How do I review employees' expenses?

Nneka

Updated September 03, 2024 16:05

When an employee submits expenses, they are sent to your team to approve. The company users with the right permissions can review an employee's expense requests. People managers can only view and approve the expenses of the team members assigned to them.

When an employee submits a new expense, you will get an email notification; and from your Remote dashboard, you will also see a notification about it. At the moment, it is not possible to configure the email notifications, so they only go (or not at all) to specific company admins.

In this article, we cover the following:

Review expenses
Approve multiple expenses
Approved expenses
Export expense details (Direct employees)

Review expenses

From the Expenses tab, you get an overview of all the expenses that have been submitted for reimbursement.
You can filter to view expenses from Direct employees, Contractors, or EOR employees. Just click Filter and select from the Employment type dropdown.
When you click on the 3 dots icon, you can view the expense details.

Quick review of expenses

For a faster and improved experience, choose the quick review option accessible from the pending review screen by clicking Review all expenses.

Screenshot 2024-01-15 at 14-00-16 Expenses Remote.png

When selected, one can view the expense receipt and all related information, such as category, notes, and amounts:

The approver has the option to skip, decline, or approve the expense and proceed to the next one.
Keyboard shortcuts are also available to expedite the review and approval process.

Screenshot 2024-01-15 at 13-59-11 Expenses Review Remote.png

If an expense is declined, the approver is asked to provide a reason to share with the employee:

Screenshot 2024-01-15 at 2.04.36 PM.png

After reviewing all (selected) expenses, the approver can then see a summary screen in the end before they can go back to the expenses' dashboard.

Screenshot 2024-01-15 at 14-04-47 Expenses Review Remote.png

Approved expenses

When an expense is approved, the status changes to Approved and it moves to the Approved section.
For employees hired via Remote’s entities, expenses will be paid in the same month’s payroll run if submitted and approved before the payroll cutoff date of a given month. If it is approved after the payroll cutoff date for a particular month, it will be paid out in the following month.
See also: When is the payroll cutoff?

Note: Exceptions to the standard payroll cutoff dates include Bulgaria and Germany, as well as other countries with semi-monthly payroll schedules. In Bulgaria, the cutoff is on the last day of the month. The cutoff date for Germany changes each month.
Additionally, as we approach the end of the year, there will be different payroll cutoff and deadlines for December 2024.

Export expense details (Direct employees)

For Direct employees hired via your own entities, you can export expense details from Remote. This makes it easy to import information into other platforms you may use, or provide to your payroll partner.

To export expense requests only from Direct employees:

View the Approved tab and filter the Employment type dropdown to ‘Direct employees’. You can also filter by status Approved and any date range.
Click the expense icon. You’ll then be able to select all columns, or export only the specific columns you’d like to include.

To keep Remote up-to-date, don’t forget to update the status of Direct employee expenses to Processing or Reimbursed. This will also update the status that your employees see when they view their submitted expenses.