Quarterly Purchasing Card Administrators’ Meeting
Minutes
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 – 9:00-Noon
Winewood Office Center, Building 4
Facilitator: Marie Walker
Introductions
Christina Smith, Department of Financial Services
As Director of the Division of Accounting and Auditing, Ms. Smith welcomed the
meeting participants.
Special Presentations
 VISA/Bank of America – Darren Muise, Visa; Evan Tullos, BOA; Kristen Harrison, BOA
(Presentation is attached to e-mail and will be posted on the PCard website.)
o Forced Transactions – available for emergency situations and when
network is down, although merchants force transactions through in nonemergency situations. Merchants are allowed to re-use an existing
authorization number to process recurring charges. Merchants assume all
liability for forced transactions. They cannot dispute those transactions.
Administrators can file a complaint regarding forced transactions.
Complaints must be filed with Bank of America, who will forward form to
Visa. Visa can fine Acquirer (merchant’s bank) and merchant and/or
revoke merchant’s privileges to accept Visa. Visa cannot provide the
outcome of the complaint to State of Florida, due to privacy rights.
o Service Charges/Convenience Fees – violation of Visa rules unless
accepting card is a true convenience. Visa allows convenience fees if:
 the fee is a flat charge, not exceeding $3.95,
 the fee is not a percentage,
 no other payment method is available,
 cardholder is aware of fee upfront,
 the merchant is a utility company. Utility companies must also
comply with the flat fee and cardholder awareness requirements.
Mastercard and AmericanExpress allow convenience fees. Store clerks
may not be aware of Visa’s rule and charge the fee for Visa transactions.
DFS does not have legal authority to pay convenience fees.
o Visa Waiver of Liability – Visa protects agencies up to $100,000 against
cardholder abuse in certain circumstances.
o Industry Trends – The industry (not Florida’s) average rate a merchant
pays to process a credit card is 3% – 3½%. Study shows that on
average warrants cost $72 to process, while PCard transactions cost $22.
Also, on average, checks/warrants take 33 days to process for payment,
while PCard transactions process in 72 hours. Current fraud trends
include organizations with machines that generate account numbers and
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test the numbers through the black market. If the account number
works, plastic is created. Another current fraud trend is mail theft in mail
rooms.
 Marie Walker, Department of Financial Services—General PCard Program Overview
o It has been a year since Marie became Statewide PCard Administrator.
The following are some of the items the Statewide Office is currently
working on:
 The Statewide PCard Administrator Office is working on updating
the Administrator’s Manual. First draft will remove information
that is included in other resources (such as Reference Guide for
State Expenditures) and add information that is not included in
policy documents. The first draft will also include a revised Model
Plan. The next version will include FLAIR’s Administrator Manual,
to have everything in one document.
 The Statewide Office is also working with FLAIR Education to post
Approver and Administrator training on the web.
 Bob Notman, Department of Revenue—Red Flags: Combating Purchasing Card
Fraud (Presentation is attached to e-mail and will be posted on the PCard website.)
 Michelle Oliver, Department of Financial Services—Using Level Three Data
(Presentation is attached to e-mail and will be posted on the PCard website.)
Outstanding Items
 ITN Update – No new information has been released regarding the ITN.
 National Association of Purchasing Card Professionals (NAPCP) Membership Update –
Marie has submitted a request to management for the Statewide Office to join the
association as the prime member ($495 membership fee) and the agencies join as
associates ($149 or less membership fee). Marie will inform Administrators when a
decision is made.
 MRE Training – FLAIR Education plans to schedule training for the end of September
and asked if Administrators would prefer it to be held on a Monday or Friday. By a
show of hands, the Administrators preferred training to be held on Friday. FLAIR
Education will send a letter to the Administrators once the training is scheduled.
 Vendor File Reminders – The Statewide Office receives e-mails and phone calls from
Administrators regarding the Statewide Vendor File requirements. Debra Evans with
the Bureau of Accounting, Statewide Vendor Group, spoke on this topic at the
February 2, 2011, quarterly Administrators’ meeting. The Administrators should
either refer to the minutes of that meeting or contact the Statewide Vendor Group
directly.
 Agency Plan Reviews – The Statewide Office is almost done with the initial reviews
of the agency plans submitted with last year’s Rep Letters and is also working on
revisions.
