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FAQ: What is an Expense Claim?

An Expense Claim (also sometimes called an Expense Report) in Zudello is a document used to group together one or more individual expense items (like receipts or mileage expenses) for submission, approval, and processing (either for reimbursement to an employee or reconciliation against a corporate card).

Purpose:

Submission: Instead of submitting every single small expense for approval individually, employees bundle related expenses (e.g., from a specific trip, a particular week/month, or for a certain project) into a single claim.
Approval: The claim document itself moves through an approval workflow. Approvers review the entire claim (including all attached expenses) before approving or rejecting it.
Processing: Approved claims trigger the next step, which is typically:
- Reimbursement: For claims containing "Personal Spend" expenses, the approved claim authorises payment back to the employee.
- Reconciliation: For claims containing "Corporate Card Spend" expenses, the approved claim confirms the business nature of the charges for accounting purposes.
Organisation: Claims provide a structured way to manage and track groups of expenses.

Key Characteristics:

A claim typically has header information (e.g., Claimant Name/Employee, Submission Date, Description/Purpose, Total Amount).
It contains links to one or more individual expense documents (receipts, mileage).
The claim itself follows an approval workflow defined by Sentences.
Individual expenses must generally be added to a claim before the claim can be submitted.

Think of the claim as the "envelope" you put your individual expense receipts into before submitting them to your manager or finance department.