Merging two expenses when one report has already been submitted and reimbursed

FrankBeverageGroup

An expense report was auto-submitted on the 16th of the month with a corporate credit card expense from the 8th of the month. This expense still shows the purchase as a "cash" purchase and didn't change to the locked credit card icon. On this expense report, Expensify did know that the employee wasn't supposed to be reimbursed for this amount though and thus wasn't. There were other purchases on this report that the employee was reimbursed for. This report has been exported as well. Fast forward to the end of the credit card statement period and the same expense has come through as a possible duplicate. This time with the locked credit card icon. I thought we'd be able to merge the two expenses, but since the first report has already been submitted, approved, and reimbursed, I can't send it back and the employee can't retract it. How can I merge these two expenses?

Sheena Trepanier

Hi @FrankBeverageGroup - Thanks for a really great scenario and for sharing it with the community.

From what you're describing it sounds like the employee submitted the receipt they uploaded for the credit card expense, before the credit card expense was able to import into their account. When this happens you generally see what looks like duplicate expenses, one with the credit card plus lock symbol and one with the cash symbol.

Since the receipt had been submitted on a report, the credit card expense wasn't able to merge with the receipt when it imported. If this report was reimbursed via ACH in Expensify, there won't be a way to pull that report back into a state where the receipt and cc expense can be merged.

If the report was only 'Marked as reimbursed' then a policy admin should be able to 'Unapprove' the report and reject it back to the submitter so they can merge the two expenses together.

If you have further questions, or would like us to take a look into your account, please reach out to help@expensify.com so we can have a conversation where sharing account info isn't public.

Thanks!

FrankBeverageGroup

@Sheena Trepanier Do you recommend that a credit card receipt shouldn't be uploaded for a few days until the credit card feed comes through?

Julia

@FrankBeverageGroup this is a problem we have continually struggled with, and are still trying to determine the best solution.

For now, I am set up as the final approver in an advanced approval workflow. After the manager approves the reports, I typically sit on them for a day and review the reports individually. Since all of our corporate credit card users are expected to use their cards for all business expenses, I closely review any non mileage cash reimbursement items. If they are a CC charge that hasn't uploaded yet, I will let them wait an additional day or two. Sometimes I'll research it proactively depending on my work load.

At times, they may never sync correctly due to a number of reasons. Some are trainable (making sure your employees smart scan the restaurant receipts that have the final tip and total included), and some are not (when the restaurant misreads the tip and the amounts never match, so they never sync). Those two I mentioned are just a couple examples.

Curious as to how you all are currently set up, do you use Ereceipts for transactions under $75.00? Or do you require the employees to provide receipts for most dollar thresholds? I am trying to get our organization to switch to ereceipts because I think it would cut down on the volume of items I am manually reviewing. (Meaning, if our employees KNOW they don't need to smartscan a receipt under $75, they just wait for it to import on the bank feed, and it lessens the margin for error)

FrankBeverageGroup

@Julia We require the employees to enter receipts for every purchase regardless of the amount. We currently only have two employees using the credit card feature for testing purposes. I think part of the issue we're having with our credit cards linked is that the corporate card holders are using their corporate cards for purchases as well as purchasing expenses personally. These two employees are also the approvals for other employees' expense reports so they're on both policies. The corporate card expenses are then approved twice---once on a regular expense report and once on the corporate card report.
I will take your advice on letting them wait a day or two. And the ereceipts might be the answer. Currently, about half of their expenses are less than $75.00.

Sheena Trepanier

Hi guys! In order for the receipts to merge with the credit card expenses, please make sure that both expenses remain unsubmitted.

If an employee uploads a receipt, and the credit card expense hasn't been imported yet, the employee should not submit the report the receipt is on quite yet. If they do, and the credit card expense imports afterwards, there will be two copies of the expense that can't be merged together.

We created a great doc on what to do if your credit card expenses and receipts fail to merge together, which you can find here.

I do think it's easiest to work through merge failures together in a one to one conversation, which I'd be delighted to do. Please reach out to me at help@expensify.com if you'd like to do that!