Aim:
This chapter is designed to explain the processes that are available within the EASY system to enable you to manage expense claims of the staff within your area of responsibility.
Objective:
After reading this chapter you will be able to:
· Use the Expenses Status page
· Authorise an Expense Claim
· Reject an Expense Claim
· Accept an Expense Claim
Background:
The EASY system receives regular downloads of data from the NH Electronic Staff Record (ESR), and it is this data that provides the background record that enables an employee to quickly complete a claim for the reimbursement of mileage and other expenses.
Expenses Workflow:
The process of completing an expense claim is covered by another chapter of the EASY manual. However, you may find that the workflow diagram below provides a useful overview of the Expense processes.
When one of your employees’ submits an expense claim you will receive an email advising that you need to authorise their expense claim. At the same time your Reminders menu will be updated with a message showing the number of expense claims that are waiting to be authorised (see below).
To progress the expense claims you will need to access these through the Expenses Status screen. To display the Expenses Status page you can either click on the link in the Reminders menu or click on the Expenses link in the Navigation menu.
Expenses Status:
The Expenses Status screen (see below) gives you an overview of the expense claims that require your attention. The staff who have submitted an expense claim will appear within the section that relates to their particular pay group.
The entry for each member of staff shows the number of claim items submitted with the total number of miles and/or amount being claimed.
There may be situations where a Trust requires certain expense items to be accepted by the Finance Department before they are passed for payment. Where that is the case, the person responsible for accepting such claims will see the number of claims that require their attention in the Authorised column.
To view the details of the expense claim, click on the name of the employee whose claim you wish to review.
Expense Claims:
The Assignment Claims screen shows the individual claim items that the employee has submitted for authorisation.
For certain expense types the system will calculate the adjustment that is applicable according to the terms and conditions for the employee. The Trust may choose to allow you to amend the adjustment calculated by the system, in which an adjustment field will appear in the ‘Adjust.’ Column.
The details shown in the table above are self-explanatory. However, it may be useful to explain the purpose of the icons that appear in the table.
The world icon is used in conjunction with mileage based journeys. By clicking on the world icon on the right-hand side of a journey’s row, a window will appear that shows the calculated mileage and the route that was obtained from HERE Maps for that journey.
By clicking on the calculator icon this will display how the adjustment has been calculated by the system. If you choose to amend the adjustment, you can add a comment in the Adjustment Reason box.
An exclamation icon indicates a warning condition, which means that a validation check has been triggered. When you hover over the icon with the mouse pointer some text appears below the pointer giving a brief explanation for the warning. In this case, the number of miles claimed by the employee is considered to be higher than would be expected, but it is still below the maximum allowable.
The user comment icon shows that the employee has provided additional information that they feel is pertinent to that claim item. To view the additional information provided, click on the user comment icon to display Additional Information window (see below).
For some expense types the Trust may require the employee to provide a receipt. When completing a claim that requires a receipt, the employee can either indicate that they have forwarded it on to their manager or they can attach a file that contains the receipt. The Receipt column in the table may contain a list box or a link to the file that is stored in the EASY system. The presence of the list box means that you will need to indicate what action you have taken with the receipt; you may need to refer to the guidance provide by your Trust. To view the file, simply click on the link.
Authorising Expense Claims:
To authorise the items claimed by the employee, you must ensure that the tick box at the left-hand side of each row is ticked.
When you enter the screen each of the boxes will be ticked and the selected claims will be highlighted in yellow. In the heading you can click on the tick box to untick all the boxes. Alternatively, you can click on the relevant box to select or deselect the expense claims.
Click on the Authorise button at the top right-hand side of the Submitted Claims section to accept the items that are marked with a tick. The system will require you to confirm your authorisation by entering the appropriate characters from your security word.