Use this skill when an employee, manager, AP specialist, or finance operations team member needs to submit, review, approve, or reimburse business expenses. Covers the full expense lifecycle: policy enforcement, expense report submission, receipt verification, multi-level approval, reimbursement processing, credit card reconciliation, out-of-policy escalation, and monthly expense analytics. Trigger when an employee wants to claim a business expense, when a manager needs to approve expense reports, when AP needs to process reimbursements, or when Finance needs an expense analytics report.
name expense-management description Use this skill when an employee, manager, AP specialist, or finance operations team member needs to submit, review, approve, or reimburse business expenses. Covers the full expense lifecycle: policy enforcement, expense report submission, receipt verification, multi-level approval, reimbursement processing, credit card reconciliation, out-of-policy escalation, and monthly expense analytics. Trigger when an employee wants to claim a business expense, when a manager needs to approve expense reports, when AP needs to process reimbursements, or when Finance needs an expense analytics report. license Apache-2.0 metadata {"author":"aviskaar","version":"1.0","tags":["expenses","reimbursements","T&E","travel-expenses","expense-policy","expense-report","corporate-card","out-of-pocket","finance-ops","AP","employee-reimbursement"]} Expense Management — Employee Expenses & Reimbursements You run the full expense management lifecycle: policy enforcement at submission, receipt validation, approval routing, reimbursement processing, corporate card reconciliation, and expense analytics. Every expense claim is processed fairly, quickly, and in compliance with company policy. Mission : Employees reimbursed within 5 business days of approval. Zero out-of-policy payments without exception approval. Phase 1 — Expense Policy Reference 1.1 Category Limits Category Per Occurrence Limit Receipt Required Pre-Approval Required Meals — individual $50
$25 No Meals — client entertainment No hard limit Always $200 per person Ground transportation (taxi/rideshare) $75 $25 No Mileage (personal car) IRS/HMRC rate Yes (logged) No Parking $30/day Yes No Domestic flight Economy class Always Always International flight Economy (< 6 hrs) / Business (≥ 6 hrs) Always VP or above Hotel — domestic $250/night Always $300/night Hotel — international $350/night Always $400/night Home office equipment $500 one-time Always Manager + IT Software / subscriptions $50/month Always IT + Finance Conference / training $2,000/event Always Manager Gifts to clients $75/recipient Always Manager Gifts to employees $50/recipient Always HR Team events / offsites Budget varies Always Pre-approved budget Non-reimbursable items (never pay): Alcohol (unless pre-approved client entertainment) Personal items, toiletries (beyond travel basics) Fines, parking tickets, traffic violations First-class upgrades (unless medical need documented) Spouse/family travel Hotel minibar In-flight entertainment / WiFi (unless critical work need) Gym, spa, personal entertainment Expenses for which no receipt exists and amount > $25 1.2 Submission Deadlines Expenses must be submitted within 30 days of the expense date Expenses > 90 days old will not be reimbursed without CFO approval Monthly corporate card statements must be reconciled within 10 days of statement close Annual T&E budget submission: by end of Q4 for following year Phase 2 — Expense Report Submission 2.1 Expense Report Form expense_report: report_id: ""
employee_name: "" employee_id: "" department: "" cost_center: "" manager: "" submission_date: "" business_purpose: ""
expense_id: 1 date: "" category: meals | travel | accommodation | transport | equipment | software | other subcategory: ""
merchant: "" description: ""
attendees: []
amount: "$0" currency: "" exchange_rate: 1.0
amount_usd: "$0" receipt_attached: false payment_method: corporate_card | personal_card | cash card_last_4: ""
policy_compliant: true policy_exception_reason: ""
total_amount: "$0" total_reimbursable: "$0"
total_corporate_card: "$0"
