Project: American Express Remittance

Purpose: Generates a text file for transmission to American Express
Location: Stewart Enterprises Corporate Intranet
User Base: 1
Platform: ASP.Net 3.5

Once a month, a member of the Accounts Payable group must review all of the previous month's American Express Travel & Entertainment card charges and determine the amount to be paid on each card. This used to be a manual process involving 3 people: someone to query the charges from Oracle iExpense and export to a spreadsheet, someone in Accounts Payable to review and adjust the charges in the spreadsheet, and someone to import the contents of the spreadsheet to a Sql Server database to be processed by a Coldfusion script. The ultimate product is a text file, formatted according to American Express' specifications, that is then transmitted to American Express' mainframe for batch processing.

I designed this application to simplify this process and allow the Account Payable person to work independently of Information Systems personnel. The AP user can download and review the previous month's card charges at the click of a button. The user can review a summary of all card charges, then drill down to review/adjust individual card charges. The system allows the user to easily identify which cards are complete by displaying its approval status in the summary.

Once the AP user has completed review and adjustments, clicking the "Create Remittance File" button will generate the text file and store it in a predetermined directory for transmission at a later time. This system does not actually transmit the file to American Express' mainframe. That functionality is reserved by third party software provided by American Express, which provides the security and transmission protocols that comply with their standards.

Timing is enforced by an internal "cycle cut" calendar, which defines the billing periods. The system will not allow charges to be downloaded from Oracle iExpense before the end of the current cycle cut date in order to ensure against missed charges that can lead to delinquent payments.

Code Samples:

• default.aspx.cs - code-behind file for home page
• export_details_excel.aspx.cs - exports records to a MS Excel spreadsheet
• edit_charges.js - Javascript files containing jQuery button listeners, client-side validation methods for ASP.Net CustomValidator controls, and supporting functions.