Employee expense claims
Book an employee's expense claim as a purchase with its receipts, approve or reject it, and pay them back by matching the transfer to the expense in Banking.
Employees with an Arvello login can claim back what they paid for work with their own money: the date, where, what it was for, the amount and the receipts (see Your employee portal). Claims waiting for you show at the top of Expenses, under Employee claims waiting (on the Growth and Business plans), and All claims opens the full list. You also get a bell notification for each new claim, and the employee gets an email and a bell notification when you approve or reject it. Turning a claim into books takes three steps: book it as an expense, approve it, and pay the person back.
Anyone who can see Expenses sees the list. Booking, approving and rejecting a claim needs a role that manages Expenses.
The claims list
Each row shows the person, the date, where they spent it, the amount and where the claim stands:
- To book: just submitted; nothing booked yet.
- Booked as a draft: an expense has been saved from it but not finalised.
- Approved: the expense is final and the claim approved; the person hasn't been paid back yet.
- Reimbursed: the expense is paid, so the person has their money back.
- Rejected: you rejected it, and the person sees your reason.
- Withdrawn: the person took it back before you booked it.
Open a claim to see its details and receipts, and the next step under Next step.
Booking a claim as an expense
On the claim, press Book as expense. The ordinary new-expense form opens, prefilled from the claim: the date, the amount as the gross total, a description made of where and what for, and the person's receipts attached. A banner above it says whose claim you're booking.
Fill it in as for any purchase (see Purchase invoices). The supplier is the shop or service the person bought from, not the person: the expense is the company's purchase from them. Choose the category and the tax code as the receipt shows them. Input VAT is deducted only when the receipt supports it, exactly as for a bill the company paid itself.
Saving the draft links it to the claim, which then shows Booked as a draft. A claim is booked once: if it has already been booked as an expense (say, from a second tab) or the person has withdrawn it, saving is refused with a message. For a claim that's already booked, open its expense from the claim instead. Finalise posts the expense and approves the claim in the same go. The expense counts as Unpaid until the person is paid back.
If the expense was finalised but the claim still shows Booked as a draft (the approval didn't go through, for example because the connection dropped), open the claim and press Approve claim. Approving needs the linked expense to be final: with a draft it says "Finalise the expense first."
Rejecting a claim
Type why under Reject claim and press it: a reason is required, and the person sees it with the claim. A claim can be rejected while no finalised expense is linked to it. If you saved a draft from it, rejecting unlinks the draft; delete the draft yourself. If the expense is already final, credit or delete it first, as the error message says.
Paying the person back
Pay the person back by bank transfer from the company account. When the transfer shows up in the bank feed, reconcile it in Banking against the expense:
- On its own: choose Match to Expense and pick the expense. It moves to Paid, and the claim to Reimbursed.
- Together with their salary: book the net pay with Payment to a Person, leave the rest of the transfer open, then use Add another item to this transaction and choose Match to Expense for the claim's expense.
No separate payable is involved: until the person is paid back, the amount sits in accounts payable under the shop's name, as the company's purchase from it. It's the same flow as for expenses paid personally, which covers your own purchases without a claim.