Expense claims: pay employees back for what they spent

When someone on your team pays for something for the business with their own money (parts from the hardware store, parking, fuel), they make an expense claim with the receipt. You approve it, which puts the spending in your books and records that you owe them, and then you pay them back. Expenses & Bills › [Expense claims](/expenses/claims) shows every claim and where it is.

Make a claim

1. 1Press + Create › Expense claim (or New expense claim on Expense claims).
2. 2Choose Who spent it. They need to be in Time › Employees. If it was for a customer job, choose the Project too.
3. 3Enter the Date spent, Where (the store), What it was for and the Amount.
4. 4Choose a Category if you know it, or leave it for whoever approves. If the business tracks classes or locations, the claim can have a Class and a location too.
5. 5Press Snap or upload the receipt to add a photo or PDF (on a phone, it can open the camera).
6. 6Press Submit claim. It waits under To approve. Nothing is in your books yet.

Let employees claim for themselves

Invite them in Manage users as Time & expenses only (see Invite your team). When they sign in they see Expense claims next to their time: they add their own claims with the receipt and see whether each one is waiting, approved, paid back or rejected (and why). They never see anyone else's claims or anything else of the business. They can change or delete a claim until it's approved.

Approve or reject

1. 1Open a claim under To approve and look at the receipt.
2. 2Choose the Expense category and press Approve. It's in your books on the day the money was spent, with the amount owed to the employee in Employee reimbursements (TallyPip adds that account the first time).
3. 3Or press Reject and say why. They see the reason, can fix the claim and send it again.

Claims that already have a category can be approved together: tick them on To approve and press Approve selected.

Pay them back

1. 1Press Pay back on Expense claims (or + Create › Pay back claims).
2. 2Choose the employee. All their approved claims are ticked; untick any you're not paying yet.
3. 3Choose the Payment date and the account you Paid from, and a method if you like (a check number, a bank transfer).
4. 4Press Save payment. It's one payment for all the ticked claims, and they show Paid back.

The bank side, counted once. When the money leaves your bank, Bank transactions offers to match it: a payment you already saved shows Match, and a transfer that pays back all of an employee's approved claims (or one claim of that amount) shows Pay back, which records the payment from the bank transaction itself. Either way the money is only counted once.

Changing your mind

• Undo approval on an approved claim takes it out of your books; it waits for approval again.
• Undo payment on a paid claim deletes that payment; every claim it paid back is to pay back again. If the payment was matched to a bank transaction, that goes back to Bank transactions for review.
• Undoing a matched bank transaction in Bank transactions does the same for a payment made from it, and just unlinks one you saved yourself.
• Approved claims and their payments are in Expense transactions, reports and cash-basis reports (on a cash basis, a claim counts when it's paid back). Closed books can't change.