Expenses
Review, release and carry into payroll the expenses and allowances that employees submit for their shifts.
Employees submit meal allowances, travel costs and other expenses directly at their shift. You review the items on the Expenses page and release or reject them. Released expenses go into the payroll export as their own wage type.
Access
You find the Expenses page in the sidebar under General. It requires the permission Time entries, corrections, time rules and only appears when expenses are enabled. Mark as paid additionally requires the permission Month-end, minijob, payroll export.
Enabling expenses
Under Settings › Payroll & expenses switch on Enable expenses for employees. Employees then see the button Submit expenses on their accepted shifts.
In the Meal allowances section you store fixed amounts per meal (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner). They are applied automatically on submission; without an amount, the employee enters the total. Travel costs and other expenses always need a receipt.
For the expenses to reach the payroll export, also store the wage types for expenses there (Meal wage type, Travel wage type, Other expenses wage type). Without a wage type the export aborts when expenses are included -- see STOTAX and DATEV.
How employees submit expenses
In the employee portal and in the app, the button Submit expenses on an accepted shift opens the form New expenses:
- Type -- Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Travel costs or Other expense.
- Amount -- fixed for meals with a stored allowance ("Your employer's fixed allowance for this meal"), otherwise free (up to 10,000 in your tenant's currency).
- Receipt -- required for travel costs and other expenses, optional for meals. A receipt can only be used once.
- Note -- optional.
Only one item per shift and meal is possible. As long as an item is Submitted, the person can delete it again with Withdraw expense.
Reviewing expenses
By default the table only shows items with the status Submitted. Above it are the totals ("Open … · Approved …") of the current selection.
| Column | Content |
|---|---|
| Employees | Name and profile picture |
| Shift | Date, event and task |
| Type | Type of expense, with the note below |
| Amount | Amount in your tenant's currency |
| Receipt | Preview of the receipt or "No receipt" |
| Status | Submitted, Released, Rejected or Paid; for Rejected, hovering shows the reason, for Paid it says "Paid via payroll" or "Paid out manually" below |
| Reviewed by | Who decided and when |
You can filter by Status, Event and Employees.
Select items
Select one or more items. The toolbar shows "n selected".
Decide
- Release -- the item is booked in the next payroll export. Rejected items can also be released afterwards.
- Reject -- opens "Reject n expenses". The Reasoning (at least three characters, applies to all selected items) is shown to the employee in their notification.
- Mark as paid -- for released items that have not been exported yet and are paid out outside of payroll (status Paid, "Paid out manually").
The message says how many items were updated and skipped. If a released identical meal already exists for the same shift, the item is not released ("n meal not approved: this meal already exists for the same shift."). Employees are notified about release and rejection.
Expenses in the payroll export
- Released expenses are booked in the export as their own wage-type lines (all meals share one wage type, travel costs and other expenses each have their own). Expenses of employees with the employment type Invoice and of volunteer tasks are not booked.
- In the monthly close, the card Expenses this month shows what is still waiting for approval or was released only after the export.
- If you close an event in the Export closing tab of the STOTAX page, the expenses exported in it count as "Paid via payroll". If an item changes afterwards, it shows up there among the changes to confirm.