Public Law 105-264, January 27, 1998 mandated the use of a government furnished travel charge card and the implementation regulations were published in the Federal Register July 16, 1999.
SmartPay2 was implemented November 29, 2008 following a generation of several other vendors and cards. My agency currently has JPChase Morgan as it’s vendor for our SmartPay2 cards.
These cards are unique in that our agency has all hotels, rental car, and airfare, taxi, centrally billed on individual card holder’s cards. This makes it easier for our card holders, and provides our agency with less delinquency rate than a lot of other agencies face.
We also have the traditional centrally billed cards which we call corporate cards, which can be utilized for infrequent travelers, or invitational travel.
I hold an individual card for personal travel, and I also hold the corporate card for my office. I have established procedures for establishing and creating the invitational or corporate card travel on the e-travel system, so we utilize the system as mandated, and save money on agent fees. The inviting office prepares the authorization and travel, and I just add the card number after the fact to approve the trip, my e-mail is included as an alternate e-mail so I get a copy of the invoice to reconcile my statement, and I can always access in GovTrip as well.
I then re-allocate both my corporate card and my individual card in the finance system when the statement comes in. That is one advantage of working in the finance office.
By: Shirley Keller
“The comments made here are mine alone and do not reflect the opinions of either my agency or the government.”