Requesting expense reimbursements

As an employee, you can use the Yomly self-service platform to request expense reimbursements.

Based on your company policies, your request might go through a number of approval cycles involving your line manager, HR manager, and other members of your organization's HR and management teams.

This article contains the following sections:

• Creating an expense request
• Editing an expense request
• Submitting an expense request for approval

Creating an expense request

To create an expense reimbursement request, do the following:

1. In the sidebar, in the My HR section, click Requests > Expense Reimbursements.

   

   The Expense Requests page is displayed.

2. In the upper-right corner, click + New expense request.

   

   The Expense request page, which enables you to create an expense request, is displayed.

3. Enter an Expense Request Name.

   

4. (Optional) Assign the expense reimbursement to one or multiple cost centres.

   Depending on your organization structure, as an employee, you might be assigned to one or multiple cost centres. When you create a new expense request, these cost centres are listed by default in the Cost Center Assignment section (on the left).

   You can change this default cost centre assignment; you can add or remove cost centres or modify the assignment percentage.

   You can assign your expense requests to any cost centre available for your business, even if you are not assigned to it yourself. You can also submit expenses without assigning any cost centre at all.

   To add a cost centre to your expense request, do the following:

   1. In the Cost Center Assignment section (on the left side of the Expense request page), click + Add Cost Center.

      

      The Cost Centers dialogue is displayed.

      

   2. Select the cost centres to which you want to assign the expense.

   3. Click Add.

      The cost centres are listed in the Cost Center Assignment section.

      

   4. In the Percentage column, for each cost center that you have added, enter the percent of the expense that you want to assign.

      

      For example, if you have added two cost centres, you can distribute the assignment equally. To do this, for each cost centre, in the Percentage column, enter 50.

      If you have added two or more cost centres, you can assign percentages of the expense to them in any ratio. However, the sum of the percentages must be 100.

      If you have added only one cost centre, you must enter 100 in the Percentage column.

5. Add expense items to your expense request. Do the following:

   1. In the Expense items section, click + Add item in the bottom-right corner.

      The Expense item page is displayed.

   2. Enter the following details:

      1. In Upload Bill / Receipt, upload your bills or receipts. Use drag-and-drop or click the box to browse and select a file manually. To upload multiple files, click + in the upper-right corner.
      2. In Date of Expense, click the   (calendar) icon and select the date.
      3. In the Type drop-down menu, select an expense type.

         Based on your organization's policies, your platform admin configures the list of expense types that you are allowed to claim.

      4. (Optional) In Description / Notes, enter a description or justification for your expense.
      5. In the Expense Currency drop-down menu, choose the currency.

         The current exchange rate (with respect to your default currency) is auto-filled in Exchange Rate. These values are based on real-time forex rates configured on the fixer.io platform.

      6. In Expense Amount, enter the expense amount (value).
      7. (Optional) If your expense includes VAT, you can document it separately in Included VAT.

      Total Calculated Amount displays the total expense amount after currency conversion.

      

   3. Click Save.

      The expense item is saved and included in your expense request.

      

      A single expense request can include multiple related expense items.

      For example, you can create a single expense request to reimburse your expenses from a business trip. The request would include multiple expense items, related to your travel, stay, and meals.

6. Click Save.

   Your saved expense request is displayed in the Expenses Requests page.

When you create and save an expense request, it is in its initial state (Draft).

After finalizing the details of your expense request, you must submit it for approval.

Editing an expense request

After saving an expense request, you can edit it at any time until you send it for approval.

To edit the details of an expense request, do the following:

1. On the Expense Requests page, find the request that you want to edit, and in the Action column, click View.

   

   The Expense request page, which enables you to edit the expense request, is displayed.

   

2. Update your expense request.

   For example, you can do the following:

   • Add expense items

   • Upload additional receipts for any expense item

   • Edit the details of any expense item or replace the attached receipt

   • Edit the cost centre assignment for the request

3. Click Save.

   

Submitting an expense request for approval

You can submit expense requests for approval to initiate the approval process.

The approval process for expense reimbursements typically begins with a review by one or multiple approvers. There might also be multiple levels of approval.

Only when the expense request completes all approval stages and is in the Approved state, your reimbursement can be processed through Payroll.

This entire workflow is governed by the expense request approval pipeline configured for your business.

To submit an expense request for approval, do the following:

1. On the Expense Requests page, find the request that you want to edit, and in the Action column, click View.

   

   The Expense request page, in which you can view the details of the request, is displayed.

   At the bottom of the Expense items section, based on the expense approval pipeline configured for your business, one or multiple action buttons are displayed. 

   

   In the preceding example, the Send for approval button represents the first stage of the expense approval pipeline.

2. Click the button that represents the action of submitting the expense request for approval.

   Typically, this sends the request to the state in which anyone in the initial audience assigned to review it can perform actions, such as approving it, rejecting it, returning it for changes, and more.

   Action buttons that represent these actions are displayed only to approvers who have the permissions to perform them. As an employee, unless an expense request is in a state where you can perform an action, you can only monitor its status.

   You might even have to perform additional actions to finish submitting the expense request for approval if the configured pipeline implements such a workflow.

In the Approvals section, each stage in the approval process is logged. You can review this section to gain insights about the history of events and current status of your expense request.