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Expense Policies

Using expense policies to ensure that expenses meet your organisation’s requirements

Updated over 7 months ago

Expense policies offer granular control over expense submissions. You can set up rules that specify what details are required on expenses being submitted. If those details are missing, you can either block submission or automatically display a warning to both the submitter and to reviewers that a policy’s rules aren’t met.

Please note: Expense policies are currently only available to beta users.

Policy rules

Fields that can have rules

You can currently enforce expense policy rules on the following fields:

Notes

All line items must contain a note.

Attachments

An expense must have a receipt or invoice.

Rule options

You can control the expense submission workflow by determining whether a rule blocks submission or just shows a warning. The following options are available:

Off

The rule will have no effect. Rules are turned off by default.

Block if rule not met

If the rule isn’t met, the user (also called the ‘submitter’) is blocked from submitting their expense.

Warn submitter and reviewer

The submitter is warned that their expense doesn’t meet the rule, but they can submit the expense anyway. Reviewers also see the warning when they review the expense.

Warn reviewer only

The user can submit the expense without any warning. Only the reviewer sees the warning that a rule isn’t met.

Setting up an expense policy

To set up an expense policy:

  1. In the Expend web app, open the sidebar menu, go to MANAGE, click Settings, and select Expense Policies.

  2. Click the Create Expense Policy button.

  3. Under Policy name, enter the name of your policy. Description is optional.

  4. Under Policy rules, choose an option for each available rule using the respective dropdown fields (see Rule options, above).

  5. Click Create.

How policies are applied

When you set up an expense policy with rules that block submission, it won’t apply to expenses that have already been submitted. However, warnings about policy rules not being met will be shown to reviewers.

Editing a policy

To edit an existing expense policy, click the policy in the list and make the required changes. You can change the policy name, description and rules.

Multiple policies

You can create any number of policies, but only one can be active at a time.

  • To deactivate or activate a policy, click the switch under Enabled.

  • Before you can create a new policy, all existing policy must be deactivated.

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