Reimburse expenses

Once approved, the expense displays in Expenses for the Finance team to review and process the reimbursement.

Edit expenses

In case employees make mistakes when submitting expenses, approvers can edit expense fields during the review and approval process. Changes made by the approver are recorded in the expense audit log.

To edit expenses:

1. Go to the Expenses tab.
2. Select the expense to be edited.
   The Edit expense panel is displayed at the right side of the screen.
3. Review and edit the expense as required.

You can edit the Tax code and the Tax amount. The Tax rate is automatically calculated based on the tax code for every expense.

Tax codes

You can define tax codes per subsidiary and set tax collection preferences for each expense category, with the option to override the subsidiary's default tax code. When tax codes are activated, Tipalti automatically calculates and displays the tax rate based on the tax code for every expense. Approvers can review and make adjustments before final approval.

Default tax codes and amounts are synced or imported from your ERP system or set up with your Tipalti rep while onboarding. For more info, go to Tax codes.

Employees can use the same spend categories for both Tipalti Card transactions and expenses. Tipalti auto-calculates tax amounts (such as VAT or sales tax) based on pre-defined tax codes. For more info on setting up expense categories and tax codes, go to Expenses settings.

Reimburse your employees

To reimburse your employee:

1. Go to the Expenses tab.
2. Review employee expense groups in Pending approval tab.
   Once approved, they’ll automatically move to the Pending reimbursement tab.
3. Select the expense groups you want to reimburse by checking their checkbox.
   To view all the expenses within a group, click on the expense group row in the table and review them in the side panel. Here you can reimburse multiple expenses at once or deselect the ones you’re not ready to reimburse.
4. Click Reimburse or Reimburse all.
5. Expenses that are ready to settle are moved to the Reimbursements tab,  which shows the status and history of all reimbursements.  
   • The expense groups’ statuses change to Processing and a new payment batch is created with all the selected group expenses.
   • If an expense group is reimbursed, the status changes to Reimbursed. 
     If it can’t be reimbursed, the status will change to Failed.
     

Retry reimbursement of an expense group

Payment failures may result from missing bank account details, insufficient funds in the payer's account, etc. If an expense group’s settlement fails, the Finance team should resolve the issue and retry the reimbursement. To do so, you can access the Payments tab on the menu bar and look for the payment.

To retry a reimbursement:

1. Go to the Expenses tab.
2. Click the filter and choose Failed.
3. The screen refreshes to display the list of expense groups that have failed reimbursements.
4. Click one of the groups to view the group details.
5. Click Mark group as pending reimbursement on the expense group details.
   

The expense group’s status changes to Pending reimbursement, and the group is ready to be added to a payment batch again. See Reimburse your employees for details on how to complete the settlement.

Mark as reimbursed

You can select group or individual expenses to Mark as reimbursed. This enables you to track reimbursements made outside of Tipalti’s system, while still syncing with your ERP.

To mark expenses as reimbursed:

1. Go to the Pending reimbursement or Reimbursements tab in Expenses.
2. Search for the expense you want to mark, open the side panel with the expense details and click Mark as reimbursed.
   
3. Select how and when the expenses were reimbursed, for record purposes only. Enter the From account (the payment source of the expense) and the Date reimbursed.
   
4. Click Mark as reimbursed. Please note, once an expense is marked as reimbursed outside of Tipalti, it can't be undone.
   
5. The expense status will show Marked as reimbursed in the Reimbursement tab. From here, you can also filter expenses by their status, including Marked as reimbursed.