New Feature - User Allowances
Allowances are monetary limits assigned to a user, applied to one or many expense categories. Time domains are custom for each allowance, giving the Administrator flexibility to align allowances with their company budgets.
If a user submits expenses that exceed the allowance limit, they may not be able to submit the excessive spending, depending on their company’s preferences.
Administrators can create and manage their company allowances from the Configuration page, under View and Edit Allowances
Administrators can create allowances manually, or use the bulk upload tools to create several allowances at once.
When creating an allowance, the Administrator will enter the following information
- Allowance Name - Select a specific name for the allowance, which represents what the allowance is for.
- Allowance Code - Enter an (optional) internal code.
- User Name - Choose the user for which this allowance applies.
Please Note: To create the same allowance for multiple users, use the Bulk Upload Option.
- Start Date/End Date - This date range will determine which expenses apply to the allowance. If an expense’s date falls within the date range of the allowance, it counts towards that allowance.
- Allowance Amount - How much the user can spend in the given time frame and expense categories
- Prevent Report Submission - Selecting this option prevents a user from submitting future expenses until an allowance expires, if a user exceeds their allowance.
- Participating Categories - Select one or multiple categories depending on business requirements. The categories selected determine if an expense applies to an allowance.
With the allowance created, users will begin to see their applicable allowances on their expense reports! This gives the users a real-time look at how they are tracking towards their budgets. As the user adds applicable expenses to a report, the Allowance Tracker will automatically update their remaining balance.
Expenses will only count towards an allowance if:
- The expense falls within the date range of the Allowance
and
- The expense is applied to a category that is also part of the Allowance.
The Allowance Tracker includes
- Allowance Amount - The total allowance amount.
- Draft - The user’s expenses which are applied to the allowance in the current Draft, or another Draft.
- Pending - The user’s expenses which are applied to the allowance in a pending report.
- Processed - The total amount of processed expenses which are applied to the allowance.
- Remaining - The user’s remaining budget.
Depending on how the allowance was configured, exceeding the allowance may prevent report submission.
If this option is selected and the user attempts to submit expenses that exceed their allowance, the submission will be blocked.
For submitted expenses, Approvers and Accountants will see a similar Allowance Tracker.
Column Added to Receipts Report
Emburse Expense Professional has added a Receipt Source column to expenses with Receipts Report enabled. This column denotes how a receipt is added to Emburse Professional. Sources include:
- Mobile App
- Browser Upload
- MapIt
Additionally, the source will also show if the receipt imported automatically the following source:
- Emburse Book
- AmTrav
- Amazon Business
- TripLog
Displaying the receipt source gives administrators and accountants deeper insight into how their users interact with and use Emburse Professional.
Update to Custom Report Builder Export
An expense report URL has been added to the Custom Report Builder export.
Accountants have always had the ability to include a hyperlink in their Custom Reports, which when clicked, brings the user to the expense report in question. However, when the Custom Report was exported, this hyperlink did not appear in the Excel file.
We’ve updated the logic for this column, and going forward, if an accountant uses the View column in a Custom Report, the report will display the expense report URL on export to Excel.
Meal Attendee UX Enhancements
After receiving feedback indicating difficulties with the Meal Attendee search function, Emburse Expense Professional has changed the search field, to show the Filter field instead. This clarifies that after selecting a filter, you can use this option to further refine the existing results:
Data Interchange Overwrite Warning
Emburse Professional has added a warning to the Create New Users page to prevent changes from being overwritten by a data interchange (user/category/department sync).
This warning only appears when the company has a user sync set up and will inform the administrator that their changes may be overwritten.
New Feature - Reporting Requests
As part of a new feature, users can now request the Accounts Payable report to process while still using Emburse Professional. The Help Center article on this new feature can be found here.