Recording Corporate Card Transactions

01Watch the walkthrough

A narrated, seven-minute run through one statement, from upload to a corrected line. The figures in it are sample data, not OTA's real transactions.

Captions are on by default. Turn them off from the player's menu.

02What this page does

Every charge on an OTA corporate card has to reach the books, and it has to appear on the Agency Credit Card Reconciliation in Tres. This page does both from the monthly Chase statement, so nobody keys the lines into Tres by hand.

Read the statement

You upload the Chase PDF. The page reads the statement dates, the card, and every line of account activity, and saves each line as a transaction.
Code each line

Every line gets a GL account, the category it was spent on. Every charge also gets a payee, who the money went to in Tres. The page suggests both. You decide.
Link what is already in Tres

If someone already keyed a charge into Tres, the page finds that payment and offers Link. Linking records the line with the existing payment, so the charge is not booked twice.
Submit

Each remaining line is recorded in Tres as a payment on the agency card, read back from Tres to confirm it, and then written to the OTA ledger.

What changed

The page used to post each line as a stand-alone journal entry. Those entries were right in the Tres general ledger but never showed on the Agency Credit Card Reconciliation, so charges were keyed again by hand and counted twice. Lines are now recorded as payments, which is what that report lists. The old badge Sent to TRES, unverified is gone.

Where it is and who can use it

In the advisor portal's left sidebar, open Finance → Corporate Card, or press Ctrl K (Cmd K on a Mac) and type "corporate card". Only users with the accounting role see the Finance section. Anyone else who follows a link to the page is turned away.

03Words you need

If you have read The OTA Ledger, the general terms are the same. These are the ones this page uses.

Statement: One month of the card, from its opening date to its closing date. The page groups everything by statement, and the Statement dropdown picks which one you are looking at.
Sale, Payment and Credit: The three line types. A Sale is a charge, labelled in red with a positive amount. A Payment is money paid to the card, and a Credit is a refund from a merchant. Both are labelled in green with a negative amount.
GL account: The account a line is recorded against, in the GL Account column. It answers "what was this spent on?" The list comes from Tres.
Payee: Who a charge was paid to, chosen from the Paid to list in the Tres column. Tres needs a payee on every payment. Payments to the card do not need one on the line. They go to the card issuer named in the card settings.
Tres agency card: The card as Tres knows it. Charges are recorded as payments on this card, which is what puts them on the Agency Credit Card Reconciliation. Where: Card Summary → Tres agency card
Credit GL account (the card liability): The account that tracks what OTA owes Chase on this card. Every charge increases it. Paying the card bill reduces it. Where: Card Summary → Credit GL Account (liability)
Tres payment: What a recorded line becomes in Tres. A line the page submitted shows a green Tres payment # badge with the payment's number.
Link: Records a line with a payment that is already in Tres, instead of posting a new one. A linked line shows a blue Keyed in Tres · # badge.
Void: Removes a payment this page posted, from Tres and from the card reconciliation, and cancels its entry in the OTA ledger. The line opens again so you can correct it and submit again.
Suggestion: A proposed GL account or payee for a line. Nothing is saved until you accept it.

04What a submission records

What happens to a line depends on what kind of line it is. Two kinds are posted for you. Two are refused on purpose, because only a person can record them correctly in Tres. Dr is the debit side and Cr the credit side.

A charge for an overhead expense Posted for you Agency-card payment

DrThe line's GL account, e.g. Software SubscriptionsExpense ↑

CrThe card's credit GL accountLiability ↑

Recorded in Tres as a credit card payment to the line's payee, on the Tres agency card, dated with the transaction date. It needs a payee.

A payment to the card Posted for you EFT to the card issuer

DrThe card's credit GL accountLiability ↓

CrThe line's GL account, the bank it was paid fromCash ↓

Recorded in Tres as an electronic transfer to the payee in Card payments paid to, drawn on the bank in Tres bank #. Code the line to the bank account the payment came from.

A charge for client travel Refused · key in Tres, then Link

A charge coded to a cost of sales account, or to an account with "Client Receivable" in its name, belongs to a trip. In Tres it is a supplier payment on the trip's reservation, and only a person can pick the reservation. Record it there, then use Link on this page. See §08.

A credit or refund from a merchant Refused · key in Tres, then Link

A Credit line is not posted automatically. Record it in Tres, then use Link. See §08.

What goes into Tres

Each line's statement description goes to Tres as the payment's memo, and the card name goes on the liability line. The Memo column on this page is not sent anywhere. It is a private note for whoever works the statement next.

05A tour of the page

The page has five parts, top to bottom.

