The new Stanford Easy Pay payment method launching March 31 will substantially reduce the time and effort needed to reimburse visitors for 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 3 to 5 business days after the recipient has registered with Candex and accepted payment.
Stanford Easy Pay can be used for both foreign and domestic visitors and has no minimum or maximum amount.
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, since that information was typically gathered during the supplier setup step (which no longer occurs for Stanford Easy Pay).
Enhanced Business Purpose functionality
Preparers will be able to either enter Business Purpose information in a single paragraph or enter each Who/What/When/Where/Why item in a separate field.
Updated reports
Five reports across three OBI dashboards will be updated to support Stanford Easy Pay:
- Expense Requests and SU Card Activity (ERR) Dashboard: Expense Requests and Expense Requests - Aging
- Consolidated Expenditure Reporting (CER) Dashboard: Expenditure Balance and Expenditure Details
- Procure to Pay (P2P) Dashboard: AP Invoices
The report updates will include the following:
- Because Stanford pays Candex to process visitor reimbursements and honoraria payments, “Candex Solutions Inc.” will display as the supplier in OBI.
Two new fields will be added to these reports to designate who is receiving the payment: Payment Recipient Full Name and Payment Recipient Email Address. Depending on the report, these fields may be “include fields” that can be saved in a customization. These fields will also be added to the selection criteria of the updated reports in the ERR and P2P dashboards, along with “Easy Pay” as a new value for Expense Request Transaction Category Description in the ERR dashboard reports. View image:
In these reports, clicking on the Easy Pay transaction number (EZP123456) opens a report drill that includes the payment recipient name and email address among other details about the transaction. View image:
Note: The Stanford Easy Pay payment method replaces the need for Digital Payments (DP) transactions. Previously processed DP transactions will still remain visible in reports.
Learn more
- Refer to the Topic Overview: Stanford Easy Pay for an overview of the payment process.
- Access a new learning resource:
- For step-by-step transaction guidance, refer to:
- Learn about the visitor’s experience:
- Watch a brief video tour of the registration and payment process to learn more about what the experience will be like for the visitor (payee).
- Review the FMS Event presentation and recording from the April 3 information session about the new Stanford Easy Pay process.
Recent updates
On June 23, several enhancements were introduced to streamline transaction entry for preparers:
When the Mileage Expense Type is selected, clicking on the USD Amount field triggers a pop-up that enables a quick calculation of the reimbursement amount, which is automatically added to the USD Amount field.
- When the Airfare Expense Type is selected, the Details pop-up now lists airfare information first for improved usability.
- When entering foreign expenses, only the Service Locations specified in the transaction header (in the Request Details section) will appear at the line level when selecting the Details icon, streamlining the process to choose a location for multi-destination travel.
