The Life Cycle of Expenses

Background information

A company’s employees use Cleemy Expenses to justify their expenses to their company and request reimbursement for expenses incurred. The different steps for expenses from creation to reimbursement are below.

Step 1: Creating expenses in Cleemy Expenses

First, the employee enters expenses they paid for their company in Cleemy Expenses. Expenses can be added to Cleemy Expenses manually by the employee or via bank synchronisation, which allows expenses to be created automatically in the ‘Expenses’ interface.

Manually

Via mobile

Using the mobile app, you can create expenses in real-time as they happen. You can fill in the fields in the expense form yourself or scan your receipt and the form will be pre-filled using optical character recognition. Refer to the ‘Creating an Expense in the Mobile App help page for more information.

Via the web app

You can also create your expense in Cleemy Expenses using our web app. This interface will sync with the expenses entered in the mobile app.

Automatically synchronised

Via Anytime

If you have an Anytime card synced with Cleemy Expenses, your expenses appear in your Expense interface in real-time. The expenses are pre-filled with the date, nature, amount and VAT (calculated by Cleemy Expenses). Requested receipts and analytical axes/comments can be added to the expense.

Via Powens

If you have a company/business card and your company subscribes to Powens, then expenses you pay using this card are forwarded to your ‘Expenses’ interface automatically.

The syncing time is 3/4 days after the expense occurs. The expense has to first appear in the banking interface before it is forwarded to Cleemy Expenses. The expenses are pre-filled with the date, nature, amount and VAT (calculated by Cleemy Expenses). Requested receipts and analytical axes/comments can be added to the expense.

Step 2: Submitting expenses in an expense report

Expenses in the ‘Expenses’ area are like the employee’s ‘drafts’. For them to be dealt with by your company, you must submit them in an expense report once a week/month.

You can submit expense reports directly from the mobile or web apps.

If a portion of the expenses were paid using the company card, Cleemy Expenses will automatically submit the expenses in two expense reports. Depending on your settings, Cleemy Expenses can automatically group expenses together under different expense reports based on the various analytical sections.

For more information, please visit the ‘Submitting an Expense Report’ help page.

Step 3: Approving expense reports

After you submit an expense report, it enters the approval process. Depending on your Cleemy Expenses settings, there are a number of different possible approvers: Your manager, the analytical axis/project manager associated with this expense report, etc. And the number of approval steps may also vary.

The person in charge of approval has a variety of options for approving expense reports: From the email, homepage or Cleemy Expenses app.

If one of the expenses in the expense report is incorrect, the approver can correct the expense or deny it individually so the employee can make the change. To deny an expense, the approver has to indicate the reason for the denial and the employee then receives an email notification. If an expense is denied, it appears in the ‘Employee’s expenses’ interface with the associated refusal message. The employee can then permanently delete this expense or change it and submit it again in a new expense report.

Step 4: Controlling expense reports

After an expense report is approved, it moves into the communal collection of expense reports ready to be controlled. Anyone with permission to ‘Control expense reports’ may control your expense report.

Like approval, some expenses can be denied or sent back as needed to the employee’s interface, while the rest of the expense report continues forward.

Step 5: Paying expense reports

If an expense report successfully passed the approval and control steps, it is time to reimburse the employee. This step only involves expenses paid by the employee (and not on a company card).

Employee reimbursement amount

Cleemy Expenses calculates the amount of the employee’s reimbursement when the expense report is submitted. Usually, the amount to reimburse is the same as the amount on the expense report. However, there are a few exceptions when this is not the case:

• If the employee has punctual advances that were entered in Cleemy Expenses. In this case, Cleemy Expenses compares the advance balance and the amount of the expense report to calculate how much to allocate to the advance and how much to reimburse to the employee.
• If the employee has an Anytime card (this card works just like punctual advances).

Via the Cleemy Expenses Payment module

Cleemy Expenses offers a payment module where you can generate a SEPA file to import directly into your banking interface. You can use this file to complete all bank transfers to reimburse employees.

Via your accounting

If you did not choose the option to pay via Cleemy Expenses, Cleemy Expenses will consider an expense report implicitly paid when the expense report is exported to accounting.

Via your payroll

If you want to reimburse your employees via payroll, you can use Cleemy Expenses to export the amounts spent by users and advances they received in a format compatible with payroll software.

In all three cases, the expense report first goes into the Waiting for payment status (in the Situation & expense reports interface), then switches to Paid.

Step 6: Exporting expense reports 

The last step in the expense report’s lifespan is simply integrating it into your accounting. So that you do not have to manually enter all expense reports created, Cleemy Expenses offers to generate the files in the format supported by your accounting software. Simply import the file generated during the export into your software. This file is 100% configurable.