We have designed the claim review features to support the widest possible range of organisations.
Other than defining the user permissions required to submit reviews, claimexpenses does not enforce any particular process for approving claims in your organisation.
claimexpenses only stores and displays information about claim reviews - users are not forced to request or receive a review on their claims.
You are therefore free to adopt whatever process works for you, and to vary it between different users and claims as required.
However, we have suggested a few common processes to help you understand how you might use the system.
Parallel approvals - e.g. from budget holders - requested by the claimant
In this process, your organisation nominates people to be responsible for individual budget codes or headings. Claims can be paid if they have been approved by the relevant budget holder(s) for the expenditure on the claim.
After your users submit a claim, they request a review from each relevant budget holder. You will be able to see that the claim is "In Review", and the number of outstanding requests.
Once all budget holders have completed their reviews, you will see that the claim has now been Reviewed, and the number of approvals & rejections (if any).
Once a claim is fully reviewed, your finance team will check that it has been approved by the correct budget holders and then arrange to pay the claim.
Parallel approvals - e.g. from budget holders - requested by finance
Some organisations might not want to make claimants responsible for knowing who should sign off claims from each budget. This might particularly be the case for larger organisations, or when working with freelancers or temporary staff.
You could adjust the process above so that claimants simply request a review from a single person in your finance team.
When finance receive the claim, they would check and approve the basic details (receipts provided, totals are correct, etc). The finance administrator can then request additional reviews from budget holders as required, and wait for these to be completed as above.
Sequential approvals - e.g. from line managers
Instead of requesting reviews from multiple different budget holders, your organisation might want claim approval to follow your existing management structures.
In this process, when a user submits a claim they would immediately request a review from their line manager.
Their line manager will then review the claim and, if they approve it, request a review from their own manager. In this way, the claim can be "passed up" as many levels of management as required.
As in the process above, your finance team will be able to see when a claim is in review, and when all the outstanding reviews have been completed.
Alternatively, you could ask that when the final manager in the chain (e.g. a Head of Department) approves a claim, they request a review from one of your finance administrators. This will trigger a notification that the claim is ready for final checking and payment.
Alternate or mixed processes
With our flexible review process, you're free to adopt whatever process works for your organisation. You might also choose to operate different processes for different teams, projects, budgets or staff members.
We're always open to feedback, so if you have any questions or find any challenges in implementing your claim review process within claimexpenses please do get in touch with our support team.