One of the major issues within travel departments throughout government is delinquencies. Individuals who perform travel to perform their work use their government issued charge card to pay for expenses but do not pay their accounts off timely, or individuals using their government charge card as a personal card when they are not traveling at all. Both of these scenarios lead to higher delinquencies within an agency.
Luckily, the Treasury Department has kept their delinquency rate down to below one percent. This is as a result of stringent rules within the Bureaus. At the Bureaus of Public Dept we have taken several steps in the right direction to keep our delinquencies down.
First, we have implemented the mandatory use of split disbursement. We have identified the major items where the charge card is used for, (airline, hotel, rental car), and have worked with our e-travel provider to have these expenses split disbursed automatically to the individuals government charge card. The e-travel system is also designed to allow the individual to send extra money for any other expense that the charge card was used for.
Secondly, we have restricted nearly 2/3 of the Merchant Category Codes (MCC) used by businesses. This prevents cardholders from being able to use their charge cards at places not related to travel. This step helps to prevent individuals from using their cards for personal expenses when not traveling
Even though these are only two steps in the process of controlling delinquencies, they are steps that work. Our Bureau constantly looks for ways to improve in preventing delinquencies from occurring.
The main issue for cardholders to remember in helping to cut down delinquencies is to pay your bill.
By Linda Ruppel
The contents of this message are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the Government or my agency.