The new SNAP version has an easier to use navigation, beautiful analytics, new reports, more white space. We hope that these tweaks will make for a refined experience within the SNAP dashboard and set the scene for more flexibility around how you customise reporting.
Watch the 20 minutes video overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFsLV3aS6XA&feature=youtu.be
Introduction: 00:00-00:50
Welcome to Conferma SNAP!
This a 20 minutes overview of the brand new version of SNAP. The new SNAP comes with improved beautiful analytics, brand new reports, better invoice reminders and more. These tweaks make for a refined experience within the SNAP dashboard and set the scene for more flexibility around how you customise reporting.
This video will aim to give you a high level overview of the key functionality within Conferma SNAP. It will start with a run through of the Overview Page and then move to reports, transaction, deployments, adding an invoice or invoice search, documents and invoice reminders.
Section 1: Overview - 00:50-03:56
When you log in to SNAP, you will come to the Overview page. This gives a snapshot of how your accounts are behaving.
Here you can see:
- The list of your Card Pools
- The Use Type - the type of account that has been opened with the card provider
- The Date the last statement was cut
- The number of Transactions received since the last statement was cut, and are now held in what we call the “current period”
- The Transaction Total – which is the total value of the transactions for the current period
Select the graph icon to view some analytics for your accounts
- Select the Card Pools you wish to view analytics for, and a Date Range which can be a period of up to six months.
- The Transaction Forecast shows both deployment and transaction totals, which can also be viewed in isolation. The data displayed in this graph is locked to two weeks either side of today’s date, irrespective of the dates configured at the top.
Below the transaction forecast, you will see a summary of:
- The number of Deployments, the Deployment Total, the number of Transactions, the Transaction Total, the number of documents received, and the number of invoices manually added – you can click into any of these tabs to view more details
The Deployments by Platform section shows you the number of, and percentage of deployments made on any platforms you have used within the date range.
Here is a breakdown of Deployments by Spend Type, with some further analytics for air deployments. You can see a chart showing Spend by Carrier, with the Total Deployment Amount for each carrier below, in addition to your Top Travel Routes.
The TripPay section shows the number of travellers who have Future Trips within the specified dates. You can change this data to view only those Checking In or Checking Out Today, as well as an overview of Trippay app usage for upcoming trips; how many travellers Have Access To Trippay, how many have Viewed The Virtual Card, and how many have Not Yet Registered for TripPay.
The activity feed shows any recent Traveller Activity.
You can Configure this page to view some more specific analytics. For example, CDF Name, Value, the PNR Locator, Traveller Email Address, and to Convert The Currency. Here, if we Select Danish Kroner for example, you can see that all figures have converted to this currency.
Section 2: Reports - 03:56-10:57
Now we will look at the Reporting section. To run a report, Select the Card Pool, then the Report Type.
You can run reports on Transactions, Deployments, and TripPay, all of which can be downloaded to Excel.
The Transaction Reports are generated from the transaction data provided by the card issuer, alongside deployment data captured when the virtual cards are created.
There are several options for running a transaction report. The Invoice Report is based on the data from invoices that have been manually added in to SNAP, alongside transaction and deployment data from the bank and the tool used to create the virtual card.
The Standard Invoice Report here can be run on a statement period, or on a specified date range – which can be up to a maximum period of three months. Select the date range or period and Run the report. You can amend the number of results listed per page, and search for specific transactions if you wish. The information captured in this report here includes some basic transaction and deployment details, client details, supplier information, traveller information and most importantly the invoice line item breakdown details, at the end of any transaction or deployment report, will be any custom data fields present in the booking tool or platform.
The Standard Transaction Report provides a list of all transactions alongside the booking data, again this can be run from a statement period or a specified date range. Select the report and the statement reference and Run report. As you can see, this report shows extensive details about each transaction, followed by deployment data, supplier details, the traveller and rate information, and any custom data at the end.
The statement reports will match the statements delivered directly to you by your banking provider. Click download report to export it to excel, once you have the report you can total the Transaction Account Amount column to check both statements match. Please note with some banking providers you may have to remove the last months statement payment, shown as a credit, to balance the report.
