Expense policies set out the rules for how expense claims are processed. There are three types of policies:

Policies for expense types
Policies for what claimants can do with expense reports
Policies for what approvers can do with expense reports

For every expense type, there must be at least one corresponding expense claim item policy – if no expense claim item policy exists for an expense type, claimants will not be able to select that expense type when creating a claim item.

Expense report policies set out general rules for claimants and approvers regarding expense reports and are applicable to all expense reports regardless of what expense types they contain. It is therefore not necessary to create more than one expense report policy for claimants and one for approvers, unless you wish to impose different rules on different users or user groups.

Creating a Policy for an Expense Type

An expense claim item policy defines the following:

Which employees can claim for an expense of this type
The maximum amount an employee can claim for an expense of this type
What information is required when claiming an expense of this type

To set up an expense claim item policy:

Click Expense Policies. This shows a list of all expense policies currently in place.

Right-click a row on the list, or left-click the row and click the menu icon , then click Add New Expense Claim Item Policy. This opens the Manage Expense Policy window.

Fill in the first fields as follows:

Company	The company to which the policy applies.
Policy Name	The name of the policy.
Valid From	The dates between which the policy will be enforced. If you want the policy to be enforced permanently, leave the To field blank.
Policy Applies To	Expense type policies apply to claimants, thus Claimant is selected and locked automatically.

Fill in the remaining fields as follows:

Expense Type	The Expense Type to which the policy applies.
Validation Model	The first fields that appear in the Validation Model section depend on which types of validation you selected, if any, when creating the expense type. If the expense type has Amount validation, enter the maximum value that can be entered in one claim item. If the expense type has Units validation, enter the maximum number of units that can be entered in one claim item. If the expense type has Rate validation, enter the maximum rate per unit that can be entered. If the expense type is Fixed Rate, enter the fixed cost per unit.
Policy Breach Action	The type of warning a claimant will receive when they enter a value greater than the policy allows. Information: The claimant is informed they are in breach of policy but can still submit the claim. Reject: The claimant is blocked from submitting the claim until they edit the value to no longer be in breach of policy. Provide Additional Comments: The claimant must fill out additional comments to justify breaching the policy before they can submit the claim.
Receipt Required	If this is unticked, claimants will not need to attach receipts to the claim item. If it is ticked, you can choose whether to demand receipts for all claims, or specifically for claims billable to a client by clicking the circle next to your preferred option. If the expense type is VAT recoverable, receipts must always be required.
Are user defined fields required for this Expense Type?	Tick this box if you wish for claimants to enter specific information for expenses of this type, in addition to what is covered by the default fields.
Ignore Similar Claim Items	If this is unticked, approving managers will be alerted when multiple claim items of this expense type are claimed on the same date in the same report, or when multiple items of this expense type and of the same amount are submitted, even by different claimants. This can be useful to stop employees from claiming the same expense twice. If it is a commonly recurring expense, such as a daily parking ticket, tick the box to prevent approving managers receiving unnecessary alerts.
Description Required	Tick this box if you wish to make the Description field mandatory for this expense type.
Merchant Required	Tick this box if you wish to make the Merchant field mandatory for this expense type.

Click to save the policy. It will come into effect on the start date you entered.

User Defined Fields

User defined fields are customisable fields that you can set up within an expense type policy. They will appear under the Further Required Information section in the Manage Expense Claim Item window when claimants are creating expense claim items of the expense type designated in the policy.

They are useful when you wish for claimants to enter specific information for expenses of a certain type, which would not otherwise be covered by the default fields. For example, for a “Train Fare” expense type, you may wish to know which station the claimant left from and which they arrived at.

Up to seven user defined fields can be added per expense policy. Once an expense policy has been used by a claim item, user defined fields can no longer be added, modified or deleted for that policy, however the sequence numbers can still be changed.

Creating a User Defined Field

On the Manage Expense Policy window, tick the box next to Are user defined fields required for this Expense Type?
Click the User Defined Fields tab that has appeared. This shows a list of all user defined fields in this policy.
Right-click the grey area underneath the field headings then click Add New. This opens the Manage User Defined Fields window.
Fill in the fields as follows:

Label that you want to use to describe this field	The text that will appear next to the field.
List/Text/Date/Number/Amount/Checkbox	The type of data the field will store. If you select List, you must then select which list you want to use from the drop-down menu that appears. This set of lists is configured in Custom Lists in the Administration Module.
Is User Defined Field Mandatory?	Tick this box if you want to block claimants from adding the claim item to an expense report until they fill in the user defined field.

