Reimbursement with an employee in ERPLY Books

 

This manual describes reimbursement transactions with employees and how to manage them in ERPLY Books. A reporting person is someone who is given money to pay for economic transactions related to the organization or who is paid for some economic transactions. Mostly, this is an accountant but it can be someone else in the company as well.

The general process is as follows:

  • enter all transactions so that there would be one purchase document per employee per month
  • enter all purchases of the reporting person, even if they made a purchase with the company’s card;
  • archive all documents – take a picture with your phone and upload a document if you have it on paper
  • print a summary document once a month that you can give to the employee to sign.

 

1. Where can you add reimbursements?

 

You can add reimbursements in the module ‘’Purchases -> Purchase Invoice (Add New) -> Reimbursement’’. In the invoice number cell, reimbursement per month (for example Reimbursement June 2022) is added by default which means that all purchases made by one person in the same month are aggregated into this account.

2. How to add previously described purchases?

 

Paper invoices submitted by the reporting person can be entered continuously during the ongoing month. One invoice row is created for one paper invoice. If you have a new paper invoice, then go to ‘’Purchases -> Purchase Invoice (Add New) -> Reimbursement’’. If a purchase is already added to the ongoing month, then the system will show the warning ‘’Invoice With This Number Already Exists!’’. If you open the existing invoice, then you can edit it and add new reimbursement rows. Activate the article row and select a correct value from there (if it is missing, just add a new one). Then you can add a description of what is added on the paper invoice (for example in the case of bus tickets you can just add the invoice number and the route) and write the price in the price cell.

3. How does an employee’s reimbursement work with other transactions?

 

Possible other transactions:

  • Advance – if an advance was given to an employee via a bank transfer, then it is added with a bank import in case the invoice row is connected to the correct vendor. If the advance was given in cash, then this can be configured in ‘’Purchases -> Purchase Invoices -> Open Payables’’. Don’t mark any invoices with a checkmark, just click on the ‘’Add payment’’ button and in the new window leave the ‘’Invoice number’’ cell empty. Select the employee, add an amount and save.
  • Duty assignment (business trip) daily fee – daily fees are added to the reimbursement purchase invoice so that the ‘’Vendor’’ cell is left empty, in the VAT cell select the VAT 0% and the type is ‘’Other tax’’ (then it is not added to the VAT report).
  • An employee paid with the company’s card – if an employee pays for a purchase with the company’s card, then doing the bank import connects the payment row with the employee’s purchase. It means searching for the invoice, not the vendor.
  • An employee paid using her/his own money – If the employee paid with his/her own money, then it leaves a debt for her/him. 
  • Salary – salaries are managed in the payroll module

 

There are three options to enter a loan given to an employee

  • Through an employee (this is recommended so that you could keep all transactions connected to the employee in question)
  • Giving a loan – create a reporting person document where the value added tax type is ‘’Other tax’’, the expense account is a loan account (a debit negative loan transaction occurs which is reflected positively in liabilities)
  • Loan repayment calculation – in the reimbursement document add one additional row where the loan amount is shown positively (a debit loan transaction occurs). If you want to add interest separately, then add this as a new row with a negative amount and select the expense account as an interest liability account
  • Deduction of the loan from the salary – in the reimbursement document add one additional row where the loan amount is shown as a positive amount (a debit loan transaction occurs). Pay the salary through the bank export so you can select both the salary and the reimbursement document for the payment – in this case, ERPLY Books creates one payment where the reimbursement purchase document is added to the salary (which is negative at the moment). 
  • The employee pays the loan back – in the reimbursement document add one additional row where the loan amount is shown with a positive value (a debit loan transaction occurs).

 

  • Through a project (also allows you to monitor other expenses related to the employee) – in the bank import add the requested loan account to the payout and also select a project 
  • Through an account (the easiest but in this case the least amount of information is related to the transaction partner) – in the bank import select the loan account for payout

 

4. Do you want to archive reimbursement purchase invoice files?

 

You can archive reimbursement purchase invoice files by opening the purchase invoice and clicking on the button ‘’Select file’’. You can do the same thing when you open ‘’Reports -> Purchase Invoices’’. Clicking on ‘’Select File’’ gives you the opportunity to add a file to a purchase invoice. There is also an option to print out the existing file. In general, the process should be like this: every time you upload a file, you are adding a purchase invoice (and take a picture of the paper invoice so you wouldn’t have to preserve them). 

 

5. What to do if checks on paper arrive at the end of the month but the bank balance needs to be correct every day?

 

Here we might wish to track the following aspects:

  • We have to be able to see that an employee has paid but we haven’t received the document on paper
  • We have to be able to see what kinds of documents are not yet handed in
  • We have to have an option to attribute such transactions to a separate account (although it is not compulsory)
  • We need to be able to link the payment to the real transaction when the document arrives.

 

There are several ways to handle this process:

Solution 1: using prepayments

 

  • Based on these payments, create prepayments to the employee in question 
  • Select the payment and employee in the bank import
  • If you are not using the bank import, go to ‘’Purchases -> Purchase Invoices -> Open Payables’’ and click on ‘’Add payment’’ (without selecting an invoice) and then add the employee, amount etc.
  • When the documents on paper arrive, you can connect the created invoice with the prepayment (you can do this in the Open Payables module)

Solution 2: Create an invoice for each payment in the bank import

    • When doing a bank import, do a right click on every transaction and create an invoice
    • When the documents arrive, you can track missing documents by checking which invoices don’t come with uploaded files. You can see this if you open ‘’Reports -> Purchase Invoices’’. If there is an option to ‘’Print’’, it means that the file has already been uploaded. However, if there is ‘’Select file’’, it means that the file has not been uploaded yet.
  • Disadvantage: this solution is suitable if it is not important to connect an invoice with a supplier

Solution 3: not doing transactions based on the reporting person

  • In the bank import select an expense account and select the appropriate tax rate. Also, we recommend marking an employee as a project. This way we can save all details connected to the transaction. 
  • Disadvantage: this solution is suitable only if you don’t need to print out the employee’s report and don’t need to track which documents are not final

 

6. Print out an employee’s report once a month

 

You can print out the reimbursement report if you go to the reimbursement purchase invoice (Purchases -> Purchase Invoice (Add New) -> Reimbursement), click on the ‘’Other’’ button and in the opened window select ‘’PDF’’. If you want to see the previous period’s reports, go to ‘’Reports -> Purchase Invoices’’ and there you can print them out the same way as described above.

 

7. FAQ

 

Why is it good to avoid entering reporting person expenses manually?

 

Settlement with employees seems easier, however you can enter the reimbursement purchases as manual entries but this way you cannot connect the entry with a tax rate. If you use the previously described entering method (second point), then you can add or choose the correct rate which is important for the accuracy of accounting.

 

Is the reporting person included in the 1,000 EUR report?

 

In the 1,000 EUR report you can choose who is shown in the report and who is not. You can do this if you search in the dashboard ‘’Customers & Suppliers You Don’t Need to Declare’’ and  you can add or delete person in this module. 

 

How to change an account which is connected to a reimbursement debt?

 

In ERPLY Books, an employee is defined as a contact who can be a supplier or a customer. So employees have the same conditions as suppliers and customers. All accounts for transaction partners can be found in Sales/Purchases -> Contacts. Find the employee and scroll down until you can see the supplier credit account that you can set for the employee. 

 

The following video shows how to manage reimbursement in ERPLY Books.