Employee expense claims new features

1. Add employee in bulk to EzzyBills

Claimants can be added to an EzzyBills account via the “Add Claimants” app in EzzyBills: go to Apps > Add Claimants, and follow the instruction below it to upload a csv file.

The format is of the csv file:

Name,My Email, Approver Email, My Bank Account
wildgoose, g@y.com, manager@y.com, Balsa Enterprises| 234-567 | 12345678| expense

An example csv file

The Bank Account will consist of the following details separated by ‘|’ pipe symbol accountname | bsb/sortcode | accountnumber | reference

If the claimant already exists then they will be ignored.

It is ok to

• upload the same claimant multiple times (duplicate is ignored),
• upload 1 or multiple claimants

After the claimant list is uploaded it will appear in the Settings > “Approval & Expenses” tab > “List of Users/Approvers” table (screenshot below). The upload email for a claimant will be <ezzybillsusername>.<claimant>@ezzybills1.com (you should avoid claimants with non alpa-numeric characters. You can use first-name and last-name separated by a space if required.).

When the first claim is first uploaded to xero, we will create the claimant in Xero if it is not there and add their bank account details (note* xero only supports creation of contacts with bank account numbers, the name and reference fields are ignored.)

New columns in the table

• My Email is the claimant’s email (approver email is the manager’s email for this claimant).
• you can specify “Workflow” to refine the employee expense claim process: specify a single claim limit and enable Claim notifications back to the employee.
• in order to use the workflow approval only, on the “List of Users/Approvers” table, the “Bypass Approval” needs to be ticked. (Otherwise, the first approval will be the approver on the table without any approval rules. After that, the workflow approval will be used.)

2. Set up workflow for claim notifications

By default, the status of the claims are not reported back to the employee. However, you can configure the workflow so that the employee get notifications when claims are submitted and approved (or rejected).

2.1 set up the workflow

Below is a single level xero workflow with the claimant being notified after they submit the claim and after the claim is approved/rejected:

• the workflow contains two new additional workflow tasks “Claim Submitted Notification” and “Claim Approved Notification”. The former shall be inserted before “Pre-extract”, and the later inserted after the last “Approved”.

Notes: the notifications will be sent twice: as soon as the claim is submitted, & once approved, to the email address provided in: EzzyBills > Settings > “Approval & Expenses” tab > “List of Users/Approvers” table > “My Email” column.

[screenshot – open in a separate window to enlarge]

2.2 Add approval rule

For the workflow, click the blue workflow task “Submit Approval 1” in the middle box (screenshot above), and then below the box, you will need to enable the approval rule (“Use Approval table to determine workflow approver”) by clicking & entering “yes”.

2.3 Set up the “List of Users/Approvers” table for claim notifications

On each line,

• Tick “Bypass Approval” (so the workflow can be used)
• specify the workflow with the two notification tasks.

3. Single invoice approval limit

• On the workflow, for the workflow task “submit approval”, there is a new workflow rule: “Approval limit is *** (invoices greater than approval limit are rejected)”. If the invoice is over the limit amount, it will be rejected automatically.

4. Expense claim annual limit

You can set a claimant’s annual claim limit in EzzyBills Settings > “Approval & Expenses” > “List of Users/Approvers” table. screenshot

The limit is only applicable if you enable the corresponding approval rule. You can also set the annual claim limit in the approval rules. screenshot

If a claim exceeds the claimant’s annual limit, the claim will be rejected. Please note that the annual limit applies to the calendar year starting on January 1.

5. Generate claim reports

You can also generate report (Apps > “Claimant History”) (sample report)