While you can use Time & Expense with ESS import processing to import per diem information directly into your schedule, Deltek recommends that you instead use the Per Diem Preprocessor utility.

Once you have used the Per Diem Schedules screen to create a per diem schedule that uses government per diem amounts, use the Per Diem Preprocessor utility to import government per diem information into temporary tables, review and edit that information, and then post it to your actual per diem schedules. And when the government publishes new per diem information, use the utility to post the updated information to your existing 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 You can then decide if you want them to remain active or, if they are no longer valid, to be marked as terminated and removed from the lookup lists of valid per diem locations.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.

To open the Per Diem Preprocessor screen, click Utilities > Per Diem Preprocessor on the Expense menu.

For details on how to use the utility, refer to Per Diem Preprocessor.