Drawing on more than 12 years of experience serving some of the world’s largest and most demanding commercial card customers, GE Corporate Payment Services has developed and released a new advanced reporting system. The SAM™ system – short for Strategic Account Management - supports the real-time management of purchasing, travel, and other corporate card and e-settlement programs.

The system takes advantage of the newest web technology, providing commercial card program managers with powerful reporting, querying, account and supplier maintenance, and global management tools. Its general ledger mapping functions automate the accounting of commercial card and e-settlement transactions to a very high degree.

The system is highly customizable, not only to organizational hierarchy, accounting structure, security needs, and individual user preferences, but also to customer brand.

The system interfaces with financial and ERP systems, allowing users to allocate expense data to the proper cost centers with little if any manual editing. Cardholders and program administrators can view transactions, edit accounting, and maintain account details in a flexible interface.

SAM consolidates and minimizes administrative efforts; organizations that have individual-bill travel card and central-bill purchasing card programs can manage both on a single platform. The system supports mining the rich detail of transaction addendum records, including airline, hotel folio, shipping/courier, temporary help, rental car, fuel, and non-fuel. To help review spending on a worldwide basis, customers can load global transaction data in more than a dozen currencies including the euro, with flexible options in currency conversion and reporting.

With more than 140 standard reports, SAM is a powerful relational-database tool that focuses on vendor activity and cardholder compliance. The highly intuitive query tool can access hundreds of fields, and provides flexibility in the look, format and timing of the output. By automating the routine and highlighting the exceptions, program management is streamlined, freeing staff for more strategic, value-add activities.

“We estimate that SAM’s accounting features can automate more than 75 percent of all incoming card transactions, transmitting the data to the correct general ledger account without editing by the user. In addition, the system fully supports GE’s vPayment e-settlement product, which can raise the percentage of “hand’s free accounting” to more than 90 percent,” Jeffery R. Dye, President and CEO of GE Corporate Payment Services said.

“Our customers—especially those with complex project code accounting and global travel needs—will find that the system delivers increased accuracy, streamlined reconciliation processes, and more information with which to negotiate with vendors,” said Dye. “With high-speed architecture, web access, and new reporting features, SAM helps organizations move beyond the purchase to new levels of process efficiency.”

The system replaces and significantly enhances the features of Corporate Payment Services’ existing PARIS and Synergy reporting systems.