Understanding Expense Management Policies

A company's expense reimbursement policy contains rules regarding how employees track, manage, and report expenses incurred while doing business for the company. Depending on the needs of its employees, a company might have numerous expense reimbursement policies. For example, a company might define one policy for senior management and another for its other employees. A company might also define additional policies for employees who work or conduct business in countries that have currencies different from the currency in which they are normally reimbursed.

Policies are defined by expense category, expense report type, and location. The employee's group profile specifies which policy applies to an employee. You define rules for each expense category in the policy to define acceptable expenditure amounts. These amounts are associated with a currency in the group profile. For example, if an employee's expense exceeds the amount specified in the policy rule, the system might send a warning or error message. Depending on the audit amount specified in the policy, the system might also mark the report to indicate that it needs to be reviewed by an auditor.

Some clients, such as the U.S. federal government, might want you to distinguish between allowable and unallowable expenses. Allowable expenses are the billable portion of the expenses that are within the allowance limits and are paid by the client. Unallowable expenses are those expenses that exceed the allowance limit and are not paid by the client. You can set up each expense category in an expense policy to differentiate between allowable and unallowable expenses. Allowable and allowable expenses are allocated to different accounts. For situations where the expense amount exceeds the daily allowance, you can set up the system to either allocate the excess amount to the unallowable amount or to prevent entry of an amount that exceeds the daily allowance. In this case, the expense entry process stops.

You can build some flexibility into the daily allowance by defining daily allowances for specific location and date ranges. For example, hotel rates in certain locations might exceed the standard daily allowance for lodging; hotel rates might also fluctuate seasonally.

JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Expense Management policies encompass three types of information that you set up on three separate forms:

• Policy Rules

• Audit Rules

• Expense Category Attributes

After you set up one policy, you can use it as a template to add other policies using the copy feature. When you copy a policy, the system also copies the associated audit rules and expense category attributes.

You can revise any information about the policy when you copy it.