How to approve the business nature of the expenses submitted to you on expense reports, and the information provided with each expense
View the report
Reports submitted to you will trigger an email notification that you can click to view the report.
Alternatively, you can sign in to Expensify periodically and navigate to the Reports screen to find reports awaiting your approval that you can click to view.
Review the report name
The report title may provide context for the period, purpose, project, or trip.
Review the submitter
It helps to know who submitted the expense report
Review totals & sub-totals
View the report total in the upper right corner of the report. If the report contains both reimbursable and non-reimbursable expenses, then those subtotals will show just below the report total.
Make sure the reimbursable subtotal is the amount you approve for the accounting department to reimburse the submitter.
Review each expense line item in the report
Click a row to view details of the expense.
Use the arrows in the upper-right corner of the pop-up screen to navigate forward or backward.
For each line item expense, perform the following steps:
1. View icon
The “locked credit card” icon on an expense tells you that it is an activity downloaded via the company’s centrally-managed credit card bank feed. These expenses cannot be deleted. They should be marked as not-reimbursable.
The “credit card” icon without a lock represents activity downloaded via the submitter’s personal credit card linked by the user and likely is reimbursable.
The “cash” (dollars & coins) icon represents expenses entered by the submitter, either manually or via Expensify’s SmartScan technology (if the receipt was not otherwise matched to a company credit card charge).
2. Verify business nature
Verify whether each expense has a valid business purpose.
3. Verify the reimbursable checkbox
Company credit card charges should always be unchecked; they are not reimbursable to the submitter. In order for the submitter to be reimbursed, the “Reimbursable” box must be checked.
4. Review category and tag
The category is a dropdown list from the company’s Chart of Accounts and is required for all expenses. Tags are additional classifications used by the company.
If you need to make changes, you can reject the report back to the submitter for modification. Or you can click and edit.
Modifications can be performed one at a time, or you can click the Save button to get out of the detail screen, back to the report view and click the Details icon in the upper right corner of the report, then the pencil icon to select and edit multiple expenses all at once, such as to assign the same one class to multiple expense rows.
5. Review comments
Further clarification of the nature of the expense.
6. Verify the receipt is attached
Supporting documentation in the form of an itemized receipt is required by the IRS on all business expenditures over $75.
Expensify will generate a generic text e-receipt for purchases under $75, but e-receipts are not itemized. The original receipt is preferable.
Look for duplicates
Spot-check all expenses on the report. There is the potential that a receipt snapped in the mobile app didn’t match properly with the company credit card download. The submitter needs to merge the two.
Approve report
When you click the Approve button, it will show you the assigned person to whom you are forwarding the report with your approval.
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