Part	What it is for
Upload Statement (PDF)	Choose PDF File uploads a Chase statement. A green line reports how many transactions were imported, skipped as duplicates, or corrected, and which statement they belong to.
Manage GL Accounts	A link that opens the account list. Import from Tres brings in accounts added to Tres since the last import. Each account has an Active switch. Switching an account off hides it from every dropdown here. Tres is not affected.
Statement	Picks which statement the rest of the page shows. It opens on the most recent one.
Card Summary	The card name and last four digits, the four card settings with their Save button, Submit to Tres, a status line saying what is still missing, and Accept consistent suggestions when there are any.
Transactions table	One row per line: Date and card, Description and type, Amount, GL Account, Tres, Memo, and a total at the bottom. Memo is hidden on narrow screens, and on a smaller screen the table scrolls sideways inside its card.

The card settings

Set these once for each card. After that the page remembers them, and you only look at them again if a message tells you one is missing.

Setting	What it is
Credit GL Account (liability)	What OTA owes Chase on this card. The first time, the list only shows accounts whose name contains the card's last four digits.
Tres agency card	The card in Tres that charges are recorded on.
Card payments paid to	The Tres payee that payments to the card go to, such as Chase Card Services.
Tres bank #	The number of the Tres bank that card payments are drawn on. Chase checking is 712.

What the Tres column can show

The Tres column shows where each line stands in Tres and what you can do about it.

It shows	Meaning	What you can do
A Paid to list, with an amber outline when empty	A charge that is not in Tres yet.	Choose the payee, or click the green Use … button to take the suggestion.
Already keyed in Tres? with a payment and Link	The page found a payment in Tres for the same amount within ten days.	If it is this charge, click Link. See §08.
Link a Tres payment #…	A way to link by number when the page did not find the payment.	Type the Tres payment number and click Link.
Tres payment # + Void	Recorded. The page posted this payment and read it back from Tres. The GL account is locked.	Nothing. Void only if the line is wrong.
Keyed in Tres · #	Recorded by a payment someone keyed in Tres, which you linked.	Nothing. It cannot be voided here. Correct it in Tres.
Journal entry # — not on card reconciliation	An older line posted the previous way. It is in the Tres general ledger but not on the card reconciliation.	If the charge was also keyed in Tres, Link it. See §08.
Voided or Reversed	Recorded and then cancelled. The line is open again.	Correct it, then submit again.

What the GL Account cell can show

It shows	Meaning	What you can do
Set GL account	Not coded and no suggestion.	Click to pick from the list.
A coloured suggestion box	Not coded, and the page has a proposal.	Accept it, or click the account name to choose another.
An account name you can click	Coded, not recorded yet.	Click to change it.
An account name in plain text	Recorded in Tres. Locked.	Void the payment first if it must change.
Force Reverse in TRES	Appears under every coded line that is not recorded yet.	Leave it alone. See §09.

Editing a cell

Clicking the GL Account or Memo cell opens it for editing. Enter or clicking away saves the change. Esc cancels it. A payee saves as soon as you choose it.

06Recording a statement

Do this once a month, when the Chase statement closes. Allow about fifteen minutes, most of it on merchants the page has not seen before.

Download the statement from Chase

Use the PDF statement, not a CSV export. The page reads only Chase's statement layout.
Upload it

Click Choose PDF File and pick the file. When the upload finishes, the page switches to that statement. Check the green message. The number imported should match the number of lines on the statement.

Uploading the same statement twice is safe. Lines already on the page are skipped as duplicates.
Check the card settings

For a card you have used before, all four are already filled in. For a new card, fill them in and click Save. See §05.
Give every line a GL account

Click Accept N consistent suggestions to take all the green ones. Then work through the amber and blue ones one at a time: read the reason, then click Accept or click the name to choose another account. For Set GL account rows, pick one yourself.

The status line counts down: "3 transaction(s) still need a GL account."
Give every charge a payee

Click the green Use … button where the page suggests one. Otherwise choose from the Paid to list. Payments to the card need no payee.

The status line tells you if any are missing: "9 transaction(s) to submit; 1 charge(s) still need a payee and will be skipped." A skipped charge is not lost. It stays open until it has a payee.
Link anything already keyed in Tres

Where a row says Already keyed in Tres?, check the payment it names. If it is this charge, click Link. Do this before you submit, or the charge will be booked twice.
Look over the whole table once

Read down the GL Account column and the payees. Once a line is recorded, changing it means voiding the payment in Tres and submitting again.
Submit to Tres

The button is enabled once every open line has a GL account and the card has a credit GL account. It sends every line on the statement that is not already recorded. A green message reports how many payments were recorded. Red text lists any that failed and why. See §10.
Deal with what was refused

Client-travel charges and merchant credits are refused every time, by design. Record each in Tres, come back to this page, and Link it. See §08.
Check the result

When the status line says All transactions are recorded in Tres, every row has a green or blue badge. Each payment was read back from Tres before it was counted, so there is no separate confirmation step. Open the Agency Credit Card Reconciliation in Tres when you reconcile the card, and the payments will be there.

