When an organisation owes money to its workers for personal spending on business purposes, the money is reimbursed to them through the Expense Reimbursement process. All of these acquisitions were made with the express intent of advancing the company’s goals. A company’s written expense reimbursement policy informs workers of the types of charges that will be paid and the timeframe within which they may expect to receive compensation.
Just what does an expenditure reimbursement policy entail?
The purpose of an expense reimbursement policy is to provide employees with clear and consistent guidelines for when and how they will be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses incurred in the course of their job.
A company should have a policy in place for the recovery of expenses incurred when an employee makes a purchase on the company’s behalf using personal money (personal credit card, cash, etc.) rather than a corporate credit card.
There are two primary actions required to develop a cost reimbursement plan:
- To be reimbursed, expenses must meet predetermined criteria
- Ask yourself the following questions
Does the cost have anything to do with getting somewhere? If so, please review your staff’s travel needs. In this area, you must lay out the criteria for what counts as a trip expense and what does not. Your firm will pay for your meals while you are on the road as long as the cost of those meals is less than the per diem set by your organisation.
Expenses that are not travel-related may be reimbursed if they meet the criteria for appropriate plan standards. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has established guidelines to ensure that employee expenditure reimbursements are not treated as taxable income. In order to be reimbursed under an accountable plan, an employee’s expenditures must be both reasonable and directly related to the employee’s job duties.
Clarify what steps workers need to take to submit expense reports
The first step is to have them start a habit of saving all of their receipts. Each expense must have a justifiable business purpose, and records must be kept to prove it if the IRS ever decides to audit. Tired of piling up paper receipts? Use an application designed for creating expense reports to automate the process and simplify the task of keeping track of money spent on trips.
Tips for Formalizing and Rolling Out Your Company’s Expense Policy
The first step for a finance team to victory is the creation of a policy for the payment of out-of-pocket costs. Policies are only effective if they are written down and followed in practise. It is possible to do this by:
Presenting a clear and comprehensive policy for the reimbursing of business costs at your company. If you define any terms that could be confusing to workers, you reduce the likelihood that they would break the regulations.
The new policy should be announced publicly and made available on your company’s internal messaging system (Slack, intranet, etc.). Provide the policy in a cloud-based drive so that workers may access it from anywhere. Your company’s business travellers will really benefit from this easy access.