Next, we will look at a Deployment Report, which relates primarily to data captured in the booking process. Here you will need to select the date range when the deployments were created. Run the report and you will see the details about the deployments, supplier information, traveller and rate information, followed by the custom data captured in the booking process.
Finally, there are 3 Trippay Report options:
The All User Report allows you to view all users in your organisation who have downloaded TripPay, this shows the basic information about the traveller, their name, email address, the date the user was created, the date they registered for TripPay, and the date they last logged in.
You can also run a report which shows any Users With Trips Commencing Today, and Any Trips Checking Out Today, these reports will show details about the traveller, the supplier, the arrival and departure dates for hotel, or any dates or times relevant if they are taking a flight, train, or renting a car.
As demonstrated, the transaction and deployment reports bring back extensive data. To refine this, you can also create bespoke reports based on the Standard Transaction and Standard Deployment reports.
To do this
- Select Customise Reports, and Select the report you would like to customise
- Name the report
- Move the columns you want to include across from the list provided, you can click fast-forward to move everything across and remove the ones you don’t want to appear, or move the columns that you want individually across
- When you’re happy with the columns you have selected, click Customise and you will see a preview of the report
Now, when you go to run a deployment report, you will see the custom report in the drop-down list, Select the date range to run this on and click Run Report as you would any other.
If you want to go back and add in any additional columns, for instance another default value, a static value which allows you to include a column to the report which is constant, or smart description, you can do this here. To add Custom Data Values to your customised report select Custom Data Value as the Type, give the column a name and add the Custom Data Key. The Custom Data Key refers to the name of the custom data field that you wish to add to the report. It is very important that this Custom Data Key matches your custom data field name exactly. For example, if you have a custom data field label as ‘DEPARTMENT’ then Custom Data Key should also be named ‘DEPARTMENT’ in the exact same format. There should be no spaces before or after. This Key is used as the identifier to extract the data from your deployments and for this to work it needs to be input in the correct format. Click Save.
- Any user can create a custom report, but only administrators can share customised reports with all SNAP users, by selecting Options, Share Report
- The new column will appear in this preview screen, you can also adjust the order of your columns here by dragging them into your preferred order. When you run the report again, this show in the way you configured it
- This custom report will now show in the Customise Reports If you decide you no longer need the report, click Options, Delete Report and Confirm and this will no longer be available. Please note – it is not possible to delete the two standard reports.
Section 3: Transactions - 10:57-15.44
From the transactions tab, you can search for individual transactions, groups of transactions, or transactions over a specific date range.
First Select the Spend Type. If you select a Card Pool, you can also Select A Statement, or search by
- The Transaction ID, - the unique number we give to the transaction when it is loaded into our system
- The Deployment ID - the number assigned when a card is generated
- The Narrative - the name that the hotel has on the PDQ machine
- You can also search using the Last 4 digits of the card and even the Authorisation Code that the hotel has used
If you don’t fill any of this information in, set a Date Range for the search, which will default to 1 month back from today’s date. Amend the dates using the calendar, the search dates are restricted to three-month periods.
There are filters which can be used to narrow down the search further by looking for:
- Deployments Matched to the transaction,
- Invoices Matched – This is if you have added the invoice/folio line item data. It is a manual function in SNAP, we will explain this in more detail later.
- Reconciled - if a transaction has been matched to a deployment and the invoice data has been added or marked as ‘not required’.
When you have entered all your criteria, hit Search. The results will be in list format, the information we can see here is
- The ID
- The Date the card was charged
- The hotel Narrative
- The Last 4 Digits of the card charged
- The Amount that has been charged to the card and currency
- The Tick indicates that the transaction has been matched to a deployment, and as you have not added in any invoice breakdown yet, this is the same as the Full Amount. When we have added in an invoice breakdown you will see that the amount goes to zero, is flagged as fully reconciled with a green tick.
Click on a transaction to view further details.