Refunds: check the sign

A refund from a merchant is printed on the statement with a minus sign. On this page it should show as a green Credit with a negative amount.

Statements uploaded before October 2026 could bring a refund in as a red Sale with a positive amount. If you see one, do not give it a payee and do not submit it. Upload the same statement again, which corrects the line in place. If it still shows as a Sale, or the line was already recorded in Tres, stop and ask.

If the message says "need checking in Tres"

Occasionally Tres takes a payment but something after that fails: the payment does not read back as expected, or saving it to the OTA ledger fails. The amber text names each one and ends with Do not retry. The payment exists in Tres and the row is marked with its number.

Open the payment in Tres and compare it with the row. For a ledger problem, open Finance → Journal Entries, filter to source CorporateCard, and look for an entry with the status NeedsAttention. Do not void the line or submit it again. Ask if anything does not match.

07Reading the suggestions

The page suggests a GL account for every uncoded line and a payee for charges it recognises.

GL account suggestions

The page first looks for past charges from the same merchant. When there are none, it asks an AI model. The colour of the box tells you which it did and how much to trust the result.

Box	It says	Meaning	How to treat it
Green	Used for all 4 similar charges	Every past charge from this merchant was coded to this account.	Safe to accept in bulk.
Amber	Mixed history — 2 of 3 similar charges	This merchant has been coded more than one way.	Decide each one yourself. A merchant like Amazon can be several kinds of expense.
Blue	AI guess, with a reason	The merchant has never been coded before. The AI read the description and picked from your active accounts.	A starting point. Check the reason before accepting.

Hover over a green or amber explanation to see the closest past charge it matched. While the AI is working, the Card Summary shows Asking AI about new merchants…. The page can be used during this.

Payee suggestions

A green Use … button under the Paid to list names the payee this merchant was paid to before, or a Tres payee whose name matches the start of the description. Click it to accept, or choose a different payee from the list. Linking a hand-keyed payment also teaches the page who that merchant is paid to, so next month's line gets a suggestion.

If the merchant is not in the Paid to list at all, it has no payee in Tres yet. Ask for one to be added rather than choosing a near match.

08Charges already in Tres

Some charges reach Tres before the statement does: a hotel keyed in on the day it was booked, a flight recorded against a trip. Link tells the page that payment is this line, so the charge is counted once.

When the page finds the payment

For each open line the page searches Tres for a payment of the same amount, dated within ten days, that is not voided and not already linked to another line. Matches appear under Already keyed in Tres? as #number · payee · date. Two extra words can follow:

reconciled means the payment has already been cleared on a card reconciliation in Tres.
other card means it was charged to a different agency card in Tres. Look twice before linking.

Click Link next to the right one. The row changes to Keyed in Tres · #.

When it does not

Click Link a Tres payment #…, type the payment number from Tres, and click Link. The page checks that the payment exists, is not voided, and is for exactly the same amount as the line.

Client-travel charges

Code the line to its cost of sales account and submit as usual

The line is refused with Client-travel charge: record it in Tres as a supplier payment on the trip's reservation, then use Link. Nothing was posted.
Record the supplier payment in Tres

On the trip's reservation, paid with the agency card, for the same amount.
Come back and Link it

Reload the page. The payment now appears under Already keyed in Tres?. After linking, a blue note says that in Tres it books to the trip, while the OTA ledger keeps this line's own GL account. That is expected.

Older lines posted as journal entries

A row with Journal entry # — not on card reconciliation was submitted before the change. If the same charge was also keyed in Tres as a payment, Link it to that payment. The page reverses the stand-alone journal entry in Tres so the charge is booked once, and the row then shows Duplicate journal entry # reversed. If the journal entry never existed in Tres, the note says there was nothing to reverse.

09Fixing a mistake

The fix depends on how the line stands in the Tres column.

Not recorded yet

Click the GL account or change the payee. Nothing has left OTA.

Recorded by this page: void, correct, resubmit

Click Void on the line, and confirm

The payment is voided in Tres, which removes it from the card reconciliation and from the Tres general ledger. The line's entry in the OTA ledger is cancelled by a counter-entry dated today. The row shows Voided and can be edited again.
Correct the GL account or the payee
Click Submit to Tres

Voided lines are picked up again. The new payment uses the original transaction date and gets a new number.

Recorded by a linked payment

A Keyed in Tres row has no Void button. The payment belongs to whoever keyed it and may already be reconciled. Correct it in Tres.

The payee is wrong on a recorded line

The page refuses to change it: This line is already recorded in Tres; change the payee there. Either change it in Tres, or void the payment and submit again with the right payee.

