There are two ways to apply per diem rates: defining them in e-xpense or pulling them from government web sites. To pull the latest rates off the web, you must enter the appropriate web site on the e-xpense Initialization screen.
Follow these directions to define per diem rates in e-xpense. Employees can select to default these per diem rates onto their expense forms, and e-xpense can validate employees’ entries against these per diem rates, provided that you:
Set up per diem options in expense categories. This includes selecting the per diem rates that apply to each category. Each rate on the e-xpense Categories screen corresponds to a rate on the Per Diem Tables screen, which you will set up below.
Set up per diem options in expense forms.
To set up per diem rates in e-xpense
Repeat these steps as often as necessary to set up rates for each location. Note that the process for setting the mileage rate is parallel to the process for setting other per diem rates, but there are slight differences.
From the JAMIS Administration home page > Setup tab, under Expense Setup, click Per diem tables. Or, from the top of any JAMIS Administration screen, click Expense Setup > Per Diem Tables. The Per Diem Tables screen appears.
Click Add to create a new per diem table code. In the top section of the screen, per diem table code entry fields appear.
In the Location Code field, enter up to ten characters naming the location. Employees use this code to identify the area from which they want to obtain per diem rates.
Enter the city, county, state, and country for the code.
Click Save to commit your per diem table code entries.
Hint: While adding a new per diem table code, if you haven’t clicked Save yet, you can click Back to cancel any entries that you’ve made. From there, you can choose to restart the process for adding a new per diem table code, or you can retrieve existing codes to change or delete.
Click Add Detail to create a detail record for the per diem table code. In the bottom section of the screen, per diem detail entry fields appear.
In the Published Date field, enter the date when the rates are published.
In the Season Start Date and Season End Date fields, enter the dates when these rates are effective. For example, summer rates from 06/01/2008 to 09/01/2008. e-xpense compares these dates to the date on the employee’s expense form to determine which rates to use.
If a per diem table code has detail records with overlapping season dates, then e-xpense determines which rates to use as shown in this example. Let’s say a per diem table code has these records:
01/01 to 06/30, rate 40
03/01 to 09/30, rate 50
05/01 to 12/31, rate 60
For dates 01/01 to 02/28, e-xpense uses rate 40. From 03/01 to 04/30 it uses rate 50, and from 05/01 to 12/31 it uses rate 60.
Note: The published date can be before or after the season begins. For example, the rate can be published for employees on 11/30/2008, but the rate does not become effective until 01/01/2009. Also, note that you can create records with the same location code and published date, but different season start dates.
In the Maximum Lodging field, enter the maximum dollar amount for lodging. Do not enter the dollar sign ($) for this or any of the other rate fields.
In the Maximum Per Diem field, enter the maximum amount that employees can spend per day on non-lodging expenses. This field corresponds to the Maximum M&IE check box on the e-xpense Categories screen.
To define the per diem rates in more detail, fill in the applicable fields:
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Incidentals
Mileage Rate
Note: Although you can make an entry in the Mileage Rate field, e-xpense ignores it and uses the rate for the MILEAGE code instead. This is because mileage rates are set by the government and apply to all locations, not just one.
Click Update to commit your per diem detail record entries.
To add another per diem detail record with different date(s), click Add Detail and repeat from step 7.