Expense claims

Expense claims are how staff get reimbursed for money they spent personally on business items. A staff member submits a claim with the receipt attached; once it clears approval, AccountFUN creates a supplier bill and posts it to accounts payable. Reimbursement then happens through the normal bill-payment flow.

If the claim is in a foreign currency, the exchange rate is deliberately left off the claim: final approval posts the bill using the system rate for the claim’s date. An admin can instead send foreign-currency claims to a draft for finance to set the rate (see Settings → Approvals). A claim in your base currency always posts straight away.

Out of the box a claim needs one approval. Bigger teams can build multi-step approval chains — for example a manager first, then finance — on Settings → Approvals.

The claim itself never posts

The claim is a request, not an accounting entry. The ledger only moves when the final approval converts it into a supplier bill. For a foreign-currency claim, finance sets the exchange rate on that bill before it’s posted.

Who sees what

Expense claims are role-aware:

• Everyone without Approve Expense Claims — including Standard, Sales, and Purchase users, not just Employees — sees only their own claims. Their tabs are Your Own and Awaiting Payment (their approved claims still due to be reimbursed). They can’t open, edit, or file claims for anyone else, and they don’t get a review queue.
• Approvers (the Approve Expense Claims permission — Admins and Accountants by default) see the whole organization’s claims, land on the To Review tab, and also get Awaiting Payment and All Expenses.

On Your Own and All Expenses, use the status filters below search to narrow the list to All, Draft, Submitted, Approved, Paid, Void or Declined. Counts follow the same ownership and search limits as the list; choosing a status does not give access to another person’s claims.

You can’t approve your own claim

Approving a claim pays the person who filed it, so nobody approves their own claim — someone else with Approve Expense Claims has to. Two exceptions keep small teams moving:

• Admins can approve their own claims.
• If you’re the only person in the organization who can approve claims, you can approve your own.

Either way, the approval is recorded in the audit history with the reason it was allowed. And if a claim gets stuck — say the assigned approver has left the team — an admin can still action the pending step.

Approval chains

With no setup, one approval from anyone who has Approve Expense Claims is enough. For finer control, Settings → Approvals (admin only) lets you build chains:

• Levels run in order. Each level is either Any approver (the first approval moves the claim on) or All approvers (everyone on that level must approve).
• Who approves is a role (any member with that role) or a specific person.
• Routing rules decide which chain applies: match on the claim’s amount (compared in your base currency) and/or the claimant’s role. Give a chain a priority, and mark one as the fallback for when nothing else matches.
• If no chain matches (or you’ve set up none), the single default approval applies.

Editing chains never disturbs live claims

A claim snapshots the chain it started on, so changing or deleting a chain never reshapes a claim that’s already in progress.

Track progress

The Approval column on the list, and the claim’s detail page, show where the claim is — for example Step 2 of 3 · waiting on the CFO — and, if it was declined, the reason it was rejected.

• Approvers and admins always see this, along with the route (the name of the chain the claim went down).
• You decide whether employees see it: Settings → Approvals → Show approval progress to employees. It’s off by default; while off, claimants see a plain status instead.

The workflow

DRAFT ──Submit──▶ SUBMITTED ──Approve──▶ next level ──…──▶ APPROVED (creates the bill)
                    │
                    └──Decline──▶ DECLINED ──Revert──▶ DRAFT

Status	Meaning	What you can do
Draft	Saved, not submitted	Edit, Void, Delete
Submitted	Moving through the approval chain (one or more levels)	Approve or Decline (when it’s your step), Revert to Draft, Void
Approved	Every level approved; converted to a supplier bill	View Bill (links to the new bill)
Declined	An approver rejected it	Edit, Revert to Draft
Voided	Cancelled	—

Foreign-currency claims

For a claim in a currency other than your base currency, Approved posts the bill with the system exchange rate straight away. An admin can change this under Settings → Approvals → Post foreign-currency claims automatically: turn it off to leave foreign-currency bills as drafts — finance opens them from Bills, checks or amends the exchange rate and approves them to post. Base-currency claims always post the moment the final approval lands.

Submit a claim

1. Go to Expense Claims → New Expense Claim.
2. Set the Claimant (defaults to you), Spent at (date incurred), and Description (what the expense was for).
3. Pick the Supplier you paid and the Account (the expense category — e.g. Travel - National, Office Expenses). Selecting an account auto-applies its default tax rate.
4. Enter the Purchase amount and choose Tax Exclusive / Tax Inclusive.
5. For a foreign-currency expense, pick the Currency. You don’t choose an exchange rate — that’s set on the bill after approval.
6. Save Draft, Submit, or Submit + Add Another.

Submit and approve in one step

If you can approve the routed chain’s first level yourself, the form also shows a Submit and Approve button — it submits the claim and takes that first approval at once.

Save the receipts

Drag receipt files onto the claim’s detail page — they attach under a Receipts heading so the approver can verify them. See Files library.

Approve and reimburse

When an approver clicks Approve, the claim either moves to the next level (the button reads Approve & advance) or, on the final approval, AccountFUN creates a bill linked back to the claim. The bill is posted to accounts payable straight away — a foreign-currency claim’s bill uses the system exchange rate for the claim’s date. If the admin turns off Post foreign-currency claims automatically (Settings → Approvals), a foreign-currency claim’s bill is instead created as a draft for finance to check or amend the exchange rate and post from Bills. Either way the claim becomes Approved and shows the linked bill number and who approved it.

To reimburse the staff member, pay that bill like any other — Record Payment or a batch payment to their bank account. The Awaiting Payment tab tracks approved claims whose bills still have a balance due.

Email updates

You’re emailed when a claim needs your approval and when a claim you filed is approved or declined. Choose Immediately, a Daily summary, or Off per organization in Settings → Notifications.

File claims from an app or AI assistant

A member can file a claim — and, if their role can approve, approve their own — through the public API or an AI assistant. Through those, a person can only approve the claims they filed themselves; approving someone else’s claim always happens here in AccountFUN.

Worked example

An employee buys $54.50 (incl. 10% tax) of office supplies with a personal card.

1. They submit a claim: supplier “Officeworks”, account Office Expenses, amount $54.50, Tax Inclusive. Receipt attached. Submit.
2. The approver opens Review, checks the receipt, clicks Approve. AccountFUN creates BILL-0123 for $54.50 (Office Expenses $49.55, input-tax $4.95, AP $54.50). Claim shows Approved · View Bill.
3. On payday, the bookkeeper pays BILL-0123 via Record Payment to the employee’s bank account. The bill moves to Paid and the staff member is reimbursed.

With a two-level chain (manager, then finance), step 2 is two approvals: the manager sees the claim under To Review and clicks Approve & advance, then finance approves — and that final approval creates the bill.

The expense hit the P&L at the moment of approval, not when the cash went out — which is correct accrual accounting.

Mileage settings

Admins choose the default distance unit in Settings → Organization → Regional Preferences → Mileage Unit. New mileage claims and route suggestions use that preference; existing claims keep their original unit. The default expense account for mileage remains in Settings → Expense Claims.