Feature Overview: Expenses
​Step by Step: How to Activate the Expenses Module for Employees
​Setting Expense Policies
​Ways to Submit Expenses
​Approving expenses
​Monthly summary of my employees' expenses
​How to Modify an Already Validated Expense
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It's possible to manage employee expenses on PayFit and reimburse employees via payroll.

✅ Using PayFit for expense management reduces admin workload as employees submit their expenses directly into their employee portal. Once approved, the expense goes straight onto the employee's payslip and is paid as part of their monthly income.

✅ Employees can scan their receipts and this will auto-populate fields in the submission form to make the process quicker.

✅ The employee can see a full log of every expense they've submitted, whether this has been approved / rejected / cancelled / pending so it's easy to track what has been submitted.

✅ Once an expense has been requested, managers are notified via email straight away. Once a manager has approved / declined an expense request, the employee is also notified via email.

✅ Admins are able to set limits / warnings per expense category, which are visible to the employee. These help to avoid absurd requests being submitted.

✅ Admins can set up a management structure so a manager can approve expenses from their direct reports as well as the expenses being visible in the admin space.

✅ Admins can make receipts / comments compulsory to ensure that they have all the details they need when validating expenses.

✅ Admins can create Expense reports by using the Custom Reports functionality.

✅ Expenses can be reported in payroll journals.

❌ The expense categories are pre-set and cannot be changed or added to (though this feature is coming soon ⏳).

❌ There is only one level of approval so you're not able to set up multi-layer authentication for expense requests.

❌ Expenses are processed via payroll on a monthly basis - out of cycle payments cannot currently be supported.

As a default, PayFit makes expenses not taxable and not NI-able. You are able to make expenses taxable / NI-able on a case by case basis.

1️⃣ Go to My Company > Pay items > Expenses > Expenses settings.

⚠️ If a padlock icon shows next to the Expenses section in your PayFit account, you may not have access to it in your current package. To discuss enabling expenses, please speak to a member of our customer care team via the Contact Us form ⚠️

2️⃣ Click Manage Activation in the top right corner of the screen to select which employees you want to allow to use this feature.

As soon as you activate expenses for an employee, you can click on Notify by email to send an email notification to the employee. They will be able to instantly submit expenses (meals, transport, accommodation, etc.) directly from their PayFit employee portal in the Expenses section.

As before, go to My Company > Pay items > Expenses > Expenses settings.

Here, you're able to set overall parameters for expenses e.g. blocking expenses over £200.

Alternatively, you can click on New Policy to set expense parameters per category.

Choose the category type from the list and choose the parameters you'd like to apply.

When an employee submits an expense, they will choose the relevant category and be restricted by the rules provided by the admin.

There are multiple ways to submit expenses through PayFit:

1️⃣ Receipt scanning (OCR) via the Employee Space.

2️⃣ Manually inputting details of the receipt via the Employee Space.

3️⃣ Admins can directly input an expense in the employee space.

4️⃣ Admins can bulk upload employee expenses.

Receipt scanning allows employees to either upload or take a photo of their receipt with their phone without having to manually fill in all the details.

To do this, they can choose the Add my receipt function, at which point the app will then auto-populate the relevant fields thanks to the optical character recognition (OCR) technology.

With this option, employees can manually add expenses by uploading their receipts.

In the expenses section of the employee's PayFit account, they can manually fill in the necessary information for each of their expenses and submit the total amount they wished to be reimbursed for.

Employees are able to submit expenses in a foreign currency and convert the amount in the local currency. We do this by synchronising with the European Central Bank rate (updated each day and the date of the expense will indicate the auto-conversion rate used).

In the admin space, head to My Employees > Pay Items > Expenses.

You're able to input details of the expense and choose whether it needs to be subject to tax or NI. More information on what is considered a taxable or NI-able benefit can be found here.

Admins can upload employee expenses in bulk. This is particularly useful if you are transitioning between systems and would like to log upcoming expenses that have already been submitted by employees.

To do this, head to My Company > Imports > More Imports > choose either business travel mileage allowance or other expenses sheet > download and input information > re-upload into PayFit.

The PayFit account admins and their managers (depending on defined validation and view workflows) will receive a notification to approve or reject the expense request.

The manager can either validate the expenses in bulk or expense submission or choose to check every expense one by one before validating/rejecting it.

Validation by the admin from the validations section on the admin space:
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In the expenses section, you will have access to a detailed overview of expenses by month and by category. All the receipts for each month can be downloaded in one click.

To keep control of this expense item you can track its evolution by comparing the total sum of expenses for the current month vs the previous month.

The detailed view allows you to track each expense report month by month.

The export button allows you to download an Excel file with a summary of all expenses for the detailed month: cost, category, VAT, etc. This document can be very useful for both you and your accountant.

As an admin, you're entitled to modify or cancel an expense that has already been validated.

1️⃣ Go to the Expenses section on your admin space.

2️⃣ Click on "Edit" in the Monthly Summary section.

3️⃣ Select the employee by clicking on See all.

4️⃣ Click on the '...' under actions to edit the expense or delete if needed.

5️⃣ Make any amendments (including making the expense taxable or NI-able) and save.

When you change an expense, the employee isn't notified by PayFit so you'll need to inform the employee of any change you make as an admin.