In June 2007, the Financial Services department announced the selection of a new service provider for the College’s credit card program. Ithaca College has contracted with GE Corporate Payment Services as the College’s service provider for both our Procurement Card and Travel Card Programs.
As most of you may remember, in October 2006, Ithaca College was required to perform a mass re-issuance of all procurement and travel cards outstanding. This was the result of a decision made by the College’s long time service provider, to sell its credit card portfolio to a third party vendor, Elan Financial Services. In November 2006, the College was notified by Elan Financial Services that the type of account our credit card program was transferred into was not a corporate account, therefore another mass re-issuance of all credit cards was going to be necessary. It was at this time that the College asked Elan Financial Services to hold off on this re-issuance so we could review the current level of service being provided.
With our migration over to GE Corporate Payment Services we will be providing employees with separate cards for each program. This will allow for a more accurate recording of both our procurement and travel expenditures, as well as, reduce the College’s exposure in case of lost cards or potential misuse of the cards.
In preparing for the migration from our current credit card vendor to GE Corporate Payment Services, our records identified a large population of cardholders that have changed jobs within the College since their original application, or that may no longer require the use of procurement/travel cards to perform their current jobs. Good internal controls require that a review of outstanding cards be done on a regular basis in an effort to minimize the College’s overall exposure to credit card abuse, therefore, employees who feel they need to have a College procurement and/or travel card will be required to complete an online application for the new cards. This online application process will also require the cardholder’s supervisor to approve the application before it is submitted to the Accounts Payable or Travel Services department for final approval and card creation. All departmental supervisors are expected to take this opportunity to review each procurement and travel card application to determine if the applicant indeed needs a card or cards to conduct College business. Once testing of the new online application process has been completed additional communications will be published informing the campus of the new procedures and the timeframe in which this must be done. No action by College employees is required until these additional instructions are issued. All supervisors should be reminded that they are required to review and sign off on cardholder statements for their employees on a monthly basis.
The College has also reviewed its current policy regarding cash advances taken in connection with travel related to College business. In an effort to improve the reconciliation of cash advances by our Travel Services department the College will be limiting cash advances to those cardholders that will be traveling internationally, traveling with student group programs, or traveling for an extended period of time that would otherwise prevent them from reconciling expenditures in a timely way. If a cash advance is required for travel it should be done using the College’s travel card. If traveling internationally or with a student group program that requires specific cash needs, the Bursars Office may be used to facilitate these transactions internally and not require the use of the travel card. E-Z Pay may not be used for cash advance purposes. It is important to note that all travel cards will be issued with the cash advance feature turned off, therefore if a cash advance is needed and meets the approved criteria, the Travel Services department will need to be contacted in order to activate the cash advance feature for a specific card.
