Someone bought supplies on their own card, paid for parking, or drove to a job in their own car. An expense claim is how they ask the company to pay them back, with the receipts. Nothing is owed until someone approves it.
Who can claim
- Anyone who can change the books enters a claim under Bills > Expense claims > New claim, for themselves ("I paid") or for someone else ("Someone else paid", with their name).
- A person who cannot open the books claims from the phone scanner. Open Company Settings > Access, find them under Adds documents, cannot open the books, and tick Sends expense claims. Pick the contact they are paid back as (usually their own Employee contact). Their scanner then shows Claim expenses beside Scan.
Send a claim from the phone
- Open the scanner and tap Claim expenses.
- Tap New expense claim and say what it is for.
- For each thing paid for, add the date, the amount and what it was for, then Photo of receipt (or From my uploads for a receipt already sent in). A trip takes the miles instead of an amount.
- Tap Send for approval.
The list shows where each claim stands. A claim sent back says why: fix it and send it again. A claim still waiting can be taken back to change it.
Approve a claim
Open Bills > Expense claims. Waiting claims come first.
- Open one. Look at each receipt, and fill in the category (the expense account) of any line that has none.
- Check Paid back as, the contact the bill is written to.
- Pick the bill date in the Decide card (a December receipt approved in January can still be dated in December) and press Approve.
Approving writes one bill to the contact, already approved, with every receipt attached to it. Pay it like any other bill (Pay bills, a check). To approve several at once, tick them and press Approve selected.
Send back returns a claim with your reason; nothing posts.
Good to know:
- Nobody approves their own claim. When nobody else can, enter the cost as a bill instead.
- Trips are paid at this company's rate per mile (the gear on the Expense claims list). Left empty, a trip is paid at the IRS standard rate of its date when your books are in US dollars.
- A trip paid back here is deducted through the bill, so it should not also sit in the mileage log. The claim warns when the log already has a business trip on that date.
- Each receipt belongs to one claim. A receipt already attached to an entry in the books is marked, in case the cost was entered twice.
- Voiding or deleting a claim's bill sends the claim back to waiting, so it can be decided again.
- The bill counts toward a contact's 1099 like any bill to them; the claim says so when the contact is on the 1099 report.
- Turning off someone's Sends expense claims deletes the claims they have not sent. Claims already sent stay for you to decide.