How to set up the reimbursements policy?

Please follow the steps below to set up the company's reimbursement policy: 

1. Make sure that the Reimbursements module is enabled for your company. If it is not enabled please consult our team at [e-mail].  

2. Log into the platform as an Admin or as a user with Tech Admin permissions.

3. Navigate to the upper left side, click on your company, and then on the Company Settings link. 

4. Scroll down to the Reimbursements section and click on Manage Reimbursements.

5. Decide how you want to handle reimbursements budget-wise. 

5.1 One-off: This means that a new budget will be created for each request.  

5.2 One-off and under existing budgets: This means that the user will be able to select whether to submit as a one-off or select a pre-approved budget for faster approval. If you selected this option check the relevant boxes. 

6. Configure the 'Additional settings' according to your company's policies. The functionalities of each option is described below.

6.1 'Expenses one-off budget name' - The name of the budget that appears in step 2 of the reimbursement submission dialog. It is configurable and the default is 'Other'. 

6.2 'Expense age (days)' - A threshold for the flagging functionality to kick in. 

6.3 'Flag Expenses submitted under Other budgets as over budget'- a part of the flagging functionality. If a request is submitted under the 'other' option it will be flagged respectively.  

6.4 'Employees can submit non-reimbursable expenses' - The option to let employees submit non-reimbursable expense requests for tracking purposes. 

Note: Strong users (e.g., user with an Admin profile) can submit such expenses (i.e., non reimbursable) even if the toggle is set to off. Expenses can be also marked later as personal which results in being non-reimbursable.  

6.5 Enforce manual transaction submission to approval flow.  

6.6 'Which spend categories are showing in Add Expense' - It is possible to present all the spend categories or just the ones mapped to expenses. 

6.7 'Lock expenses for review' - This option locks the expense during the review phases so users can not change any details. CF fields are locked and it is not possible to edit, cancel or itemize the expense. Strong users can unlock and lock it back. This is set to ON by default and Admins can change it if they want to. 

6.8 Multiple expenses settings - it is now possible to restrict the type of expenses employees upload via bulk csv upload. At least one of the options (i.e., out of pocket or external card) must be enabled. 

Note, if the toggle above is set ON, the UI will display the option to submit multiple expenses. 

6.9 'Add Expense currency should be empty' - this option allows the user to select the currency of the submitted reimbursement. When not toggle ON, the home currency (e.g., USD) is auto-selected. 

6.10 'I’d like Mesh to notify manually paid employees' - the option to alert employees about payouts. 

6.11 'Cadence of the notifications to approvers' - set a daily or weekly cadence for alerts the platform sends to reimbursement approvers. 

6.12 'Batch travel expenses' : 

OFF: Trip-related expenses are submitted individually and set to In Review.

ON: Expenses submitted to a trip budget are marked as Pending until the employee closes the trip. Upon submission, all Pending expenses are set to In Review and the approval workflow is triggered.

Note: If an admin enables Batch Travel Expenses, trip-related expenses are submitted and marked accordingly (that is, set to Pending). If the admin later disables this setting, any existing Pending expenses will not automatically enter the approval workflow and will remain in the Pending state. The setting change applies only to future expenses. As a workaround, existing Pending expenses can be removed from the Pending state by itemizing them.

6.13 'Download CSV on Payment Schedule' - When toggled ON, a CSV file, with all the expenses that were just scheduled, is downloaded as soon as the user clicks the 'Schedule Payment' button on the 'Expenses to Pay' tab. 

6.14 'Include user data on export' - When toggled ON, add the custom field name + values mapped to the user record at the end of each exported file. 

6.15 'Automatic Spend Category for Personal Spend' - The option to automate Spend Category selection when a user marks an expense as personal. 

7. Decide how you want to handle mileage reimbursements.

7.1 Toggle on the Enable mileage reimbursements requests if you want to make this option available for the company's employees.

7.1.1 Select a Spend Category to be used as a a default for Mileage expenses. 

7.2 Click on the Add rate + link, type the Rate Name, enter the rate, enter the currency, and click on the check icon. You can set more than one rate.

Notes: Guidelines for mileage reimbursements are provided by the IRS and can be found here.

8.  Enable 'reimbursement payouts' and instruct users to add personal bank account details. This option will allow your company to disburse approved reimbursements to the employee's bank account.

Note: The reimbursement flow with payouts will appear after you enable this option.  

9. Check the sections for accuracy and click the 'Save and close' button.