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 Rep Letters – The Statewide office plans to have a workshop regarding the
upcoming Rep Letters in the fall. The Rep Letters will be sent out to the agencies in
the fall.
New Items
 Administrator Backup – It is important that each agency have a backup administrator
who can take over in the event the Administrator is not there. It is a severe
inconvenience for an agency to not have someone who can speak to the bank, order
cards, cancel cards, etc.
 Status of FLAIR Requests:
o Population of Social Security Number (SSN) in PCard Module – FLAIR staff
is looking at the ―envelope‖ process. They discovered that some of the
fields in the envelope were not addressed in programming. Adding the
fields to the programs should increase the occurrences of sub-vendors
being populated. This change is being tested and should be in
production soon.

o
CDPURGE Change – After old records were purged from the Information
Warehouse, we discovered 49 old records that have been in FLAIR
Departmental for years. Those records should be deleted when FLAIR
conducts the next purge, December 30th.
o
Purge of PCard approver records with no active PE records – For approver
records deleted before 2002, there are some discrepancies in the PCAPRV
and PCPERSON tables. The approvers appear to be active in one table,
but not in another. FLAIR staff is currently working to resolve the issue.
o
PCard website enhancements – The Statewide Office has made some
progress in updating the website with additional reports, but the website
is a work in progress. Since the Agency Administrator List has not been
added to the Administrator Only Page, the Statewide Office plans to
include the list with the Weekly PCard Update that is sent to the
Administrators every Wednesday. NOTE: Since the meeting, this
information has been posted to the Administrator-only page of the PCard
website.
Discussion/Best Practices – Who has processes that are working well
for their agency and would like to share with the group?
 Card distribution to field employees :
o DOR sends an e-mail to the cardholder that his/her PCard is on the way
via FedEx and requests the cardholder to let the Administrator know if
the card has not been received within 10 business days. The card is
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cancelled if the Administrator does not receive a response from the
cardholder.
DOH sends an e-mail to the cardholder and office liaison. If the
cardholder does not respond within 10 days, the card is cancelled.
DEP sends a form with the card that must be signed by the cardholder
and returned to the Administrator.
FWC lowers the credit limit of the new cards to $1 and sends the cards to
the Regional Business Managers and has the cardholder sign an
acknowledgment form. Once the signed form is faxed to the
Administrator, the credit limit is raised to the appropriate level.
DBPR sends a memo with the P-Card requesting the cardholder to e-mail
the Administrator once the card is received. In addition, the
Administrator e-mails a notification message to the cardholder that the
PCard is being delivered by UPS with the date/time to expect the card,
and a request to the cardholder to e-mail the receipt of the card. Both
actions are done to ensure that the Cardholder notifies the Administrator
promptly, so action can be taken to cancel the card if it has not been
delivered.
 Notification of separated employees:
o FDLE PCard Administrator receives a monthly separation report,
generated by Human Resources, to ensure cards have been cancelled.
o DJJ has a separation notification system, where the supervisor enters the
information into the system and an email is generated to the PCard
Administrator. The Administrator can then ensure the card has been
cancelled.
o DBPR receives a separation report bi-weekly and each division’s Human
Resource person contacts the Administrator when an employee leaves.
Also, DBPR P-Card Approvers contact the Administrator when an
employee leaves. Cardholders also receive training to notify
Administrator before separation.
o DOR receives a network access cancellation notice when an employee
leaves.
o DOH uses a program that compares active cardholders with payroll data.
An e-mail is sent to the office liaison for cardholders with no active
payroll data. If the employee left the agency, a cardholder form is
submitted to close the account. Cards of employees on extended leave
are also cancelled.
o DEP’s IT staff created a program that compares PeopleFirst data with
cardholder information for verification of employment. This program is
run by the Administrator every morning.
o FWC requires supervisors to shred cards when notified employee is
leaving, not wait until termination date. The Administrator also receives a
list from personnel as a back-up.
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 Hurricanes and Other Emergencies –The Statewide Office is monitoring the current
situation (Hurricane Irene). As of the day of the meeting, the Governor’s Office had
not issued an Executive Order declaring an emergency — which triggers the PCard
emergency process. The procedure and Real Time Form is on the Administrator-only
page of the PCard website.
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