Setting up company policies for expenses
Setting up company policies for expenses enables you to automate specific actions based on predefined criteria, such as monetary thresholds or document types. These policies can automate approvals for low-value transactions, flag higher-value documents with warnings, or cap refundable amounts for certain expense categories. This approach ensures that small expenses are processed efficiently, while larger or exceptional cases are flagged for review, providing consistency and control over expense management.
With Expense Management, you can define company policies so certain repetitive work flows are triggered automatically. For example, you can trigger the following actions:
| Action | Description |
|---|---|
| Automatically approve documents below a specified limit | Documents below a certain limit will be approved automatically. This is useful if you want to avoid extra approval work when handling documents with low amounts. Instead, you can set a fixed limit for a specific period of time, and everything will be approved automatically. |
| Refund documents only up to a specified limit | This rule sets an upper limit for the refundable amount for a certain document type. For mileage, this will make mileage refunds only up to this limit possible, while expenses will be allocated into amounts that are refundable and non-refundable. It will be indicated to the approver and the admin if the limit was exceeded. When setting up this rule in Company Policies > Edit List, leave the Period of Time column blank. |
| Give a warning for documents above the set limit | A warning comment will be added to documents exceeding a specified limit. This will not prevent any documents from being approved or posted, but it will indicate to the approver and the admin that the limit was exceeded. |
Company policies are defined for users or user groups on mileage vehicles and on the Expense Types page for a specific time period. The following list clarifies the values of a time period:
- A day — is within 24 hours
- A week — is Monday to Sunday
- A month — is the calendar month of the document
- The year — is the current calendar year
Set up company policies for expense types
To set up company policies for expense types:
- Search
for and select Expense Types. - Choose the expense type you want to create a new company policy for.
- On the action bar, click Company Policies.
- Fill in the relevant fields.
Auto-approve expenses for a user group
You can set up rules for individual users or a user group.
For example, you can set a rule to automatically approve expenses below a certain amount for a specific user group.
- In Company Policies > on the action bar, click Edit List.
- In the User Type column of the table, choose User Group from the dropdown menu.
- In the User Code column, enter the relevant code. For example, 'INT' (for Internal Employees).
- In the Action column, enter the rule. For example, 'Automatically approve documents below the limit'.
- In the Amount (LCY) column, enter the value of the limit. For example, '10.00'
- In the Period of Time column, (optional) fill this in if applicable.
Example scenarios for different expense types
In Expense Types in Business Central, you can set up rules that adhere to your company policies for each of the expense types listed. In the following scenarios, a company has set up rules to limit accommodation to £250 per night, food receipts to a maximum of £15 per day, and software purchases to a maximum of £1,000. These examples cover commonly created rules for each expense type.
Expense type: Accommodation
For this scenario, the company policy for the Accommodation expense type limit is set to £250. This means the rule only allows refunds for documents that are up to and including the limit of £250.
Example: Harry has travelled to Nottingham for two days of work meetings and stayed overnight at a hotel that cost £256 per night.
In this example, the expense submitted exceeds the limit by £6. Therefore, a comment was added that the £6 were automatically allocated to a new line with the expense type set to Personal (which meant that it would not be refunded to the expense user).
Expense type: Food
In this scenario, the company policy for the Food expense type is that anything up to and including £15 per day is automatically approved.
Example: While attending a one-day conference, Hester purchased the following items for her morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| 3x cups of coffee (at .75p each) | £2.25 |
| A bacon and egg bap | £2.50 |
| An egg and watercress sandwich | £4.00 |
| A packet of crisps | £2.00 |
| 2x Jolly colas (at £1.00 each) | £2.00 |
| A tin of Penguin Mints | £1.50 |
Each item in itself is a small amount, the sum total is under £15 and the system is set up to automatically approve documents up to £15 a day. This means Hester can send all the documents for approval and the system will automatically approve them as they are under the specified limit of £15.
Expense type: Software
In this scenario, the company wanted a policy for the Software expense type to keep an eye on large expenses. So they created a rule to add a warning if the amount for any document is over £1,000.
Example: Charlie works for a gaming company and was asked to upgrade her equipment. She bought a new mouse for £14.99 from her local computer shop. As it was under £15 it was automatically approved. However, the local shop didn't have the fully spec'd laptop that she wanted to upgrade to, so she had to buy it online. The laptop cost £1,743.
Because the rule for the Software expense type is limited to £1,000, it could not be approved automatically. Which meant that the status of the document would remain Open with a warning that the amount exceeded the set limit until an Approver reviewed it manually.