I have had expenses submitted any where from 1 day after the expense was incurred to as much as 9 months. Our current policy requires reimbursement request to be within 30 days from the date the expense is incurred.
What is a reasonable window from the date an employees incurs a reimbursable expense to when it must be submitted for reimbursement?
Answers
One week is best practice, two weeks maximum, except if extenuating circumstances are proven. Unless you require employees to file expenses on tri-carbon paper forms (red to boss, blue to accounting and pink for employee) and mail them to a far away processing office :), then they should file weekly. They get the receipts at time of purchase (or checkout from hotel). There are mobile apps that make this so easy for the traveler and eliminate so much low value work in accounting.
And for month end filing, the expenses should be in within a few days so finance can close easily. Firms that rebill expenses impose tighter deadlines because they need to ensure charges are correct.
Sloppy expense reporting can go hand in hand with questionable expenses...
Standard Operating Practice (SOP) in my organization is for the Expense Claim to be inputed on the ERP (with adequate support documents) for the reimbursable to be processed alongside payroll.
In today's environment of SAAS based expense reporting, weekly should be the norm, with auto submitting to the first approver on Sunday. Expenses should be processed and reimbursement, if any by ACH by the end of the 2nd week.
Filed Under:
Accounting