The new Stanford Easy Pay payment method launching March 31 will substantially reduce the time and effort needed to reimburse visitors for travel expenses and process their honoraria payments.
With Stanford Easy Pay, preparers will still initiate payments within the Expense Requests system (ERS), but will no longer need to set them up as a visitor payee in Stanford’s supplier system. Then, once a payment for a visitor reimbursement or honoraria is approved, Stanford sends the payment request to a third-party vendor, Candex, to be processed and paid. Because this payment method does not require supplier setup with the Supplier Query and Request tool, processing and payment time will be reduced to only three to five business days.
Stanford Easy Pay can be used for both foreign and domestic visitors and has no minimum or maximum amount.
Action required
- For new payments to visitors: Because Stanford Easy Pay does not require supplier setup for visitors, preparers may decide to save time by waiting until March 31 or later to create and submit any new visitor travel reimbursement or visitor honoraria transactions.
- For in progress payments to visitors: ERS will transition to Stanford Easy Pay for all visitor travel reimbursement and visitor honoraria transactions on March 31, 2025. All visitor travel reimbursement and visitor honoraria transactions that are new or in progress must be fully submitted and approved by 5 p.m. on March 25, 2025 to ensure processing. Incomplete transactions after March 25 may need to be re-submitted via Stanford Easy Pay on or after March 31.
Why is this changing?
Supplier setup is time-consuming for preparers across campus. While the setup process is an important step to protect Stanford from risk, such as bank fraud or scams when making payments, over 85% of visitor reimbursement and honoraria payments last year were one-time, and for relatively small amounts of money. By removing the step to set up the visitor in the supplier system, FMS can save time for staff, and help simplify work at Stanford, without increasing risk.
How Stanford Easy Pay works
After a visitor reimbursement or honoraria request is created in ERS and fully approved, Stanford automatically sends the transaction to Candex for processing. Candex then contacts the visitor to register.
Once the visitor registers, Candex pays them through an electronic funds transfer. To help the visitor, the Candex portal is available in 14 languages, and Candex provides support for payees during standard working hours in the U.S. and Europe. Payments in foreign currencies will incur a transaction fee.
Throughout this process, payees receive reminder notifications to register (if necessary), and preparers receive email notifications about the payee’s progress.
When payment is complete, the transaction’s status in ERS changes to Paid and the payment is documented in the relevant financial systems and reports. Information about what these transactions look like in OBI reports will be provided soon, including the new Stanford Easy Pay transaction type EZP.
Related enhancements
Several related enhancements will also roll out when Stanford Easy Pay launches.
Simpler navigation
Stanford Easy Pay will feature a simplified, more intuitive navigation within Oracle Financials. The Create New Transaction options shown on the Expense Requests page will be organized by type of transaction (Expense Report or Non-PO Payments), and subdivided into type of payee (for Expense Reports) and type of transaction (for Non-PO Payments), as shown below. The Digital Payment payment option for domestic visitor travel reimbursements will no longer be shown.
Consolidated Expense Types
The number of Expense Types for visitor travel reimbursement will also be consolidated (from 18 to 10 options) to streamline how this information is entered. The consolidated Expense Types will be:
- Adjusted Per Diem
- Airfare
- Ancillary Airline Fees
- Car Rental
- Conference Registration
- Ground Transportation
- Lodging
- Miscellaneous
- Meal(s)
- Meal(s) with alcohol
Visa information for foreign visitors
Visitor travel reimbursements and visitor honoraria transactions for foreign visitors will need to state what visa the visitor has in the Business Purpose. This information had previously been collected during supplier setup for visitors, which is not required for Stanford Easy Pay.
Learn more
- Visitor’s experience: To learn more about what the experience will be like for the visitor (payee), watch a brief video tour of the registration and payment process.
- New Fingate resources will be provided here soon, and related Fingate pages will be updated to reflect these changes.
- An information session will be offered on April 3 to provide an overview of the new Stanford Easy Pay process.
