Enforcing the expense policies of your company can be tricky. Even if employees are made aware of the rules, self-enforcement is not very realistic. As a Finance team, you need a way to enforce these policies in a manner that doesn’t drain your resources.
Fyle’s sophisticated expense policy engine
When you use an automated solution, it becomes a lot easier to define the business rules and actions. Fyle does it better than most, with a dedicated expense policy engine.
The engine breaks down policy creation into a series of steps. This opens up a plethora of permutations you can use to create concrete policies. So unlike other software, you’re not limited by fixed rules that are already created by the system. Fyle’s policy engine adapts to your organization’s needs. Think of it as answering four major questions.
- Which expense categories are affected by the policy?
You define what categories are included or excluded in the business rule you intend to create. For instance, all expenses under the ‘Office Supplies’ category have to have a receipt, and can not cross $100.
- Who the policy applies to?
Assume you have different expense policies for various employees. It can be complicated to keep track of which policy applies to whom. In Fyle, you can configure exactly who the intended recipient is. You can filter employees based on their departments, levels, locations, titles, or custom fields. For organizations that have many departments or a complex hierarchy, this becomes important.
- What are the conditions of the policy?
This is the crux of the expense rule. Fyle’s engine allows you to set conditions that will trigger the policy. Here are some of them:
- Set maximum expense limits for different categories
- Rules around spend dates (for example, if spend date is more than a month old, it requires additional approval)
- What the acceptable expense age is
- Receipt rules (for example, receipts for food are mandatory)
- Payment mode rules (for instance, entertainment expenses made by corporate card need to be flagged)
- You also have an option to create project, location & cost-center specific policies.
- What action needs to be taken if the expense violates the policy?
Multiple actions can be taken when a policy violation is detected. This is usually dependent on the way a Finance team operates. That’s why Fyle allows complete flexibility. You can choose to make the expense unreportable, meaning the employee can’t even submit it. Or you can allow the employee to submit it with an explanation. You can make the system flag the expense, and notify the employee about the error. You can even enable additional approval. This level of customization ensures that all your use cases are covered.
Real-time policy enforcement
Here’s the best part. When an employee is filing an expense, the system will run a policy check. If the expense doesn’t comply, Fyle notifies the employee (or whatever action you define) in real-time. For example, assume you have a policy that caps the expense limit for the Food category at $50. When an employee files a food expense that’s $60, the expense is immediately flagged. This way, the Finance team has complete control over compliance. You also don’t have to worry about employees not being aware that they’ve overshot the allowed limit.
Policies for trips and advances
Fyle’s policy engine is available not only for basic expenses, but also for the trip and advance modules.
- On Fyle, trips require pre-spend approvals. This means employees need to file trip requests that need to be approved. The policy engine enables you to set up rules for the requests themselves. For example, you can create a rule that says travel requests can only be made 1 week in advance of the travel date. You can also create policies around specific bookings (like hotel or transport).
- In the case of advance requests as well, you can define what’s allowed. For example, an employee can not request advances of more than $10,000 for Project A. We built this feature specifically to eliminate manual effort and curb expense fraud that is usually coupled with cash advances.
Compliance comes first
We understand how substantial compliance is. And also how hard it is to enforce. The best way to deal with it is through automation. That’s why Fyle’s AI-first platform has a dedicated policy engine. We ensure that you have complete control over your business rules, at all times. Irrespective of how complex your policy is, give the engine a chance.
Expert support
At Fyle, we take support very seriously. If you need help, our Customer Success team works with you to set up organization-wide policies. If you’d like to learn more about how Expense Policies work, schedule a demo with us today!
