Contents. 1. Introduction to the Online Expenses System Expense Claim Administration Overview Entering Expense Claims...

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1 Contents 1. Introduction to the Online Expenses System Expense Claim Administration Overview Entering Expense Claims Expense Claim Submission Expense Claim Approval Review RETURNED Items or Claims (delete, amend or resubmit) Reimbursement Appendix Appendix A (Approval Stages 1-12) Page 1 of 13

2 1. Introduction to the Online Expenses System All permanent members of staff must claim for reimbursement of business expenses incurred using the Online Expenses system which is accessed at In order to login, enter UOE as the company ID, your University login ID (though this is not the same account) and your Online Expenses password. Please not that you cannot register for an account via the link on the above screen. You must instead apply for one by completing the application form under the Staff Expenses and Purchasing Cards category in SID. The default homepage is shown below. Additional menu items will be displayed on your home page if you hold a University Purchasing Card, are a Delegate or Approve Claims. Selecting a menu item and any subsequent submenu choices you make will lay a breadcrumb trail in the blue title bar which you should use to navigate up a level rather than using the browser back button. To return to the home screen click either of the available icons which are displayed on all screens. Page 2 of 13

3 A brief explanation of each of the menu items shown on the previous page is given in the below table. For more comprehensive guidance, go to the relevant section within this document. Name of Menu Item Add New Expenses My Claims My Details Help & Support View My Company Policy View My Claimable Items Reports Expenses360 Mobile App GreenLight Purpose of Menu Item Creates a new claim, upon saving opens the Add / Edit Expenses screen. If you already have a Current Claim this option will instead open the Add / Edit Expenses screen straight up (new expenses added will be saved to this Current Claim. Shows submenus, Current Claims (claims created but not submitted expenses items can be added, updated or edited here), Submitted Claims, (claims actively being processed) and Previous Claims, a complete list of your completed/paid claims). View and change your account details, set up a delegate for your account and add a new vehicle into the system. Return University specific guidance only by entering UOE into the search box. Opens the University of Exeter Expenses & Purchasing Card Policy. Shows all expense items that you re able to claim. Available to finance teams only. Details how to set up Expenses360 on a mobile device, note you should first add your mobile device by selecting My Details and then My Mobile Devices. Not used. Within all screens it is important to look out for on screen instructions and other options. Some screens will have icons displayed which give options relating to the line they are against. By hovering over any icon you ll see what it does click on the icon to action. Many icons are standard across screens. Edit Delete Help Attach Receipt View Receipt View Journey Item Flagged Primarily for editing expenses prior to submission or during approval Delete an expense line or erroneously synchronised expenses from Expenses360 Brings up help relevant to the specific area For attaching electronic receipts not processed through Expenses360 For viewing electronic receipts View all of the journey steps of a mileage expense Shows that a particular expense item has been flagged so it may be a duplicate or over 3 months old etc. Page 3 of 13

4 2. Expense Claim Administration Overview Expenses not being claimed against research grants or EU project budgets can be submitted in fully electronic claims, within which electronic copies of original receipts are attached to expense items instead of it being necessary for the original hard copies to be sent to finance teams. Original expense receipts must be retained until after you have had confirmation that the claim has been paid. The University must retain original expense receipts for claims made against EU project budgets. Therefore you should send all research grant expense original receipts to the relevant finance team in your college or service, together with a claim printout, unless you are absolutely certain that the research grant(s) being claimed against are not EU funded, in which case fully electronic submission is acceptable. All types of expenses can be entered directly into the main system or alternatively by using the Expenses360 mobile app. Shown below are the different ways in which an expense claim can be submitted. 1) Expenses360 (see separate Expenses360 user guide) Enter the expense item(s) into Expenses360 using your smart device. After entering and saving an expense, you ll be prompted to take a photo of your receipt, this will then attach automatically. Synchronise Expenses360. Open the Online Expenses system to complete and then submit the claim. 2) Non-Expenses360 (e-receipts or scanned receipts) Enter the expense item(s) into the Online Expenses system. Once saved, you are returned to the summary screen from where you can attach the file version of your receipt(s) using the Manage Receipts function. Submit the electronic claim. 3) Non-Expenses360 (receipt hard copies) Enter the expense item(s) into the Online Expenses system. Print a copy of your claim. Attach the original receipts to the claim printout. Submit the electronic claim and send the paperwork to your finance team. The below flow diagram offers a simple view of the expense claim submission and approval process. It is assumed that Expenses360 users will add a receipt when creating an expense. Page 4 of 13

