9.1 Expenses Processing: From Expense Entry to Reimbursement

The published objective is Describe expenses processing. Configuration questions in this chapter and the next assume you know the end-to-end flow and the statuses an employee sees.

The Expenses work area

Employees open Me > Expenses. Depending on their roles and enabled features, the work area shows up to five pages:

• Travel and Expenses (the default): create and manage expense items and reports.
• Approvals: for managers, to approve expense reports and cash advances.
• Cash Advances: request advances and manage unapplied ones.
• Pages for trips and other features you enable.

With the Actionable Cards for Expenses opt-in, reports appear as cards with direct actions such as Withdraw, Submit, Duplicate, Delete and Print. A global search covers expense reports, cash advances and corporate card items.

To enter expense reports, an employee needs:

• the Expense Entry Duty, which is assigned automatically when the employee record is created;
• a business unit and default expense account on the assignment, in the Expenses Information section.

Contingent workers can be enabled too.

Entering expenses

Entry channels:

• the web Expenses work area;
• the Oracle Expenses mobile app (with receipt capture);
• an offline Excel spreadsheet for cash items, uploaded as pending items, a new report or an existing report;
• email receipts forwarded to a designated address (Manage Auto Submission and Matching Options);
• the conversational Expense Assistant in the Oracle Digital Assistant;
• automatic creation from travel itineraries and corporate card feeds.

Expense types and items:

• An expense type comes from an expense template for the business unit, for example Hotel in category Accommodations.
• An expense item is the actual charge on a given date.
• Items can be itemized (a hotel folio into room, tax and meals), split across cost centers or projects, and given attendees for meals and entertainment.

Classifications for corporate card items:

• Business: the company reimburses the card issuer.
• Personal: the employee is responsible.
• Business – Employee Paid: the employee paid the issuer and the company reimburses the employee. This option only appears when the Both Pay option is enabled.

Duplicate detection runs as expenses are created, from card uploads, the web, mobile, spreadsheets, recurring expenses or itineraries. It checks the employee's expenses from the last six months on fields such as amount, date, currency, expense type and merchant. Only unsubmitted expenses are marked as duplicates of submitted ones. On the web the employee sees a warning straight away. For items from email or the assistant, a banner lists the suspected duplicates.

Delegates: an employee can authorize a delegate, such as an executive assistant, to manage their expense reports, spend authorizations and cash advances. A report a delegate submits can need the owner's approval first (Pending individual approval).

The report lifecycle and its statuses

Rejected reports aren't dead ends. The employee can open, correct and resubmit them, and a resubmitted report must complete all required approvals again before audit. Oracle notes that rejecting a report discards any line adjustments made earlier.

From approval to payment

1. Approval. The FinExmWorkflowExpenseApproval rules route the report (section 10.1).

2. Audit. Audit selection rules decide whether an auditor reviews the report (section 10.4). Receipt rules may require original or imaged receipts and place payment holds (section 9.5).

3. Reimbursement. The Process Expense Reimbursements process (also run as Process Expense Reimbursements and Cash Advances) creates payment requests in Payables:

   • to the employee, for cash expenses and for card charges the employee is owed;
   • to the card issuer, for card charges under Both Pay.

   Under Company Pay, the issuer is paid separately by Create Corporate Card Issuer Payment Requests (section 10.2). Approved cash advances go through the same process.

4. Payment. Payment requests are paid by payment process requests like other Payables documents. Expenses supports fixed payment methods, and employees can be paid by check or electronically to their bank account. Payment requests are used because employees aren't suppliers.

Other entry objects

• Spend authorizations ask for pre-approval of planned spending and can be linked to expense items. Budgetary control can reserve funds for them.
• Trips group an itinerary, cash advances and expenses. Trip-based reports can be created automatically (section 10.5).
• Prepaid expenses record items already paid by the company, such as a centrally billed flight, so trips and policies show the full cost without reimbursing the employee.