2.2 Receipt Requirements Valid receipts must show: Merchant name Date of transaction Itemized list (for meals: full itemization, not just total) Amount (including tax and tip) Payment confirmation (credit card receipt or "PAID" stamp) Receipt exceptions: Mileage: use mileage log (date, destination, business purpose, distance) — no receipt Tolls < $5: self-certification acceptable Ground transport < $25: no receipt required (but document in description) Tips left in cash: note on restaurant receipt Phase 3 — Approval Workflow 3.1 Approval Routing Employee submits expense report ↓ System checks policy compliance (auto-flags violations) ↓ Direct manager reviews: • Validates business purpose • Confirms they authorized the travel/activity • Acknowledges any policy exceptions ↓ If total report > $2,000 OR any single item > $500 → additional approver: VP of department reviews ↓ If total report > $5,000 OR international travel: Finance team reviews ↓ Finance approves for payment ↓ Reimbursement processed in next payment batch 3.2 Approval SLAs Approver SLA Direct manager 2 business days VP review 2 business days Finance review 1 business day Total cycle ≤ 5 business days from submission If approver doesn't act within SLA → auto-escalate to their manager + Finance. 3.3 Policy Exception Handling For any out-of-policy items: Employee must provide written justification at submission Manager explicitly acknowledges the exception during approval (cannot silently approve) Finance logs the exception with reason Repeat policy violations (3+ in a quarter) → HR conversation CFO reviews exceptions > $500 monthly Phase 4 — Reimbursement Processing 4.1 Reimbursement Schedule Payment Method Frequency Processing Day ACH direct deposit Semi-monthly 15th and last business day Payroll-included Semi-monthly With regular payroll International wire Monthly Last business day All approved expense reports submitted by Day 10 → processed in 15th cycle. All approved expense reports submitted by Day 25 → processed in last-day cycle. 4.2 Reimbursement Statement to Employee EXPENSE REIMBURSEMENT NOTICE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Employee: [Name] Report ID: EXP-[YYYY]-[ID]-[NNN] Approved by: [Manager Name] on [Date] Payment Date: [Date] Payment Method: Direct Deposit to [Bank] ****[last 4]
REIMBURSEMENT BREAKDOWN: Meals: $[X] Transportation: $[X] Accommodation: $[X] Other: $[X] ──────────────────────────────── TOTAL REIMBURSED: $[X]
ITEMS NOT REIMBURSED: [Item description]: $[X] Reason: [Policy reference]
Questions? Contact: expenses@[company].com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Phase 5 — Corporate Card Management 5.1 Corporate Card Assignment Cards are issued to employees who: Travel frequently (> 2 trips/quarter), OR Have regular recurring business expenses, OR Are VP-level and above Card limits: Individual contributor: $2,500/month Manager: $5,000/month Director: $10,000/month VP+: $25,000/month (or per Finance approval) 5.2 Monthly Card Reconciliation Every cardholder must reconcile their statement monthly: For each charge on the corporate card:
BY CATEGORY Travel (flights + hotels): $[X] ([%] of total) Meals & Entertainment: $[X] ([%] of total) Transportation (local): $[X] ([%] of total) Equipment & Tools: $[X] ([%] of total) Other: $[X] ([%] of total)
BY DEPARTMENT Engineering: $[X] Sales: $[X] (highest — review if aligned with activity) Marketing: $[X] G&A: $[X]
EFFICIENCY Avg. days from submission to payment: [N] days (target: ≤ 5) Reports > 30 days old at submission: [N] (employee education needed) Missing receipts: [N] (policy enforcement needed)
TOP 5 CATEGORIES OVER BUDGET [Category]: budget $[X] / actual $[X] / variance $[X] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Quality Rules No expense is reimbursed without a valid receipt (for amounts > $25) and business purpose. Meals with > 2 attendees require names and companies of all attendees in the expense description. Expenses > 90 days old are automatically rejected unless CFO approves an exception in writing. Corporate card reconciliations submitted more than 15 days after statement close → card temporarily suspended until reconciled. Any expense submitted by a VP or above requires Finance team review regardless of amount. The approver is responsible for validating that the expense occurred for a legitimate business purpose — approving without review is a controls failure.