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6 3. Entering Expense Claims We recommend that claimants use the Expenses360 app to create expenses, for which there is a separate user guide. This section explains how to enter expenses directly into the Online Expenses System and shown below is a screenshot of the main claim item entry screen. Expenses created using Expenses360, when synchronised and reconciled to a claim, will populate most of the fields below and expense item specific fields automatically. In order to add an expense directly into the system, click Add New Expenses. If you have already started a claim but not yet submitted it, the expense item entry screen will open and can be completed, the item will be added to this existing claim. Should there be more than one claim started but not submitted, you can select which claim to add the current expense(s) to using the dropdown menu shown below. If an Add / Edit Claim screen is brought up, there are no active claims that your new expense(s) can be added to. Do not amend the system generated claim name but do enter an appropriate description for your claim. Upon saving the newly created claim, an expense item entry screen will appear as shown below. Page 6 of 13

7 General Details Enter the Date of the item or items being claimed or select from the calendar. If typing the date there is no need to enter separators these are automatic. The date format is DD/MM/YYYY. Select a Reason for claiming the items from the drop down list. This is for reporting purposes and is mandatory. It is important that you select the most appropriate reason, distinguishing in particular between externally funded research and non-research grants/projects. The default Country is United Kingdom. Select the appropriate country from the drop down list for where the expense was incurred. This does not necessarily mean that you paid in a different currency. Typing the first letter of the country will bring up the first possible name. Repeating the letter will scroll through the names. The default currency is Pound Sterling if the expense was paid for in another currency select from the list. Typing the first letter of the currency will bring up the first possible name. Repeating the letter will scroll through the names. When an alternative currency is selected the Exchange Rate box will appear showing a recently entered exchange rate. If necessary, overwrite this value with the exchange rate you received and select the relevant option from the dropdown box. You should provide evidence of the exchange rate received either by a receipt or a copy of your credit card statement. College/Service This will default to the College or Service in which you are employed and cannot be amended. If you are claiming against a budget not held by your college or service, please provide details in the narrative so that your finance team know to liaise with the college or service in which the budget is held. If the wrong college or service shown, please log a SID call. Claim Type This is a critical part of the approval process and incorrect classification will most likely delay reimbursement of your claim. Cash claims - You must only use one claim type per claim, i.e. academic staff should batch Research Grant expenses and standard College expenses on separate claims. This will ensure much quicker processing and payment due to it not being necessary for a claim to pass through the approval stages for more than one claim type. Card claims - Claim types can be mixed on the same claim. This is because a single purchase card statement must be reconciled to a single claim. If your statement contains one or more transactions which are research grant expenditure, please ensure that you submit a claim printout and the research grant expense receipts to your college finance team, even if you attach scanned receipts for the non-research grant expenses. Page 7 of 13

8 For employees of each College or Service there are a number of alternative claim types to select from, the below table summarises each of them. Claim Type When to Use Available To / Used By Service Standard Professional Services claims. All Professional Services College Standard College claims. All Colleges Research Grant Expenses claimed against a research grant. All Colleges College Services (other services, use Service ) Centre for Medical History Partnership/GSE only PR/Event Centre for Medical History expenses. GSE expenses (only for school related visits). Expenses claimed against a PR or event budget. HUMS SSIS (GSE) CAMS Department This will default to your own area within your College (not applicable to Professional Services) and cannot be amended. If it is incorrect please log a SID call. Specific Details The Expense Category and Expense Item boxes only appear when no item has been selected from the complete list on the left-hand side. Within this screen they are optional; we recommend that you instead select items via the complete list, as shown below, which will allow you to populate multiple expense item sub-forms on the same page. The system remembers your most recently entered expenses which means that initially, blank forms for these expense items are visible. Simply deselect the tick boxes to remove these entry forms as appropriate and select those that you are entering this time. Page 8 of 13

9 Key Points Items are listed alphabetically. If you cannot read the full item name hover over it and the full description will be displayed in a bubble box. You can select as many items as you want as long as they all relate to the same general details already completed at the top. If you select an item you must complete the details as some of the boxes are mandatory and you will be unable to save if they are left blank. If you select an item by mistake just untick it. Any key policy or information points are set out just below the item name when the fields appear on screen. When inputting directly into the system, to enter two items of the same type under the same general details, it will be necessary to complete and save the first and then select New Item from the menu on the subsequently brought up claim summary screen. Page 9 of 13

