Admin Home > Expenses

The Compleat Expenses module streamlines how your company submits and approves expense claims, automating the process to cut out the time-consuming legwork.

Here's a useful guide to the settings you can customise in the Compleat Expenses module to make your expenses process run smoothly. All of the settings fall under the Expenses drop-down in Admin Home.

With just a little configuration, your users will be submitting expenses claims in no time!

 

Expense Receipts

In the Expense Receipts section, you can determine if an expense item requires a receipt, what format that receipt will be in, and if that receipt is VAT-relevant.

If a user isn't required to attach a receipt for an item, there's no need to calculate VAT. If they're attaching a receipt, you need to decide whether or not to enable VAT calculation.

 

Expense Categories

Categories are used to group your expenses into types, such as:

• Accommodation
• Company car mileage
• Entertainment
• Staff meals
• Training
• Travel

Categories are used for reporting purposes. We advise that you choose your expense categories carefully, and only create as many as you need.

The default expense category called All Items is used to capture all expense items.

 

Vehicle Rates

If you're using mileage calculations, you'l need to set up Vehicle Rates.

Each expense user can have access to multiple vehicle rates. That caters for people who might drive and/or cycle during the same expense claim period.

HMRC sets the rates thresholds for company and personal car use. Currently, the rates are:

• 45p a mile for journeys under 10,000 mile
• 20p a mile for journeys over 10,000 miles
• 5p a mile for each additional passenger (no obligation to name name passengers)

Most customers don't reclaim VAT on fuel.

Compleat only supports claims that are in miles or kilometres.

 

Expense Locations

Here, you can set up specific locations that users can select for journeys, such as "Office to Warehouse". This will turn the expense item into a drop-down rather than free text. 

 

Expense Types

Expense types determine whether an expense item within a claim is for mileage and travel, or simply all other types of expense. When a user is creating an expense claim that is has an expense type of mileage or travel, they'll be able to select a location to calculate mileage.

If a user changes the calculated mileage when submitting a claim Compleat will automatically mark it as out of policy. It's sometimes necessary to process these claims anyway. For example, if you're travelling through London and have to drive around the ring road as oppposed to straight through the middle of London.

There are three default expense types available for mileage type claim items:

• Business mileage - Uses Microsoft Bing Maps to calculate the miles travelled between two locations.
• Travel - Requires users to enter a start date and end location, and doesn't calculate mileage.
• Non-travel - Users don't need to enter any locations or addresses.

 

Expense Items

This is where you enter the indivual items that users can claim on their expenses. Users will select expense items from a drop-down menu.

Depending on the expense type they select, they might see further options. For example, if they're claiming for travel.

To add an expense item, just click Add item in the top-right.

When you add a new expense item to Compleat, you need to configure a few settings to determine how the expense field behaves. Here's a quick explanation of the settings available.

Company	Choose which company the expense item will be available for.
Expense name	The name that the user will see.
Code	A unique short code to identify the expense item. The user won't see this.
Comments	Any text you enter here will be visible as Help notes on the expense item. Users can click into Help notes to find out more information when they're submitting a claim.
URL address for expense image	You can link to an image that represents an expense item. Eg. A picture of a train for train travel.
Expense cost	Use this to set default expense costs.
Maximum cost	Use this to set a maximum cost per item. Eg. If your company has a £100 maximum nightly cost for hotel stays, and a user stays three nights, then Compleat will calculate a maximum cost of £300.
Can the user override? (Expense item max. cost)	If Yes, Compleat will submit the claim but mark the claim out of policy. If No, the user won't be able to submit the claim.
Can the user change the cost?	Yes or No. If you set the maximum cost as 0 then Compleat will always mark the claim as out of policy.
Allow multi-currency entry for this item	If allowed, the user can select a currency at header level for reimbursement. Then, at line level, they can claim multiple currencies, which will be converted in one total in the header level currency. Eg. Ferry to France £90, hotel in Paris €60, flight to the US $300.
Allow user quantity	Yes or No.
Quantity texts	This determines the unit type that the user will choose from.  Eg. For hotel expenses, the quantity text would be "Nights", and then the user can select the number of nights they're claiming for.
Enter unit cost when entering quantity	This is useful for expenses items that can vary in price.

 

In the Allocation Details tab, you can set some defaults for the expense item, and choose whether or not users can override them when they're submitting a claim.

In the Analysis Details tab, you can analysis field defaults and restrictions.

In the Custom Codes tab, you can set the default codes to be applied for each expense item, which could help determine approvals.

Expenses can use the same approval workflows as P2P. You can use extended properties tab within a user profile (Security > Users) to create a separate approval profile if you want to avoid adding custom codes just for this functionality.

 

Layouts

You need to create two layouts for expense claims: one for standard expense items, and another for credit card imports.

To ensure that the right users can use the expense layouts, make sure that you grant access in users' security profiles.

 

You might also like...

• Process a credit card expense claim
• Import a credit card statement
• Processing credit card statements: A checklist for Admins