Certify Administrators have the ability to customize their expense reporting processes to match the policies and guidelines outlined by their organization. This article shows you how to configure special policies under the View and Edit Policy section in Certify.
On your account homepage, click the gear icon and then select View and Edit Policy.
Travel and Expense Policy Content
Upload a PDF of your company's Travel and Expense Policy. All users will be able to access this file on their Certify account Travel page.
Receipt Requirements
Set the amount threshold for expenses above a certain amount that require receipts. If your company requires receipts for all expenses, select Require receipts for all expenses from the drop-down menu. This is a soft policy setting that will not prevent an expense report outside of policy from being submitted for approval.
Expense Submission and Approval
- Prevent users from editing their own commute distance: Disable users from making changes to their stored commute miles.
- Allow approvers to edit expenses while approving reports: Allow approvers to be able to edit expenses during the approval process.
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Allow Approvers to add a receipt image to expenses while approving expense reports: Allow approvers to be able to add additional receipt images or supporting documentation during the approval process.
- Please Note: Users with an Accountant role in Certify will always have the ability to edit expenses or add images, regardless of whether this functionality is enabled.
- Flag all edited expenses: Automatically flag expenses edited by an approver or accountant; this will cause them to appear in the Expense Policy Review report.
- Flag expenses submitted more than _ days after transaction date: Creates a soft-policy flag for expenses older than specified days after the expense report submit date
- Flag personal automobile use when distance is more than _ percent greater - than map distance: Creates a soft-policy flag for mileage expenses over then specified percentage of the calculated Map It! distance.
- Allow users to adjust currency conversions: Allow users to adjust the converted expense amount of expenses converted by Certify. Assign a policy tolerance which creates a soft-policy flag for expenses over the specified percentage of the default Certify conversion rate.
- Limit each user's cash advances to _: Provide a maximum amount for cash advance requests
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Automatically archive expense reports: Select to automatically archive expense reports When expense reports are reimbursed, When expense reports are processed, or Do not automatically archive.
- Please Note: Automatically archive expense reports when expense reports are reimbursed should only be selected by clients using Certify ACH.
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Validation message to display to report submitters: Enter a customized message to be displayed on the expense report submission page. Each expense report submitter must acknowledge the message before submitting their expense reports.
- Please Note: This message cannot be left blank, and acknowledgment by the submitter is required regardless of the content included in the message. The following message appears default if a custom message is not created; “I certify this expense report is true and accurate”.
Submission Requirements
Submission Requirements prevent end users from submitting an expense report if specific requirements are not met. Enable a submit validation by clicking the checkbox next to it.
Expense Equality Checks
Expense Equality Checks require all expenses within an expense report to share a common ‘value’. Select the value field using the dropdown menu.
Credit Card Expense Treatment
The Read-only Credit Card Expenses drop-down allows you to choose between three options:
- Enabled for All Users: Select this option if you don't want users to delete their imported card transactions.
- Disabled for Full Administrators: This option allows only a Full Administrator to delete or edit imported card transactions. This means users without the Full Administrator role will not be able to edit or delete card transactions.
- Disabled for All Users: This option allows users to delete their imported card transactions. Due to the nature of credit card expenses, users will not be able to edit the expense amount, regardless of the status.
Text Message Alerts (SMS)
If you enable text message alerts, users will receive a text message in addition to the regular notification email. If the user has chosen NOT to receive notifications, then no text message will be sent. Delegate users who have chosen to receive email messages on behalf of the user will NOT be sent a text message.
Email Alerts
You can set the number of days at which email reminders are sent to Approvers who have pending, unapproved expense reports, and also how often reminders are sent.
The Approver must also mark the checkbox on their My Account / Email Notifications tab to receive approval reminders.
Approval Workflows
Expense reports follow a natural flow of approvers until they are submitted to an accountant for processing. If you select Flexible Approval Workflow from the drop-down menu, each user selects an approver when submitting an expense report. You do not need to specify an approver for each user, or an accountant for each approver, if using Flexible Approval Workflow. For more information, please see our article about configuring Flexible Approval Workflow.
If you select Locked Approval Workflow, multiple levels of approval with optional approval limits and special approval rules can be configured. If you use Locked Approval Workflow, you must specify an approver for each user, as well as an accountant for each approver. For more information, please see our article about configuring Locked Approval Workflow.
Expense Report Processing Queue
If your company has a shared processing account for expense reports, you may control when and for how long an expense report is held by one person for review. These are optional configurations for this functionality.
Click the checkbox for Automatically place a hold on expense reports when Accountants view them to immediately place a hold on an expense report when it is opened by a delegate Accountant user.
Click the checkbox for Automatically release holds after __ minutes of no activity if you would like to only allow a hold to be placed on a report for a specified amount of time.
Expense Report Allocations
If you click the checkbox for Expense Report Allocations, users will be able to select multiple departments or general ledger dimensions, and enter percentages for cost sharing. The Expense Report Allocations report can be used to view journal entries after the expense reports have been processed.
Click the checkbox for Automatically Apply Previous Allocations if users tend to use the same allocation percentages repeatedly. This will automatically assign the most recently used allocations whenever a new expense report is created.
Click Save at the bottom of the page to save your changes.