10 The specific fields for each item will vary; however the following are standard for all items except mileage. Do you have a receipt you are expected to provide a receipt and should select Yes. However if in exceptional circumstances you do not have a receipt select No and select the reason from the drop down box lower down. Does it include a VAT number and VAT rate these buttons will appear if the item could have VAT included. This refers to UK VAT only. You should select Yes if your receipt includes a VAT number and the VAT amount and you made the purchase in the UK. Total (Gross) the amount you are claiming. Narrative this field is for entering the additional information that you want to appear against this transaction, to enable approvers and budget holders reviewing financial reports to understand why you made the claim. Note that you do not need to enter the date of the expense as this is entered under General Details, nor do you need to enter your own name into this field. Finance code (Aptos) this field is for filling in the full Aptos account code beginning 1-XX-X-XXX- XXX... It is a free text field with no validation. You can copy and paste from any document where the code is stored or you can type it in. If you do not know the code to use, you should contact your finance team who will be able to help. If you are unable to obtain the necessary code when creating an expense, you can enter a partial code or note in this field to enable you to save it. You must enter something. When all fields are populated, click to the expense. To add a receipt to your newly added expense, click the icon on the expense item summary line. The above icon (clicked on any expense item line) takes you into the Manage Receipts screen, from where receipts can be added to all expense items. There is a separate guide available for managing receipts. Page 10 of 13

11 4. Expense Claim Submission Once a claim contains all of the expenses that you require it to, it is ready to be submitted. When submitting, if the claim contains any expenses over three months old, a prompt will ask for justification for the delay in submitting. Finally, you are given the opportunity to rename the claim or update the description, (you might have done this already at time of creation), the system generated name should be retained but you can update the description. Click save and then accept the declaration to complete the claim submission process. Page 11 of 13

12 5. Expense Claim Approval Expense claim approval can be broken down into three phases. 1) Finance team checking 2) Standard approval 3) Escalated approval (usually conditional) Within each of the above phases there can be several steps. You can minimise the number of steps your claim will require processing at, by limiting the claim types included within the same claim to one or two. See Appendix A for a full list of signoff group stages. Review RETURNED Items or Claims (delete, amend or resubmit) An approver may reject one or more claim items back to a claimant. If any of the items in your claim are returned at an approval stage you will receive an advising you of this and asking you to log on to view the returned item through My Claims - Submitted Claims. Go to the claim overview screen and view the Claim History, the most recent entry will show the reason for the expense being rejected or questioned. On the same screen, in the expense item list the returned item(s) will be highlighted. If you just need to provide further information or do not agree with the reason for return you can resubmit without amendment termed a disputed item. You will be presented with a box to complete with the additional information or the reason for returning without amendment. Alternatively you can either edit the expense item or delete it from the claim. When you have dealt with the returned items and saved, the claim will automatically be re-submitted and the claim history updated. Reimbursement Cash claims which have reached the final approval stage (12) by 11am on Tuesday, provided there are no finance code issues, will be reimbursed into the same bank account that your salary is paid into on the Friday of that week. An confirmation specifying the payment date will be sent to your University account once fully processed. Delays are likely to occur around the Easter and Christmas bank holidays so if at all possible try to get claims submitted well in advance of these times. Page 12 of 13

13 Appendix A (Approval Stages 1-18) 6. Appendix Approval Stage Stage Description Used By 1 Claim pre-checking (custom) UEMS (PENTAG) SSIS (SSI) 2 Claim checking (custom) HUMS (CMH) SSIS (Partnership) 3 Claim checking by finance teams (college nonresearch and service expenses) 4 Claim checking by finance teams (research expenses) 5 Credit card claim checking by finance teams (college non-research and service expenses) 6 Credit card claim checking by finance teams (research expenses) All All colleges, some professional services. All All colleges, some professional services. 7 Claim approval (standard) All 8 Claim approval (research) All colleges, some professional services. 9 Claim approval (custom) HUMS (CMH) SSIS (Partnership) 10 Claim approval (where a signoff route contains either a conditional or a mandatory second approval stage). CLES HUMS (mgmt.) UEBS (card/mgmt.) UEMS (card/mgmt.) 11 Accounts Payable (cards) All 12 Accounts Payable (cash claim payment) All Page 13 of 13