Requests & Approvals
Process an expense claim from submission to reimbursement
Record an employee's out-of-pocket expense with its receipts, take it through manager and finance approval, and mark it paid so the reimbursement posts to the books.
3 min readLast updated
In this article
An expense claim returns money to an employee who paid a business cost personally: a taxi, a hotel night, a client lunch. Each claim passes through a fixed chain. The employee's manager approves it, finance approves it, and finance marks it paid once the money has left the company.
Before you start
The employee must have an employee record. Employees can also raise claims themselves from self-service.
If HR posts to the general ledger, map the Expense Claims (reimbursement debit) and Cash / Bank (credit) accounts on the Accounting tab of HR settings before the first payment.
The claim lifecycle
Status | How it gets there | What you can do next |
|---|---|---|
Draft | The claim is created | Edit, attach receipts, Submit, Delete |
Submitted | Someone selects Submit | Manager approve or Reject |
Manager approved | A manager approves | Finance approve or Reject |
Approved | Finance approves | Mark as paid |
Paid | Finance marks it paid | Nothing; the claim is closed |
Rejected | Rejected with a reason | Nothing |
Each move needs its own permission: submitting, manager approval, finance approval and payment are granted separately. A user normally sees only the action that belongs to their role enabled in the row menu.
Create a claim
Open People › Requests & Approvals › Expense Claims.
Select New claim.
Choose the Employee. Without approval or payment permissions, you can only file a claim for yourself.
Choose the Category, such as travel, accommodation, meals or transportation.
Enter the Date of the expense. It cannot be in the future.
Enter the Amount. It must be greater than zero. Currency defaults to the payroll currency when you leave it empty.
Optionally fill Merchant and Description.
Under Receipts, select Attach to add proof. PDF, Word and image files up to 10 MB each are accepted.
Select Save. The claim is saved as Draft with its own claim number.
Take it through approval
In the claim's row, open Actions and select Submit. A draft can no longer be edited or deleted after this.
The manager opens the same menu and selects Manager approve.
Finance reviews the claim and selects Finance approve.
To turn a claim down at either approval stage, select Reject and enter a Rejection reason of up to 500 characters.
After paying the employee, finance selects Mark as paid and confirms. This closes the claim and cannot be undone.
What happens when a claim is paid
If Post HR transactions to the General Ledger is on in HR settings, the system posts a two-line journal entry dated on the payment date: a debit to the Expense Claims account and a credit to the Cash / Bank account, on the employee's branch.
If that option is on but either account is not mapped, Mark as paid is refused and the message names the missing setting. The claim stays Approved, so the books and the claim never disagree.
If the option is off, the claim is marked paid and no journal entry is created. Record the payment in accounting yourself.
Common questions
Why are some actions greyed out? Each action is available only in the right status: Submit on drafts, Manager approve on submitted claims, Finance approve after the manager, and Mark as paid after finance.
An older claim shows "Finance approved". Can I pay it? Yes. Claims left in that status by an earlier version are treated as approved and can be marked paid.
Do expense claims appear in the approval inbox? No. They are decided on this screen only.