Click to save the user defined field.

Modifying a User Defined Field

Right-click the user defined field you wish to modify, or left-click the field and click the menu icon , then click Modify. This opens the Manage User Defined Fields window for that field.
Edit the fields as necessary.
Click to save your changes.

Sequence Numbers

Each user defined field added to an expense type is given a sequence number. These numbers indicate the order in which the fields will appear in the Manage Expense Claim Item window. The field with sequence number 1 will appear first in the list, number 2 will be second in the list and so on. You can modify the sequence number of a user defined field by clicking the up and down arrows in the grid.

Deleting a User Defined Field

Click the User Defined Fields tab in the Manage Expense Policy window.
Right-click the user defined field you wish to delete, or left-click the field and click the menu icon , then click Delete. You will receive a warning message asking if you are sure.
Click to confirm the deletion. If necessary, the sequence numbers of the remaining fields will be shifted to fill in the gap.

Creating an Expense Report Policy for Claimants

Expense report policies for claimants define the following:

When claims can be made
Whether claimants can submit multiple concurrent reports
Thresholds for automatic approval

To create an expense report policy for claimants:

Click Expense Policies. This shows a list of all expense policies currently in place.

Right-click a row on the list, or left-click the row and click the menu icon , then click Add New Expense Report Policy.

This opens the Manage Expense Policy window.

Fill in the first fields as follows:

Company	The company to which the policy applies.
Policy Name	The name of the policy.
Valid From	The dates between which the policy will be enforced. If you want the policy to be enforced permanently, leave the To field blank.
Policy Applies To	Select Claimant.

Fill in the remaining fields as follows:

Auto Approve <	The value below which an expense report will be automatically approved.
Maximum Claim Item Age	The maximum amount of time that can pass between an expense and the claim for said expense. Employees will not be able to claim for expense items older than the age you specify here.
Allow Multiple Submitted Expense Reports	If this box is ticked, claimants will be allowed to submit multiple expense reports at once. If this box is unticked, claimants will not be allowed to submit another expense report before their last one has been approved or rejected.
Allow Forward Dated Claims	If this box is ticked, claimants will be allowed to claim for expenses they have not yet incurred, but anticipate incurring in the future. Note that claims forward-dated by one day are always allowed, even if this box is not ticked - this is to account for time zone differences.

Click to save the policy. It will come into effect on the start date you entered.

Creating an Expense Report Policy for Approvers

Expense report policies for approvers define the deadlines for escalated and automatic approval, whether to allow the Approve All button and what happens when specific items within a report are rejected.

To create an expense report policy for approvers:

Click Expense Policies. This shows a list of all expense policies currently in place.

Right-click a row on the list, or left-click the row and click the menu icon , then click Add New Expense Report Policy. This opens the Manage Expense Policy window.

Fill in the first fields as follows:

Company	The company to which the policy applies.
Policy Name	The name of the policy.
Valid From/To	The dates between which the policy will be enforced. If you want the policy to be enforced permanently, leave the To field blank.
Policy Applies To	Select Approver.

Upon clicking Approver, new fields will appear in the Report Detail section of the window. Fill in the remaining fields as follows:

Escalate Approval After	The amount of time an approver has to approve or reject a report before it gets escalated to the next level of approver. Leave blank to disable escalation.
Automatically Approve	The amount of time an approver has to approve or reject a report before it gets automatically approved. Leave blank to disable automatic approval.
Allow Approve All	If this box is ticked, approvers will be able to click a button to instantly approve all items in an expense report.
Rejected Claims Items Action	This field dictates what happens when some, but not all, items within a report are rejected. Detach Rejected Claim Items: A new report containing only the accepted items will be moved to the next stage of approval and the rejected items will be sent back to the claimant, who can modify and resubmit them if they wish. Reject Entire Expense Report: The entire expense report, including the accepted items, will be sent back to the claimant, who can modify and resubmit it if they wish.
Notify Approver/Finance Approver Past Due Expense Reports	The number of days after which approvers or finance approvers, if they have any outstanding expense reports, will be sent a notification reminding them that they have expense reports awaiting their approval. Leave blank or enter '0' to disable these notifications.
Additional Notification Group	A second user group, in addition to approvers or finance approvers, who will be sent the reminder notifications. Leave blank if you do not wish for any other users to receive the notifications.

