ReimbursementRequest
Handling Requests for Reimbursements
Most non-profit organizations have to reimburse employees, contractors and volunteers for expenses, such as travel expenses. There are two sides to the reimbursement process that must be adequately handled by a non-profit accounting system.
Reimbursement: The Organization's View
The organization has to be able to easily:
- Receive and store receipts. Track those receipts in the context of the double entry accounting entries that relate to those receipts.
- Track the reimbursement request as an invoice.
- Handle any currency conversion related to the receipts, both from the point of view of international travel, and also considering the fact that the person reimbursed may seek reimbursement in a different currency than the native currency of the organization's.
- Track approvals of the expenses by multiple parties. (For example, perhaps a volunteer project leader must approve, and then later by with fiduciary duty to the organization itself).
- Ideally, the system would auto-detect any places where a travel and/or reimbursement policy for the organization is violated (or mandates additional approvals).
- Ideally, the system could "set up" accounting entries for "merger" into the accounts, based on an expense report submitted, via some draft transacting approval process.
Reimbursement: The Traveler's View
From traveler's/reimbursement-requester's view, they'll need:
- An easy, outward-facing web interface for submitting receipts.
- Ideally, flagging them when additional approval is needed before submitting their expense report, so that they can seek additional approval before submitting.
- Updates on the external web interface system about status when the expense is moving through the internal system at the organization.
- Automatic calculation of any per-diem allowances.
Reimbursement on Behalf Of
A classic scenario that occurs for non-profits is an employee or a contractor buys an item that is actually for someone else. For example, a volunteer needs a plane ticket to go to a conference, so an employee or someone else (the "Floater") who can "float" the expense makes the purchase. The reimbursement request comes in from the Floater but the real person who received the item should be recorded.