How to make employee expense reimbursement efficient

Employees may be reimbursed for gas if they use their personal vehicle for work-related travel. The employer will normally have a set reimbursement rate per mile that employees can claim for business-related travel, or an organization can choose to reimburse actual costs incurred. Each employee will need to keep track of their business-related miles and submit them for reimbursement, along with any required documentation.

Medical expense reimbursement plans (MERPs) are another type of employee reimbursement. Reimbursing medical expenses is an alternate way for employers to offer employees health benefits instead of traditional group health plans. It’s worth noting that under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), you aren’t required to reimburse employees for expenses as long as it doesn’t reduce an employee’s wage below minimum wage. But, many states have laws requiring employers to reimburse business expenses2. If you reimburse your employees’ expenses under an accountable plan, you may deduct them as business expenses. They are subject to federal income tax limitations for specific expenses (e.g., listed property, meals, gifts).

Health-Based Reimbursements

The process can involve up to five members of the finance team to screen the claims and examine the expense data. Initial processes of approval include converting currencies used during a business trip, mileage tracking, and manually computing total spending for a day. This is important to make sure the employee has complied with the per diem budget allotment or the business travel policies as a whole.

It also deters employees from making unnecessary purchases if they know it will take a month to get their money back. How should employees submit their reimbursement requests and documentation? In the past, employees may have been required to tape their receipts to standard printer paper so the finance team could easily file hard copies. For companies to process reimbursement requests, employees need to provide proof of spending, such as receipts. In the old days, traveling salespeople had to log their expenses on a spreadsheet and keep their receipts throughout their trip until they returned to the office. This was a major hassle, and they always risked losing the receipts before they had a chance to turn them in.

Example of Reimbursed Expenses

This will help you monitor your overall business expenses to ensure they remain within budget. However, most organizations choose to do so as it is generally considered to befair and common practice. It can also help to create abetter employee experience, provided you create a clear and consistent policy for effective expense management. This means defining what you accept as an employee expense, how employees submit expense reimbursement requests, and how you incorporate expenses into your payroll process.

• That is the amount of money that U.S. employees lend their employers each month through expenses, according to a 2018 report from Conferma.
• Under this arrangement, the employee has sufficiently accounted for their expenses as long as the reimbursement rates are in line with government-established rates.
• According to our 2022 Employee Benefits Survey Report, 42% of employees say if their employers had $200 extra to give each month, they’d rather have a separate benefit than a wage increase.
• There may be a set timeline for when reimbursements will be issued, while others may issue reimbursements on a more ad-hoc basis.
• After you run the Expense Report Reimbursement program (R20110), the system creates vouchers or time card records, depending on the reimbursement method.
• But in most cases, it would be unfair to deduct payroll taxes from reimbursements.

When employees must travel for work, they may be eligible for travel reimbursement. This typically includes lodging, meals, transportation, and any other necessary expenses. Some companies may instead use a per diem or set daily allowance for meals and incidentals, so employees don’t have to submit the particulars. He is a diligent financial professional, able to manage the details and turn them into relevant business leading information. He has a strong financial background in construction, technology, consulting services and risk management.

2.1 Running the Expense Report Reimbursement Program

For example, if an employee is required to drive their vehicle to a convention center instead of their office, the mileage to and from that destination would be eligible for reimbursement. Be prepared to reimburse employees for any meals they eat during their trip as well as cab and rideshare fares. https://turbo-tax.org/what-is-employee-expense-reimbursement-and-how/ If the employee has to pay for their plane ticket and hotel room, reimburse them for these expenses as soon as possible since they cost a significant amount of money. When these types of high-tech systems are in place, it won’t just make work easier for your human resources and finance teams.

The system should provide you with full visibility into your spending and suggestions for cost-cutting measures. You can analyze employees’ business trip expenses, identify https://turbo-tax.org/ policy violations, and avoid unnecessary costs. Sometimes employees might submit the duplicate expense receipts twice, which leads to duplication of payment.

You can also reimburse employees for their phone bills if they use their phones for work, among other expenses such as software subscriptions, technology, and materials. A health stipend reimburses employees for their qualifying medical expenses. They work similarly to an HRA, except they’re taxable and have fewer regulations.

• Automated expense reimbursement allows anyone to streamline and generate expense reports by department, by the employee, by project, by month, or by category.
• Business travel and lodging expenses constitute the majority of employee reimbursement claims.
• Others have no visibility into how they are going about the process; almost half of companies don’t know how much they are spending on expense reports for example.
• If you leave this field blank, the system uses the general ledger offset from the Supplier Master record.
• You need an expense reimbursement app that lets you completely customize the process based on your unique business requirements; a system that accommodates and enforces your expense policies.

Compare the receipts to the amount you paid to ensure there aren’t any discrepancies. A remote work stipend is a monthly allowance provided to employees to help reimburse their home office expenses. Unlike business expenses, which must meet IRS accountable plan requirements to be tax-free, remote work stipends are taxable.

But how do you know what gets covered and what doesn’t when it comes to job duties? Employers are finding GCHRAs are a great way to make high deductible plans work well for employees and create top-tier luxury health benefits to attract top talent. The IRS calculates standard mileage rates yearly to determine the deductible costs of operating a vehicle. For 2022, the standard mileage rate is $0.585 per mile driven for business use. Handling reimbursement claims, payouts, and records can quickly become a full-time job if you don’t have a process. With the proper expense report procedure, you can prevent confusion and align your team.

• For example, your policy may state that reimbursement for meals cannot exceed $200.
• According to our 2022 Employee Benefits Survey Report, 87% of employees value health benefits.
• An employee might pay out-of-pocket for cab fare from the airport to a conference center.
• However, if your reimbursement doesn’t meet the rules for an accountable plan, it should be reported on your employee’s W-2.

Instead of demanding expense reports, a mobile app that allows you to submit individual reimbursement requests as they occur. Employees don’t have to wait until the end of a business trip to fill out an expense request. Each transaction is approved and handled individually at the time of purchase.

Unless a charge is fraudulent or extremely illegitimate, finance usually ends up issuing a reimbursement, albeit after a lot of back-and-forth. Once the receipts are uploaded, employees can get their reimbursement in just a click directly into their bank account. Employees don’t even have to wait for five days to get their expense claims. Jotform offers more than 10,000 customizable form templates that can become the foundation of an automated workflow in Jotform Approvals. We’ve already covered some of the different software solutions that manage expenses.