The Transaction Amount is in local currency, the Statement Amount in the currency you set the account up in, the Matching State will say Automatic, indicating that Conferma have auto matched it, and the Statement Ref which specifies which statement the transaction can be found in. If it is ‘not set’ the transaction is in the current period and has not yet been allocated to a statement.
You can see that this transaction has been matched to a deployment, and the details of this are shown in the bottom pane.
- The Deployment ID
- Type of spend – which is hotel in this case
- The Date the booking was made
- The Hotel (supplier) Name as it is displayed in the booking platform
- The Detail is the dates of travel
- The Last 4 Digits of the credit card number
- And under this icon, the Amount of Transactions matched to the deployment, (which is this transaction we are looking at above) and the total amount deployed at time of booking.
As we have gone in via the Transaction Search, the transaction is in the top viewing pane, select View Deployment and the deployment moves to the top and the transaction drops below.
The Deployment Detail contains all the information shown in the report we looked at earlier, at an individual level. The detail here is fed from what is captured in the booking platform, therefore this varies depending on this.
Open up the Accommodation Details to see the Check in and Out dates, Payment Restrictions, and Cancellation Policy. Any customer specific information is visible in the Custom Data Fields tab. Here, we have captured the department.
You can click into the tabs to view any Invoices, Notes and Documents that are associated with the deployment.
Click View Transaction to flip this back up to the top pane, from here you can Select TRANSACTIONS to go back to your original search results.
Section 4: Deployments - 15:44-18:04
Next, we will look at Deployment Search. You can search here for any deployment, whether it has been charged yet or not.
To search for deployments, you can narrow this down to the Spend Type and Card Pool. You can also search using Deployment ID, the Date Range, which is the booked date range and is limited to three-month periods and will default to three months back from today’s date, the Reference, the Supplier Name, the PNR Locator, the Last 4 Digits of The Card and the Deployment Status.
You can also narrow down the search further with the optional filters here. If a deployment was cancelled it will show in red in the search, but you can also filter them out by ticking Exclude Cancellations.
You can also apply some Advanced Search options to search for the specifics: hotel name, address, the check out date range, and the traveller name. Here we are going to narrow down the search, to deployments for a specific traveller.
Click Search
Clicking on any of the headers reorders the search into numerical or alphabetical order. These are Deployment Id, Spend Type, the Date the booking was made, the Name of supplier, the Supplier Reference, the PNR Locator, the Detail is the date of stay, the Total Deployed Amount, the number under the Icon indicates how many transactions have been matched to the deployment, and you will also see the Last 4 Digits of the card.
We will Select the deployment here where the transaction has been matched. All the deployment details are available here, including rate information, custom data fields and so on. This is the same page we come to through a Transaction Search, but where the deployment details default to the bottom pane with and the transaction above, this is the other way around. Again, we can view any related Invoices, Documents and Notes here.
Click the transaction, and View Transaction, to flip this to the top pane.
Section 5: Adding an Invoice & Invoice search - 18:04-20:16
When you receive a copy of the invoice/folio from the supplier, use the information it contains to find the transaction.
Remember you can search using the travellers name, the hotel name and dates of stay or the last 4 digits of the card. It is always easier to add the invoice when the transaction is in the top pane.
Once you’ve found this, check that the dates and transaction amount match the invoice.
If you would like to store the breakdown of your invoices in SNAP, here is where you add this data. Generally, the purpose of doing this is so you can run Invoice Reports to compliment the Standard Transaction Report, as you can break it down into individual spend items. If this level of data isn’t important to you, the following process is not necessary.
Select Options, in the top right, Create New Invoice
SNAP will present a basic template, it takes what it can from the deployment details – the Check In and Check Out Dates, the Invoice Date - today’s date. Add in an Invoice Reference which can be the reference on the hotels invoice or your own internal reference. Add the breakdown into the Category and when you’ve added the total amount into the template, Save Invoice. You will be informed that ‘The new invoice has been added successfully!’ When you view the transaction, you will see it has been marked as Reconciled. As previously mentioned, if you have added the full invoice breakdown, this data will show on the Invoice Reports.
You can search for any manually added invoices in the Invoice Search tab using similar criteria to the other tabs we have looked at previously.
