borderFile FAQ

borderFile Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is borderFile?
borderFile is enterprise software that provides companies with a process to meet the payroll compliance requirements of their business travelers.

Which payroll requirements does an organization have in respect of its business travelers?
From a payroll compliance requirement perspective, business travelers are covered by rules and regulations that govern nonresident employees with workdays in a payroll jurisdiction (outside of their payroll home state or country) . These compliance requirements apply to U.S. employers who have employees traveling from state to state. Similarly, they also apply for employers who have employees traveling across country borders.

Due to ongoing growth in employee mobility, these requirements are being increasingly enforced by audit.

How does borderFile work?
borderFile automates the collection of travel data, the calculation of compliance metrics and the sharing of reports and dashboards with key stakeholders in your company.

borderFile attaches to your existing HRIS and travel booking systems and automates tracking of travel bookings, changes, and cancellations without bothering your travelers. It begins analyzing booked travel, as it happens, and accumulates historical travel data, so you get a complete compliance picture quickly and with minimal effort.

Visual dashboards, configured for your organization, pin-point employees that have breached compliance thresholds for each jurisdiction, while intuitive tools enable the employees to review and verify their travel details. Intelligent workflows complete the process by giving payroll managers the ability to review data for completeness and perform the necessary calculations to execute payroll.

Is borderFile secure?
borderFile is Systrust, SAS 70, and ISO 27001 certified. When borderFile is installed, Blackspark takes direction from your IT team to ensure system configuration complies with your IT security and data governance policy. If your IT team would like to review the borderFile IT due diligence summary, please email us at support@blacksparkcorp.com.

Who is responsible for installing and implementing borderFile?
Blackspark owns implementation, training, and support. As mentioned above, Blackspark takes direction from your IT team, but is responsible for delivering all integration and configuration of your borderFile system.

How does travel data get into borderFile?
The first method is via travel itinerary forwarding. As travel is booked, an email configuration forwards a copy of travel confirmation to your borderFile system. Through borderFile’s integration with TripIt by Concur (Nasdaq: CNQR), travel confirmations are translated and synchronized with borderFile. This process supports almost all of the world’s travel vendors (thousands of booking sites). To confirm if your travel management companies are supported, please email us at support@blacksparkcorp.com.

If you are an existing Concur customer, borderFile connects directly to your Travel & Expense solution via Concur Connect. This is performed by your Concur Administrator and does not require linking your employees' individual Concur accounts. Read more about the Concur integration here.

Alternatively, travel data can be sent directly from your travel management company to your borderFile implementation. To deliver this method, Blackpark works with your travel management companies to provide an integration point that supports their existing systems.

How does borderFile identify connecting flight and layovers for the purposes of calculating days of presence and workdays?
Within each of the above processes for collecting travel data, borderFile identifies segments of travel that represent a connection or layover. No workday allocation is assigned to presence created by this travel data and presence in a location related solely to a connection or layover is designated and reported as such.

How does borderFile address changes and cancellation of flight plans?
If travel data is collected via the TripIt extension, updates and cancellations of travel plans are processed as travel confirmations are received within TripIt. As these updates occur, they are synchronized in borderFile.

If travel data is collected via Concur Connect, borderFile synchronizes changes made to Concur itineraries.

If travel data is collected directly from your travel management companies, borderFile identifies changes and cancellations to previously processed data and automatically synchronizes the updates.

Can borderFile ask the traveler to provide the purpose of travel for each trip, if this information was not specified at the time of booking?
Yes. borderFile will intelligently process bookings and can reach out to travelers to provide the purpose of travel. Travelers will receive an email reminder with a secure link directly to the trip record in borderFile, where they may provide the missing details.

How is employee data collected by borderFile?
There are two methods for borderFile to collect your HRIS data.

Your borderFile implementation connects with the API of your one or many HRIS to collect data. Alternatively, if your HRIS does not have an API, borderFile is able to receive and process comma separated (csv) or tab delimited data. Using one of these integration points, employee data housed in your HRIS is transferred to your borderFile system.

How do changes in employee data (new hires, terminations, transfers etc..) get updated in borderFile?
The synchronization process described above to seed your employee data is also scheduled to occur at an interval you define (once a week, once a month, etc.). With this, updates that occur within your HRIS are synchronized with your borderFile implementation.

When is data available for reporting in borderFile?
In real time as data is processed. Reports are available 24/7, on-demand.

What kind of reporting does borderFile provide?
Built upon Force.com (by salesforce.com), borderFile includes a robust reporting infrastucture used by the majority of the Fortune 500. Out of the box, borderFile provides more than 300 reports, dashboards, and point and click displays of business traveler activity.

Does borderFile report on days in country, workdays, rolling counts over 12 month-periods, rolling counts of services?
Yes, borderFile reports on all these data points, including organization of data at corporate and project levels and has ability to report on data for any specific time period required.

Can reports be exported?
Yes, reports can be exported to MSExcel.

For which countries does borderFile track travel?
All countries. borderFile maps and tracks your organization’s presence and employee travel globally.

How does borderFile track data in countries with different tax years?
borderFile maintains tax year data for 180 countries and organizes travel data in context of the tax year of the country traveled to.

Does borderFile monitor employee state to state travel within the United States?
Yes, borderFile monitors and tracks U.S. domestic state to state travel. Included with borderFile is a U.S. activity dashboard and 50 state specific dashboards to track business traveler activity in each state measured against thresholds for payroll requirements in that state.

How can I share borderFile data with my tax service provider?
borderFile data and reporting can be shared with your tax service provider through exporting of data or sharing PDF copies of reports. For information privacy purposes, you can export data without any personal or identifying data. Alternatively, in accordance with tax service authorization process, employees can share their data with your provider.

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