Learn how to create an Expense Setup from the HR portal using the HR Services module.
To start, log in to your People-i account. Click on the HR portal. From your main dashboard, click on the HR services tab. From the options appearing below, click on Expense. Then select Expense Setup.
From the Expense Setup screen, which is divided into Five sections. We will set up one type of Expense at a time using these fields. And once it is saved, that Expense type will become available to your employees. In the same way, you can create as many types of Expenses as you need.
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In order to create an Expense type, we will start from the Geographical Setup. The fields in this section identify the location or the office that this Expense Type is being created for. First is the Company field, click on this field to select the company that you are setting up this expense type for, from the drop-down menu. Similarly, you can use the Market, Cluster, Sub-Cluster, Country, Province, State, City or Branch fields to identify if this Expense Type is applicable to a specific location. If it is applicable for the entire company, use the multi-select feature to select all the values in Market, Cluster and Sub-Cluster. Similarly, you can select the “All” option in the country, province, city and branch drop-downs.
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Next is the Expense Type and Rules Setup section; the fields in this section will be used to identify the general information and rules related to that expense. Firstly, select the Expense Type. This is the general category in which the expense you are about to create will fall in. In the next field, enter the Expense Title. This is the name of the Expense you are creating, and will be shown to your employees, Line Managers and all other users to identify this expense type. So choose it carefully according to your policy.
The “Show Entitlement” field determines whether the entitlement or limit for that expense should be visible to employees who are applying for that expense. The actual entitlement amount for the expense will be configured later in this tutorial, however, if you wish to hide the entitlement amount from your employees, select “No” in “Show Entitlement.” If you want them to be able to see the amount, they are entitled to for that expense type, select “Yes.”
Similarly, the “Apply Beyond Entitlement” field allows you to determine whether an employee should be allowed to apply for an expense that exceeds his entitlement. If you select “No” then the system will not allow the employee to submit such an expense application.
The “Pro-Rated” field allows you to decide whether the entitlement for that expense will be granted to the employee altogether or if it will be divided into a monthly amount and earned every month. If you choose “Yes,” then every year, total entitlement of that employee will be divided by 12 to calculate the monthly entitlement which will then be granted to the employee with every passing month. If you select “1st Year,” then this case will only apply for up to one year from the employee’s date of joining. If you select “No” then your employees will be able to apply for the entire year’s entitlement within the first month.
Next is the “Reimbursement Type” drop-down – this will be used to select the mechanism in which entitlement will be calculated and has 3 options. Regular, Slab-Based and Salary Based.
If you select “Regular,” then the expense entitlement will be determined simply based on what is defined in the “Eligibility & Entitlement” Section at the bottom of the screen, which we will discuss later in the tutorial.
If you select “Slab-Based,” the system will open a section titled Slab Setup. This set-up allows you to determine the percentage of the expense amount that will be reimbursed to the employee based on how high the amount is. For example, you can define if the expense amount ranges from 1 to 100 USD, the employee can apply for reimbursement of 50% of that amount. However, if the expense amount ranges between 101 to 200 USD, the employee can apply for reimbursement of 20% of that amount. These are called “Slabs.” You can click the “Add Slab” button to create as many “Slabs” as you require. Notice that whenever you add a new slab, the lower limit of the slab is equal to 1USD plus the upper limit of the previous slab, making sure that your ranges do not overlap.
The third option available in Reimbursement type is “Salary Based.” This will allow you to link the entitlement of an expense to the employee’s salary. By clicking on “Salary-Based” the following drop-down field titled “Salary Type” will be activated with four options. If you select “Annual Basic,” this means that the employee’s entitlement for that expense will be equal to his Annual Basic Salary. So, for instance if the employee’s monthly Basic salary is 100 USD, selecting this option will cause his entitlement to be 1200 USD. Similarly, if you select “Annual Gross” the system will check the employee’s Monthly Gross Salary from his profile and multiply it by 12 – the result will be the employee’s entitlement for that expense type. You can also select Monthly Basic or Monthly Gross in case you would like that employee’s annual entitlement for that expense to be equal to one month’s Basic or Gross Salary. We will work further on setting up employee expense entitlements later in this video.
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Next is the Expense Type and Rules Setup section; the fields in this section will be used to identify the general information and rules related to that expense. Firstly, select the Expense Type. This is the general category in which the expense you are about to create will fall in. In the next field, enter the Expense Title. This is the name of the Expense you are creating, and will be shown to your employees, Line Managers and all other users to identify this expense type. So choose it carefully according to your policy.
The “Show Entitlement” field determines whether the entitlement or limit for that expense should be visible to employees who are applying for that expense. The actual entitlement amount for the expense will be configured later in this tutorial, however, if you wish to hide the entitlement amount from your employees, select “No” in “Show Entitlement.” If you want them to be able to see the amount, they are entitled to for that expense type, select “Yes.”
