Fyle lets you create Expense Policies that are checked automatically when your employees submit their expenses. Any policy violation will be detected in real-time.
Policies can be set up by Admins in Settings. Go to Settings > Expenses > Policies. Now, click on the Add New Policy button.
The policy form will open up.
Let me walk you through each section in this form and what they're meant for.
1. Define the nature of expenses targeted by this policy
Here, you select the expense categories for which the policy is applicable.
When you Include a category, it means that the policy is applicable for it.
When you Exclude a category, it means that the policy is applicable for all categories except the ones excluded.
You can include/Exclude multiple categories in the same policy.
Based on the policies till now, we have suggested a few categories by default for the ease of selection.
If you do not include/select any category for this policy, it will be applicable for all categories.
2. Choose who is affected by this policy
Here, you select who this policy is applicable for.
By default, only Levels property is shown. By clicking on Add Employee Property, you can select more employee properties to be included/excluded in this policy.
For each employee property, you can include/exclude certain type of employees to be affected by this policy. For example, Include employees who belong to Engineering department. Or, Exclude employees who are from Level L1.
When you Include a Level, Department, Title or Specific people, it means that the policy is applicable for employees belonging to that level/department/title/etc.
You can Include/Exclude multiple values for each employee property.
If you do not set any employee property, the policy will be applicable to everybody in the organization.
3. Set the Policy Conditions
Here, you need to set the policy conditions, which when satisfied by an expense will cause a policy violation to occur.
By default only the Amount Constraint. is shown. Click on Add condition to see more options.
Conditions
1. Amount Constraint: This contains the Limit Type and Amount Limit.
Limit Type is the period over which expenses must be aggregated. Amount Limit is the limit for that period, which when crossed will cause the policy violation. The following options are available for Limit Type - Individual, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually.
For example, if an employee should not be allowed to submit expenses summing up to more than USD 500 in a week, then the limit type is Weekly and the amount limit is USD 500.
2. Locations
Include or Exclude expense locations for which this policy is applicable.
3. Receipt Mandatory
If you select Yes, then a policy violation occurs if no receipt is attached.
4. Spend Date
Here, you can define the range of dates, between which if an expense was made, then the policy will be applicable on that expense.
5. Expense Age
If the expense is older than the expense age set, then the policy violation will occur.
6. Cost Centers
Include or Exclude Cost Centers for which this policy is applicable.
7. Projects
Include or Exclude Projects for which this policy is applicable.
8. Include Foreign Currency Expenses
If Yes is selected, then even foreign currency expenses fall under this policy. And the policy will be checked after the foreign currency is internally converted to the home currency.
9. Allowed Percentage Difference for Exchange Rates
Sometimes, an employee changes the default exchange rate provided by the system. If the percentage difference between the two rates is more than x% filled in the above condition, then the policy will be violated.
10. Payment modes
Include or Exclude Payment modes for which this policy is applicable. Currently, in this condition, you will be able to include or exclude the payment modes Paid via Employee or Paid via Corporate Card.
4. Configure what happens when employees violate the policy
When ALL the conditions that are set in the above 3 steps are satisfied, then the policy violation will occur. Now in this step, you must configure what action must be taken if a violation occurs.
Actions
1. Flag Expense
If Yes is selected, the expense will be flagged for further review. All flagged expenses will be denoted by a small flag icon.
2. Show Pop-up
If Yes is selected, then a real-time alert is shown to the employee when the violation occurs. The employee then needs to give the reason for violation if they still wish to submit the expense.
3. Make Expense Unreportable
If Yes is selected, the employee will not be be allowed to submit the expense.
4. Cap Expense Amount
If Yes is selected, the expense amount will be capped to the amount limit set in step 3.
5. Assign Additional Approvers
You can assign the expense to additional approvers for further review.
If you skip primary approver from processing the expense, the expense will directly be forwarded to the additional approver(s).
The additional approver can be the employee's secondary approver or their project approver or their department approver. Alternatively, you can enter a specific approver's email ID to assign them as the additional approver.
5. Policy Description
Finally, set a description for your policy to identify it among other policies. Also, this description will be displayed to the employee in case of a policy violation.
Click on Save at the bottom of the form to save the policy. Click on Save & Clone to save this policy and clone all the conditions set to a new policy (which can then be edited easily and saved again).
Summary -
A summary of all the conditions and actions set for this policy can be seen on the right side of the screen.
View the summary and verify correctly before setting up the policy.
When a section heading inside the summary is clicked, the respective section on the left hand side is scrolled open automatically.
Note that, for any of the policies to be violated for any expense, all of the conditions set, i.e,:
- Nature of expense, if set
- Employee properties, if set
- All of policy conditions, if set
must ALL be satisfied (or evaluate to True)
A policy, once set, can be found under Settings > Expenses > Policies.