Click to save the policy. It will come into effect on the start date you entered.

Applying Expense Policies to Specific Users

By default, policies are applied to every user in your expense system. However, you can choose to apply policies to only a specific user or group of users. This feature can be used to block certain users from claiming for a certain expense type, or to apply different rules to different users regarding a certain expense type.

Adding Users to a Policy

On the Manage Expense Policy window, click the Applies To tab.
Right-click the somewhere in the table, then click Add New.

This opens the Policy Rule window.
Click the drop-down menus to view the lists of locations and departments in your company, then select the user group to whom you wish to apply the policy. You can create the group using any combination of the two fields. Alternatively, if you wish to apply the policy to one specific user, click User Specific to get a drop-down menu of every individual user to select from.
Click to add the user or users to the Applies To table in the Manage Expense Policy window.
If there are multiple user groups or users to whom you wish to apply the policy, you can repeat steps 2-4 as many times as you wish.
Click on the Manage Expense Policy window to save your changes to the policy.

📌Note: If you wish for the policy to apply to, for example, everyone from the London office and everyone in the finance department, you must complete steps 2-4 twice, once selecting only London from the Location field, then once more selecting only Finance from the Department field.

If you were to select both London and Finance within the same Policy Rule window, the policy would then be applied only to employees from the London office who are also in the finance department.

Removing Users from a Policy

On the Manage Expense Policy window, find the user or user group you wish to remove from the policy on the list in the Applied To field (using the scroll bar that appears on the right-hand side if necessary).
Right-click the user or user group you wish to remove from the policy, or left-click them and click the menu icon , then click Delete. You will receive a warning message asking if you are sure.
Click to confirm the removal.
Click on the Manage Expense Policy window to save your changes to the policy.

Distance Rates

When creating an expense policy for a vehicle-based expense type, the Distance Rates tab will be available. In this tab you can set the rates at which claimants will be compensated for their mileage, for each vehicle classification assigned to the expense type. See Vehicle Classifications for details on how to create vehicle classifications and Creating an Expense Type for how to assign classifications to an expense type.

Each vehicle classification has its own grid with in-line editing enabled. To edit the rate for a classification, click the Rate field within the grid, enter the new value, then press enter or click away.

If you wish to enter multiple rates for a single classification, edit the Starting Distance to a higher value or the Ending Distance to a lower value, and a new row will be added to the grid.

To delete a row from a grid, click the delete button on that row. Note that each grid must always have at least one row.

📌Note: Once a policy has been used by a claimant, you will no longer be able to edit the distance rates. If you wish to change the distance rates for an expense type after the policy has already been used, you must create a new policy and set the old policy to expire via the Valid To date.

Completed distance rates example:

Modifying an Expense Policy

Click Expense Policies. This shows a list of all expense policies currently in place.
Right-click the policy you wish to modify, or left-click the policy and click the menu icon , then click Modify. This opens the Manage Expense Policy window for the policy, where you can make the necessary changes (see 3.1-3.5 for details of each field).
Click to save your changes to the policy.

Deleting an Expense Policy

You can delete an expense policy at any time. If you delete an active policy, it will immediately cease to be in effect. If you delete the only policy associated with an expense type, claimants will no longer be able to use that expense type until you create a new policy for it.

To delete an expense policy:

Click Expense Policies. This shows a list of all expense policies currently in place.
Right-click the policy you wish to delete, or left-click the policy and click the menu icon , then click Delete. You will receive a warning message asking if you are sure.
Click to finalise the deletion.

Policy Breaches

To view the Policy Breaches grid, click the > button next to Expense Policies in the vertical menu, then click Policy Breaches.

The Policy Breaches grid shows the list of policy breaches committed by users from your company. This includes policy breaches related to claim items that have not yet been submitted.

To export the list of policy breaches, click the three dots button in the top-right of the grid, then click Export. This begins a download of a CSV file containing the data. When the file is ready, it will appear at the bottom of your browser.