You can delete this invoice in the Options tab.
If you do not require the line item data to be manually added into SNAP, you can also mark it as Invoice Not Required from the Options tab. The Transaction Amount will still show as reconciled for these transactions. This will remove the transaction from the Invoice chaser report.
Section 6: Documents - 20:16-23:54
If you have chosen to store copies of the invoices/folio in SNAP, these will be in the Documents tab. These are sent in from the hotel, or uploaded by the traveller using TripPay.
You can search by Spend Type, Card Pool, Deployment ID, use a date range, which refers to the date the document was uploaded into SNAP, Uploaded by – the name, fax or email address it was received from, and again you can filter by Documents Matched and Invoices Matched if you wish.
Hit Search and this will bring back the list of documents fitting your criteria. SNAP uses OCR - Optical Character Recognition technology, to find and link the invoice/folio document to the deployment.
If this has been successful, the Deployment ID is shown in the end column, likewise if an invoice has been created and the document linked to it, the Invoice ID will show in the Invoice column.
To manually link a document to a deployment, click on the document and take a look at the information it contains.
In the top right under Options select Link to a Deployment, this will open the deployment search tab on the left-hand side.
Search for the deployment it relates to, and when you find the correct deployment, click on it and select Link to Deployment. The Deployment ID will then show next to Linked Deployment.
From the Options tab, you can also Delete or Reject a document, here you can Add A Rejection Reason, for example if the invoice is not legible.
To manually add in the invoice breakdown, go to Options and select Create New Invoice
This opens an Invoice Template in the left pane. The OCR will populate what it can from the invoice. The invoice reference can be the reference on the hotels invoice, or your own internal reference, the invoice date will pre-populate to today’s date. You can enter here any additional Company information
To begin the breakdown, click Add Line Item. From here, Select the Category, add a description if required, the number of nights and add in the net and the tax if they appear different to the default settings on the invoice. Then click Add Line. Do this for as many categories as you need. Once the full breakdown has been added click Create.
The invoice details are in the top pane, underneath are the line items.
The invoice is matched to the deployment, now Link the Transaction to the invoice.
Click into the Transactions Tab, and any Possible Matching Transactions will show here. Click to Link This to The Invoice, the Unreconciled Amount will now show as 0 and in green. Now when viewing the transaction, you can see from the tabs that there is a matching deployment, and a matching invoice.
Section 7: Invoice Reminders - 23:15-25:52(End)
In the Invoice Reminders tab, you can chase outstanding copies of invoices/folios. Select the Card Pool, and the Statement Reference, you can also search by a Supplier Name and a Date Range to narrow down your search further if necessary. It is also possible to refine your search by the Minimum and Maximum Number of Reminders already sent.
Search and you will see the transactions that have been matched to a deployment, but where the invoice has not been manually added or marked as invoice not required. Because of this, the system presumes that you need to chase for copies of the invoice/folio.
You will see the details of the individual deployments, and most importantly in this section is the communication method.
Click a deployment and it will show you some further transaction details, as well as the date that any reminders were last sent, and how many reminders have been sent already.
The communication method where the original confirmation was sent will be auto-selected, and by clicking Send at the bottom of the screen, the supplier will receive an Urgent Invoice Request. You can change the communication method and manually add in an alternative email address or fax number if necessary.
By Unmarking All you then have the option to send reminders individually by ticking the ones you want, so if I want to only email the Crowne Plaza here, I can select it and hit Send.
From this page, if you for any reason do not require the hotel to send you the invoice, you can mark the matched deployment as ‘Invoice Not Required’, when you search these parameters again, the deployments you have done this for will no longer appear on the chasing list.
Introduction: 00:00-00:50
Section 1: Overview – 00:50-03:56
Section 2: Reports – 03:56-10:57
Section 3: Transactions – 10:57-15.44
Section 4: Deployments – 15:44-18:04
Section 5: Adding an invoice/ Invoice search – 18:04-20:16
Section 6: Documents 20:16-23:54
Section 7: Invoice Reminders – 23:15-25:52(End)