Similarly, the “Apply Beyond Entitlement” field allows you to determine whether an employee should be allowed to apply for an expense that exceeds his entitlement. If you select “No” then the system will not allow the employee to submit such an expense application.
The “Pro-Rated” field allows you to decide whether the entitlement for that expense will be granted to the employee altogether or if it will be divided into a monthly amount and earned every month. If you choose “Yes,” then every year, total entitlement of that employee will be divided by 12 to calculate the monthly entitlement which will then be granted to the employee with every passing month. If you select “1st Year,” then this case will only apply for up to one year from the employee’s date of joining. If you select “No” then your employees will be able to apply for the entire year’s entitlement within the first month.
Next is the “Reimbursement Type” drop-down – this will be used to select the mechanism in which entitlement will be calculated and has 3 options. Regular, Slab-Based and Salary Based.
If you select “Regular,” then the expense entitlement will be determined simply based on what is defined in the “Eligibility & Entitlement” Section at the bottom of the screen, which we will discuss later in the tutorial.
If you select “Slab-Based,” the system will open a section titled Slab Setup. This set-up allows you to determine the percentage of the expense amount that will be reimbursed to the employee based on how high the amount is. For example, you can define if the expense amount ranges from 1 to 100 USD, the employee can apply for reimbursement of 50% of that amount. However, if the expense amount ranges between 101 to 200 USD, the employee can apply for reimbursement of 20% of that amount. These are called “Slabs.” You can click the “Add Slab” button to create as many “Slabs” as you require. Notice that whenever you add a new slab, the lower limit of the slab is equal to 1USD plus the upper limit of the previous slab, making sure that your ranges do not overlap.
The third option available in Reimbursement type is “Salary Based.” This will allow you to link the entitlement of an expense to the employee’s salary. By clicking on “Salary-Based” the following drop-down field titled “Salary Type” will be activated with four options. If you select “Annual Basic,” this means that the employee’s entitlement for that expense will be equal to his Annual Basic Salary. So, for instance if the employee’s monthly Basic salary is 100 USD, selecting this option will cause his entitlement to be 1200 USD. Similarly, if you select “Annual Gross” the system will check the employee’s Monthly Gross Salary from his profile and multiply it by 12 – the result will be the employee’s entitlement for that expense type. You can also select Monthly Basic or Monthly Gross in case you would like that employee’s annual entitlement for that expense to be equal to one month’s Basic or Gross Salary. We will work further on setting up employee expense entitlements later in this video.
Next is the Application Parameters section, you will use the fields in this section to identify the different rules that will be observed when creating an expense application.
The first is the Document Required option. Select one of the checkboxes to choose if this type of expense application requires the attaching of a supporting document by the applicant.
In the Apply Pre-Fact field, select allowed if you would like to allow your staff to apply for an expense before it has been incurred. Select “Not Allowed” if they can only apply for the expense after it has been incurred. If you select “Allowed,” the next two fields will become activated. The “Minimum Pre-Fact Apply” field is used to define how many days before the expense is incurred should it be applied. For instance, if it is set to “4,” this means that the employee needs to apply for the expense 4 days before it will be incurred. Otherwise the system will not accept the application. Similarly, the ‘Maximum Pre-Fact Apply” field determines the maximum number of days an expense can be applied in advance. Meaning if this is set to “10” the employee cannot apply for the expense more than 10 days before it is going to be incurred.
In the Apply for Next Year field, if you select “allowed” from the drop-down menu, employees are able to apply for an expense whose date falls in the next fiscal year. If you select “No” the system will not allow the employee to apply for such an expense.
The “Apply Post-Fact” field determines whether an employee is allowed to apply for an expense after it is incurred. If it is set to “Not Allowed” the employee cannot apply for an expense that is already incurred. If it is set to “Allowed,” an employee can apply for the expense even after it has been incurred and the next field “Max Post Fact Apply” will be activated. This field determines the maximum number of days an employee can apply for reimbursement of an expense after it has been incurred. For instance, if this is set to 4, the employee can apply for reimbursement up to 4 days after the expense has been incurred. If he tries to apply after that, the system will not allow him to do so.
In the Monthly Quota field, you can specify the maximum number of times that an employee can apply for this particular expense type within a given month.
In the Weekly Quota field, you can specify the maximum number of times that an employee can apply for this particular expense type within a given week
In the Annual Frequency Field, you can decide if you would like to limit the number of times an employee can apply for that expense type in a year. If you select “Limited,” the following field will become activated. In the Maximum Annual Frequency field, you can specify the maximum number of times that an employee can apply for this particular expense type within a given year.
