While the ideal expense management process includes virtual expense cards (allowing finance to build in their expense policy – a set-and-forget spending control), reimbursement requests aren’t going away. Finance functions need a tool to maintain control of employee spending that also includes reimbursements, ideally Cloud-based.

Jack’s morning-tea run – paid for with his own cash

Take Jack for example. Jack is a teacher and he doesn’t have a DiviPay virtual card because he doesn’t often make work purchases. His school CFO has allocated DiviPay cards to 10 teachers and executives who regularly need to purchase incidentals, but Jack is one of 50 other teachers who don’t have (and don’t typically need) a card.

But Jack’s colleague who usually buys morning tea for the staff room is off work sick. Jack's offered to run up to the grocery store and refresh the supplies – and his CFO has agreed – but without a DiviPay card, Jack has to make the purchase on his personal card. Jack now needs to be reimbursed for the expense.

What Jack and his school need is DiviPay’s new reimbursements feature. It’s currently free, and it allows Jack to request a reimbursement through DiviPay, allocating the cost to the associated budget. It’s then easy for Jack’s CFO to approve the reimbursement request and get the money back to him as quickly as possible. The CFO will also find it handy that all DiviPay reimbursement data flows through to Xero like expenses paid for on DiviPay virtual cards.

Jill’s new tool for home – paid on her credit card

Jill’s story is a bit different. Jill is part of a team of field engineers in the tech industry. Jill frequently uses her DiviPay card to purchase small parts needed to complete a job. On this occasion, Jill wanted a tool for a personal job at home. Granted, the tool might occasionally be useful at work, but she didn’t really need it for work, and it wasn’t an expense she’d cleared with her manager or finance. So, Jill went ahead and paid for the tool on her own credit card, thinking she’d try her luck and ask for a reimbursement after the fact.

Jill’s employer is already using DiviPay Reimbursements. When Jill tried to request a reimbursement for the tool via DiviPay, it was rejected as it couldn’t be allocated to a budget.

Had this been a genuine business expense that didn’t fit into a budget, Jill would have emailed her manager and finance directly to sort it out. But, Jill knew she probably wouldn’t get this approved, so she wore the cost of the tool (as she should), and the company saved paying for a non-business-related expense.

Reimbursements for genuine business expenses

The moral of the story is that the more finance can pre-set and control, the better for expense management. Budgets need to be clearly communicated to employees, and businesses need the latest in fintech, like DiviPay, to enforce these spending rules.

DiviPay is already leading the way in expense management for the future. Finance simply issues a DiviPay virtual business card to an employee, with the amount they are allowed to spend within defined budgets.

But, as the above scenarios show, sometimes employees will spend their own cash or credit. So, the business also needs a way to process genuine business expenses that aren’t made on a DiviPay card. This is where DiviPay Reimbursements come in.

To find out more about this free reimbursements feature, that complements DiviPay’s existing fintech solution, contact us today for a demonstration.