If the statement itself was read wrongly

If an amount on the page does not match the PDF, upload the same PDF again once the problem is fixed. Lines whose amount changed are corrected in place. An amber box lists each one as old amount → new amount, and the GL account already chosen is kept. A line that is already recorded is never corrected this way. Void it first.

Force Reverse in TRES

Almost never the right button

This red button appears under every coded line that is not recorded yet. It posts a reversing journal entry to Tres for a line this page has no record of sending.

It exists for one case: the line was posted to Tres as a journal entry by hand and that entry has to be cancelled. Used on a line that was never in Tres, it leaves Tres holding a reversal of nothing, and a journal entry in Tres cannot be deleted. The browser asks you to confirm first. If you are not sure, click Cancel and ask. If the charge was keyed in Tres as a payment, the right tool is Link.

10Messages and what they mean

When a line fails, nothing is posted for it unless the message says otherwise. Fix the cause and submit again. Messages that say Do not retry are the exception: something was posted.

Status line and upload

Message	Cause	What to do
Only .pdf files are accepted.	The file was not a PDF.	Download the PDF statement from Chase.
Set a credit GL account above before submitting.	The card has no credit GL account.	Choose one in the Card Summary and click Save.
N transaction(s) still need a GL account.	Some lines are uncoded.	Code them. The button unlocks when the count reaches zero.
N transaction(s) to submit; N charge(s) still need a payee and will be skipped.	Some charges have no payee.	Choose payees first, or submit now and finish the skipped ones after.
All transactions are recorded in Tres.	The statement is finished.	Nothing.
Nothing new to submit.	Every line sent was already recorded.	Nothing.

After Submit to Tres

Message	Cause	What to do
Choose who the charge was paid to (payee) first.	A charge had no payee.	Choose one and submit again.
Client-travel charge: record it in Tres as a supplier payment on the trip's reservation, then use Link.	The line is coded to a cost of sales or client receivable account.	Follow §08. If it is not client travel, the GL account is wrong: change it.
Card credit or refund: record it in Tres, then use Link.	The line is a Credit.	Record it in Tres, then Link.
This card has no Tres agency card set. Set it in the card settings.	The setting is empty.	Choose the card in the Card Summary and Save.
This card has no Tres payee or bank set for card payments. Set them in the card settings.	Card payments paid to or Tres bank # is empty.	Fill both in and Save.
No credit GL account configured for this card.	The setting was cleared.	Save the credit GL account again and resubmit.
GL account '…' not found or missing Tres record number. Re-import GL accounts.	The account was renamed in Tres or never imported.	Manage GL Accounts → Import from Tres, then pick the account again.
The ledger is locked through YYYY-MM-DD; this transaction is dated …	The month has been closed in Ledger Settings.	Stop and ask. Do not unlock the period yourself to make it fit.
Posting YYYY-MM-DD: …	Tres refused the payment. The rest of the text is Tres's reason.	Often a closed period in Tres. Check the date it names, then ask.
N need checking in Tres: … Do not retry.	The payment is in Tres but a later step failed.	See the second warning in §06.

Under a row, after Link or Void

Message	Cause	What to do
Tres has no payment N.	The number typed is not a payment in Tres.	Check the number in Tres.
Tres payment N is $X, but this line is $Y.	The amounts differ.	It is a different charge, or one side has the wrong amount. Find out which before linking anything.
Tres payment N is already linked to another statement line.	Another row uses that payment.	Find that row. One of the two links is wrong.
Tres payment N is voided.	The payment was cancelled in Tres.	Do not link it. Submit the line normally, or find the replacement payment.
Tres payment N has no accounting entry, so it books nothing to the GL.	The payment in Tres is incomplete.	Stop and ask.
Tres payment N was keyed by hand in Tres. Void or correct it there.	Void was tried on a linked payment.	Correct it in Tres.
Voiding Tres payment N failed, so nothing was changed: …	Tres refused the void.	Read the reason. It is safe to try again later.
Transaction has already been reversed.	Void was clicked twice, perhaps in two tabs.	Reload the page. The line is already open.
Journal entry N is not in Tres, so there is nothing to reverse.	Reverse was tried on an older line whose entry never reached Tres.	If the charge was keyed in Tres by hand, Link that payment instead.

11Stop and ask

Stop and ask before going further if any of these happen.

A message says "Do not retry", "recovered" or "manual reconciliation". Something reached Tres. Clicking again could post it twice.
You are about to click Force Reverse in TRES.
A refund shows on the page as a red Sale.
A submission is refused because the period is locked.
The number of transactions imported does not match the statement.
A merchant has no payee in the Paid to list.
Two payments under Already keyed in Tres? both look right.

The OTA Ledger The full ledger manual: dual-writing, reversals, period locks, and reconciling OTA against Tres.