SmartPay - Statements Reconciliation Instructions and Miscellaneous Program Information Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 16:02:15 -0500 To: "USGS Employees" From: Lisa Zukowski Subject: SmartPay - Statements Reconciliation Instructions and Miscellaneous Program Information Note: Supervisors, Managers, and Team Leaders: Please ensure that employees without access to e-mail receive a copy of this message. MEMORANDUM To: All Travel, Purchase and Fleet Credit Card Holders From: John K. Peterson Office of Acquisition and Federal Assistance Subject: SmartPay - Statements Reconciliation Instructions and Miscellaneous Program Information Below are the instructions promised in our last e-mail message dated February 5, 1999, on how to read and reconcile the new NationsBank Monthly Statements. As usual, you may contact one of the USGS Agency Program Coordinators (APC's) listed at the following Intranet site: http://www.usgs.gov:8888/ops/acquisition/bc-apcs.html. STATEMENT RECONCILIATION 1. Review statements to ensure all transactions are legitimate. A sample copy of a statement with explanation of each statement component is posted on the OPS Intranet site at, http://www.usgs.gov:8888/ops/acquisition/newstmt.pdf). 2. Review each transaction to determine if it was correctly posted to a Centrally Billed Account (CBA) or Individually Billed Accounts (IBA). 3. Determine whether a transaction needs to be transferred from a CBA to IBA or vise versa. If a transaction transfer is necessary, either the Cardholder or the Reviewing Official must initiate transfers by telephone to NationsBank Government Card Services Unit (GCSU), 1-800-472-1424. Reviewing Officials may also initiate this transfer on a cardholders behalf via EAGLS. Once EAGLS is available to cardholders, and they can do this on line as well. Changes made via EAGLS will be queued to the Bureau APC for approval. Requests made to the GCSU will be logged for review and later approval by the Bureau APC. One problem that has come to our attention relates to film development or purchases made at a Wal-Mart Super Center and Eckard Drugs. These merchants are coded as a grocery store by the bank and are posted as individually billed transactions. It was anticipated that grocery stores should be available to employees in travel status as a source of meals/food. These changes will routinely need to be moved from IBA to CBA. 4. Disputed Items. The cardholder should make every attempt to resolve the problem directly with the merchant. If resolution has been confirmed with the merchant and will appear on the next billing cycle statement, the transaction should not be disputed. If an issue cannot be reasonably resolved with the merchant or the problem is an unresolved transaction or billing error, the cardholder should contact GCSU, 1-800-472-1424. A transaction should only be disputed due to the following reasons: 1) defective or unsuitable delivered merchandise; 2) non-delivery of merchandise; 3) questionable charges; 4) duplicate billing; or 5) unauthorized charge. Currently there is no form available to transmit a dispute, therefore, a Cardholder must assert a dispute, or billing error in writing and within 60 days of the date of the statement reflecting the error to the following address: NationsBank P.O. Box 7014 Dover, DE 19903-7014 The letter must include the Cardholder name, account number, merchant, date of transaction, posting date, dollar amount of suspected error, and an explanation of the error. WHAT TO PAY NOW Cardholders should pay all correctly posted individually billed transactions. Do not pay transactions that posted individually but will be transferred to a CBA. If a transaction is moved from CBA to IBA, this transaction can be paid when it appears correctly posted on the next billing cycle's statement. The statements have a payment due date of February 21, 1999. Payments will not be considered delinquent after this date but every effort should be made to make all payments as soon as possible. STATUS OF NATIONS BANK INVOICE We are currently waiting for NationsBank to provide our first bureau invoice/data file. NationsBank's is currently in the process of producing an invoice data file, and make it available to bureaus when that process has been successfully completed. Once we have received the file, it will be loaded into the new Federal Financial System's (FFS) CARD table. OFM will notify each division's Finance Officers when the invoice has loaded successfully and the CARD table is available for adjustments. OFM will also post a message on the mainframe message screen when the CARD table is available. All accounting reallocation will only be possible via CARD at this time. This functionality is not yet operational in EAGLS. When EAGLS is able to perform this function, you will have the option of doing reallocations through FFS CARD table or EAGLS. NEW ACCOUNTS All employees who have not received a card and need one should follow the instructions and complete the application found at the following Intranet site: http://www.usgs.gov:8888/ops/acquisition/bcnewapp.html . If an application has already been submitted to the Office of Program Support, please do not submit a duplicate. EAGLS ACCESS - ACCOUNT INFORMATION VERIFICATION All cardholders are now scheduled to have access to EAGLS by Friday, February, 26, 1999. EAGLS ID and passwords previously received will be activated and allow logon. When establishing a new password, your password must be at least 6 digits and contain both alpha and numeric characters (that is, a password consisting only of letters cannot be used.) - If the mailer containing this information has been lost, you may contact one of the APC's listed below to obtain your logon ID. - If you have previously logged in and successfully changed your EAGLS password but have forgotten your new password - call GCSU to have your password reset. Cards issued after program conversion have not yet been issued EAGLS ID and password. NationsBank will begin mailing them out on Monday, February 22. EAGLS access is now open to those Reviewing Officials and individuals designated with the EAGLS Administrative role who already received EAGLS ID and passwords. Any changes, additions or deletions to existing roles: Change requests may be faxed, (703) 648-7901, or e-mailed to Margaret Seaboy at mseaboy@usgs.gov. To verify whether a particular individual is currently designated a role in EAGLS, an alphabetical listing by division can be found at the following Intranet site: http://www.usgs.gov:8888/ops/acquisition/eaglsrol.html . If a change request has been submitted after program conversion, that change will not be reflected in this list. Reviewing Officials and EAGLS Admin may access EAGLS and are encouraged to do so to verify account information, address and default account number. Any problems encountered in making changes in EAGLS should be referred to the GCSU EAGLS Technical Help Desk, 1-800-472-1424. VEHICLE FLEET ACCOUNTS The information contained in EAGLS does not identify the vehicle for which the account is designated or embossed on the card. NationsBank is working on revising this information in EAGLS so that the USGS vehicle identification number is the account name and the custodian or point of contact is shown, "in care of" (C/O) in the first line of the address. When this change is effected, vehicle custodians and/or Reviewing Officials can make change to who is designated point of contact. Property Management will notify all interested parties when this happens.