Processing Expense Claims - Xero

In Today's video I take you through expense claims in Xero, how to process, approve and pay for claims to reimburse employees.
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[@Brumbie68]

Thx m8 you are making my life so much easier , I really appreciate your help

[@paulovington]

How would one do a mileage claim for business trips?

[@TallBooks]

Hi Paul, It would depend on the type of claim, if it's cents per km/an allowance for mileage then you'd put that through the payrun as an allowance, if it's reimbursement for travel expenses you can enter as a bill and have the money paid out to the employee that is owed the reimbursement. When the money is paid out match it to the open bill.

[@jt6553]

Thanks Sam. How would you process an expense claim for a 100% work related personal electronic device (eg $1100 inc GST iPhone) where the employee will salary sacrifice the ex-GST pre-tax amount, and be reimbursed the full amount? I can get the reimbursement done using a clearing account as you described. However, I'm not sure how to clear the suspense account for the pre-tax deduction.

[@TallBooks]

Have you set-up a deduction pay item in Payroll settings>Pay items. That can be linked as pre-tax and set to specific account.

[@jt6553]

@@TallBooks I do have a deduction pay item linked to a new suspense account (Liability). But that's where my knowledge falls short. My understanding is a suspense account is temporary and I don't know what to do with the balance - that is, how do I clear it?

[@TallBooks]

@@jt6553 Where did you code the original purchase? It can go against this if they are paying it off. For example the amount could go to suspense, then the employee pays it off against suspense netting to zero?

[@jt6553]

@@TallBooks The employee salary sacrificed the full amount instead of paying it off but I will look at that in future. In this case I linked the salary sacrifice pre-tax deduction to Wages and Salary and this seems to work. Thank you Sam

[@jasminehuynh4413]

Hey Sam, Just wondering when you processed the payback​ to your employee, how does zero know employee account to transfer money in? Thank you or not sure how does it work

[@TallBooks]

Hi Jasmine, good question. What you may wish to do is process the expense claim to the relevant expense category. Let's say 'stationary and printing' then once approved you apply a payment from a liability account you set up called 'employee reimbursement clearing' or 'Jasmine H Reimbursement Clearing'. Once the payment is made from this account (make sure to click enable payments to this account on the chart of accounts once set up) then you can allocate the reimbursement from the bankfeed to this liability account. Whenever it has a balance you know your employee is owed money.
Some people pool all reimbursements into one clearing account, I personally would use one per employee. Expense claims aren't always the easiest, sometimes it's better to just raise a bill for the actual expense, then when paying the employee back, match the payment to the open bill and you're all sorted. Hope that helps!

[@ConfuzzledVR2]

Hi sam. Can I process contractor expense via expense claim pleas? I mean, I wanna give the access to contractors. is that possible that contractors access to expense claim?

[@TallBooks]

Hi Sarah, Yes you can, but you'd need to add them as a user to the file with access to expenses then they can download the app and log-in with their email and password.

[@ConfuzzledVR2]

Which file do you mean? Supplier account or employee accounts? Or do you mean I need go to setting and add them as a user and just access them to the expense claim please? I will be appreciated if you respond me please.