Per Diem Preprocessor Screen

Use the Per Diem Preprocessor screen to keep your schedules up to date.

Once you have used the Per Diem Schedules screen to create a per diem schedule that uses government per diem amounts, you can use Time & Expense with ESS import processing to import per diem information directly into the schedule whenever the government publishes new per diem information. However, it is recommended that you instead use the Per Diem Preprocessor utility to update your schedules. Using the utility has several advantages over importing data directly into your schedules:

  • You are not required to locate the import files in a particular system location. You can import them from any location accessible to the computer on which you are running the utility.
  • The utility checks for error conditions (missing M&IE information, for example) and highlights the affected location lines so you can identify and correct the problem.
  • The utility checks for locations in the actual per diem schedule that do not exist in the government file being imported and highlights those locations. You can then decide if you want them to remain active or, if they are no longer valid, to be marked as terminated and removed from the lookup lists of valid per diem locations.
  • You can delete location lines imported from the government files that you do not want in your per diem schedule.

    For more information on per diems and per diem schedules, see Per Diem Schedules and Special Topic: Per Diems.

Attention: To learn more about setting up per diem schedules and importing government per diem rates, refer to Deltek Expense Getting Started Guide and Deltek Time & Expense with ESS Technical Guide.

Location Per Diem Preprocessor Screen

To display the Per Diem Preprocessor screen, complete the following step:

Click Time & Expense > Expense > Expense Utilities > Per Diem Preprocessor.

Contents Per Diem Preprocessor Screen

Screen Functions

Use these screen functions to select per diem schedules for preprocessing, import new per diem information for those schedules, review the new information, and post the changes to the actual per diem schedules.

Field Description
New

Click New to clear the screen and all selections made using the Search function, and set the screen up to import and post location per diem information for another per diem schedule.

When you open the Per Diem Preprocessor utility, it is "new" mode by default.

Save

After you use Per Diem Schedule to select the per diem schedule for which you are running the Per Diem Preprocessor utility, click Saveto create the temporary files used for preprocessing.

This is the only time you use the Save function. As you add or edit data on the Per Diem Preprocessor screen, your work is automatically saved.

Delete

Click Delete if you want to remove the temporary preprocessing information for the currently displayed per diem schedule.

This function only affects the preprocessing information. It does not remove the actual per diem schedule itself.

Search

Click Search to select one or more of the per diem schedules for which preprocessing information exists.

Note: When you use the Post function to post updated per diem information to the actual per diem schedule, the preprocessing information for that schedule is deleted and thereafter cannot be selected using the Search function.
Import

Click Import to import per diem information for the selected per diem schedule from the files you downloaded from the government Web site.

This option is only available after you have clicked Save to save the preprocessing files for the per diem schedule.

Print

Click Print if you want to print the Per Diem Preprocessor Report. This report shows all of the information currently displayed on the Per Diem Preprocessor screen.

When you click   Print, the report is generated in .PDF format. You can then review it online or print it.

If you want to print a copy of the Per Diem Preprocessor Report, be sure you do so before you post. When you post, the data used for the report is removed.

Post

Click Postto update the actual per diem schedule using the information on the Per Diem Preprocessor screen.

The > Postoption is not available if the table contains any unresolved warning or error conditions.

When you post, the utility does the following:

  • Updates the currently selected per diem schedule with the new per diem information
  • Removes the preprocessing data for the currently selected per diem schedule

If you want to print a copy of the Per Diem Preprocessor Report, be sure you do so before you post. When you post, the data used for the report is removed.

Table Functions

When you click Import and use the Import dialog box to import government per diem information, that information is displayed in the table on the Per Diem Preprocessor screen.
Note: To change the way the lines in the table are sorted, click the column heading for the type of data you want to sort by.

Use these table functions to add, remove, or make changes to individual location lines in the per diem information table.

Field Description
Filter

In Filter, indicate if you want the table to show all location per diem records, just those with an error condition, or just those with a warning condition.

Add Location

Click Add Location if you want to add a location line to the table.

When you click Add Location, the Add Per Diem Location dialog box opens so you can specify the per diem information for the line.

This option is only available after you have clicked Saveto save the preprocessing files for the per diem schedule.

Edit Location

If you want to change information for one of the table lines, first select the check box for that line and then click Edit Location to open the Edit Per Diem Location dialog box.

If the source of the line is CONUS or OCONUS, you can only change the location descriptions, the location type, and the termination date.

If the source is User, you can change most of the line information.

For details concerning individual fields on this dialog box, see the descriptions under Add Per Diem Location Dialog Box.

Delete Location

If you want to remove one or more of the table lines, first select the check box for each of those lines and then click Delete Location.

On the Per Diem Schedules screen, you cannot delete lines imported from government files. In this utility, however, you can delete such lines if you do not want them posted to the per diem schedule.

Accept Location Warning

When you import government per diem information, the utility checks for any locations in the current per diem schedule that do not exist in the newly imported information. If it finds any such locations, it adds a line for them to the table, highlights that line using blue text, and displays a warning in the Error/Warning > column.

Respond to a warning condition in one of these ways:

  • If you want to keep any of those lines as active lines in the schedule, select the check boxes for those rows and then click Accept Location Warning. The warning color and text is then removed, and the per diem information for those locations will remain in effect.
  • If you determine that some or all of the highlighted locations are no longer valid and should not be available to employees to select for expense reports, select the check boxes next to them and click Terminate Location . On the Termination Date dialog box, specify the date beyond which the location per diem information is no longer effective.
Terminate Location

When you import government per diem information, the utility checks for any locations in the current per diem schedule that do not exist in the newly imported information. If it finds any such locations, it adds a line for them to the table, highlights that line with blue text, and displays a warning in the Error/Warning > column.

Respond to a warning condition in one of these ways:

  • If you determine that some or all of the highlighted locations are no longer valid and should not be available to employees to select for expense reports, select the check boxes next to them and click Terminate Location. On the Termination Date dialog box, specify the date beyond which the location per diem information is no longer effective.
  • If you want to keep any of those lines as active lines in the schedule, select the check boxes for those lines and then click Accept Location Warning. The warning color and text is then removed, and the per diem information for those locations will remain in effect.

You can also select and use the Terminate Locationfunction for lines that are not flagged with a warning if you want to assign the same termination date to those lines. (You can also set termination dates for individual lines using the Edit Location function.)