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Moving on to the “Reasons” section. Here, you can pre-define the reasons that employees can select when submitting this expense application. These reasons will be shown to the employee when he is creating the expense application and he will have to select one. In order to define these reasons, click on the text bar provided in this section and enter one reason. You can add more than one reason by clicking on the plus sign titled ‘Add Reason’ and entering text in the new text bar that shows.
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The last section on this screen is the Eligibility and Entitlement Setup section. In this section, you can define the total entitlement of that expense that will be awarded to an employee based on which category they fall in. For instance, if you select “Department” in the criteria field, the corresponding condition field will be populated to show various departments of your company. If you select “IT” you will be able to define the expense entitlement for all employees in that department. This can also be done for specific designations, bands, employments types and more. If you would like to award the same entitlement to all employees, select “All” in the condition fields. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will select “All” for each criteria.
The last 2 fields of this section are used to define the actual entitlement.
You will be able to select the criteria for eligibility and entitlement in this section only if you select ‘Regular’ in the Reimbursement Type field in the Expense Type and Rules section. The first field is used to select the Type of entitlement and the second field is used to define the amount. The values available in the first field are also determined by the selection you had made in the “Reimbursement Type” field. If you had selected “Regular,” the two options available will be “Reimbursable” and “Fixed Amount.”
If you select “Reimbursable” the next field will be populated with the option of various percentages. If you select 100%, this means you can define that if an employee falls within the selected criteria, he is entitled to apply for 100% reimbursement of that expense. Choose the most suitable percentage as per your policy.
Alternatively, you can select “Fixed Amount,” in which case, the next field will be used to enter the fixed amount that the employees falling within that criteria are entitled to. Meaning if you select 500, the employees in the selected group is entitled to apply for a 500 USD for that expense.
Now, if you had selected “Slab-Based” in the reimbursement type field and added the required slabs as discussed earlier, only the “Slab-Based” option will be available in this field. Once that is selected, the next field allows you to choose the maximum slab that an employee falling within the mentioned criteria can apply for based on the slabs added above.
Alternatively, if you have selected “Salary-Based” in the “Reimbursement Type” field, then the “Salary Reimbursable” option will become enabled in the first drop-down. The second field will now be used to define what percentage of their Salary an employee can claim. For instance, if you have selected “Monthly Basic” salary in the “Salary Type” field, the next field will define if the employee can claim 50% of their basic salary, 100% of their basic salary or even 200% of their basic salary or more.
You can click the “Add Eligibility & Entitlement” button to add as many entitlements sets as you need if you would like to give a different entitlement to different groups. To illustrate the example, we will set the reimbursement type back to regular and select fixed amount. Now, using the Criteria and Condition fields, select Band 5. Use the last field to define the entitlement for an employee falling under Band 5. For instance, 500 USD.
Now, if we want to allow a different entitlement for an employee in Band 6, we will click on “Add Eligibility & Entitlement,” and from the Criteria & Condition options, we will choose band 6. The rest of the criterias & conditions will be set to all. Now in the last fields, choose “Fixed Amount” and 250 USD. This now means that employees falling under Band 5 are entitled to apply for 500 USD under that expense and employees in Band 6 are entitled to apply for 250 USD under that expense. The same methodology can be applied to all types of entitlements or reimbursements.
Lastly, there is one case where the “Eligibility & Entitlement” section becomes irrelevant. This is in case of Mileage Expense. If “Mileage” is chosen in the Expense Type field, a new section labeled Mileage Expense Setup will appear. In this case, the entitlement will be defined based on “Mode of Transport.”
For example, if we add “Car” as mode of transport, we can define whether the employee can apply expense based on a fixed amount or distance. If we select Fixed Amount, the system will allow us to enter the maximum amount in the following field. If we select “Distance,” the following fields become enabled and we have to enter the “Per Unit Rate” for the entitlement along with the currency. We will have to select the unit of measurement, which will either be Miles or Kilometers and we can also define the maximum number of miles or kilometers for which the employee can apply for reimbursement. In this way, we can add an unlimited number of transportation options and entitlements for different modes of transport like motorbikes, trains, taxis or more.
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Once you have completed the form, click on “Save” and that Expense Type setup will be saved in the system and appear in the list of saved setups below. You can refresh the page and start creating a new setup for a different type of expense, and if at any point you want to edit a previously created expense type, simply click on the types appearing below. Its setup will become populated in the screen above and you can make any changes to it and save it again.
The expense types appearing at the bottom of the screen are those which will be visible to your employees based on their entitlements.
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Video Tutorials
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Expense Setup (HR)
In this video, Learn how to create an Expense Setup from the HR portal using the HR Services module