IIn this section you can request advances in order to have funds, in advance, for your expenses.
The advances functionality is only visible for and accessible by those users who have advances enabled.
ADVANCES VIA THE APP
Request advance
To request an advance via the app you must access through the advances section, found in the lower block of the main menu.
Request a new Advance
Using the top right button (+), you can request a new advance.
From here you will see different fields; the Reason, Workflow, and any customised fields that your company may require are mandatory.
By clicking on the button containing the currency information, you can modify the currency of the advance.
If you activate the Trip field, you will see an additional field where you can specify your travel days, in order to view the amount your company recommends, depending on how many days you indicate.
Once you have filled in all the data, you can make your request by clicking on Request advance.
At this point, in accordance with your company's expense policy, you will be informed whether the amount exceeds the recommended or mandatory figure.
You will see the advance reflected in Assets with the Requested label.
Once the advance has been requested, you can access the details on it and, but, for as long as it maintains Requested status, you will not be able to edit it.
The Multicurrency field appears only for those advances that contain more than one currency. These must be requested through the website. From the app you can only see the amounts of each currency.
This screen details all the amounts in each of the currencies that have been requested in the advance. The items on this list are not selectable or editable, but rather only for information purposes.
ADVANCE STATUS
Advance statuses may be as follows:
- Active: Advances with Requested/Approved/In Progress/Rejected status.
- Issued: Advances that have been issued (always in a report already issued).
Requested
The advance is undergoing the approval process.
Approved (will only appear if there is a user box)
The reviewer has approved the requested advance.
Once the advance payment is made, the following status will be shown.
Available
The moment the advance has Available status, this means that you already have access to it, and you can also add it to a report through the Report field.
Advance issued
When the advance has been issued, only the contents of it can be viewed, and you can access the multi-currency details.
When its status is Issued, the advance cannot be eliminated.
ADVANCES VIA THE WEBSITE
In the advances section, you can request cash advances from your supervisor. If you cannot see this tab, contact the platform administrator (this module is not enabled by default).
In this section you can see advances with their statuses reflected in the Status column.
The different statuses are as follows:
- Requested: When we have asked for an advance and it is still in the approval phase.
- Rejected: Rejected advances are identified with this status and have the edit button with which we can make changes to the rejected advance and then resubmit it for approval.We may change the amounts (add, remove, change), the collection date and trip days.
- Valid: The advances that have been approved are identified with this status and are available to be added to any reports you may have.
- Settled: these advances are within an already settled report.
- Approved: Only for user box environments. This status will appear until the cashier user delivers the advance.
To begin the process, click the Request Advance button.
A form will appear where you can specify the details of the advance you want to request.
Once the relevant fields are filled in, click the green button. Your supervisor will receive the request for the advance.
Some comments:
- Collection date: It is only a non-binding information field so the person responsible for delivering the advance to the employee knows the date on which the applicant would like the advance to be available.
- Trip: Yes/No: If yes, allows you to indicate the number of days for the trip. With this, the system will suggest the maximum recommended amount. You may request a higher amount, but it will be recorded that you are requesting an amount that is higher than what is recommended by the company.
- Amount of advance: This is the amount you want to request. This amount may consist of one or more currencies. To do this, we will introduce the desired amount, select the currency, and click the + button. This operation must be repeated for each currency requested, if it is a multi-currency advance.
Remember that your advance will not be available until your supervisor has approved it. You can check the status of your application at any time in the table on the home screen of the advances section.
Once the advance is approved, it will be assigned to the next expense report that you create. If you do not want to use the advance in that expense report, you can modify it in that same report.
Once the advance is included in the expense report, the expenses paid in cash will be “offset” with the advanced amount. Various cases may arise:
- The amount of the expenses is lower than the amount of the advance.
- The amount of the advance covers the entirety of the expenses, but you have also needed to make an additional currency exchange.
- The amount spent is greater than the amount of the advance.
CASE 1: The amount of the expenses is lower than the amount of the advance.
In this example, the settlement amount of €-177 is because, in the currency with which the company normally works (EUR), as an employee you owe €177 to the company. However, note that there is actually a line for each currency, since the amounts to be returned are €177 and £194 respectively.
In addition, it may be that, of the £194 (GBP), you actually want to repay £190, because you had a personal expense (not payable by the company) amounting to £4. In that case, you use the button (‘= EUR’) to indicate that some of those GBP you will be repaying in Euros, because they are GBP you have spent on personal expenses. This amendment would read as follows:
Once this is done, you can see that the amount in EUR to be returned has been increased based on the rate established between EUR and GBP, those GBP you have spent on personal expenses.
CASE 2: The amount of the advance covers the entirety of the expenses, but you have also needed to make an additional currency exchange.
This could happen if, for example, from London you had to make a trip to another country with a different currency to the ones which you were carrying in the advance, and you then had an expense, for example, in US dollars (USD). The system informs you of this situation and you need to take the appropriate action to indicate how you withdrew the USD you spent as cash:
To report this currency exchange, you can select the currency you used as the source currency, indicating the amount used for the exchange and final amount in currency obtained after the exchange. In the example, I use £90 of the £194, and for those £90 I receive $134.289:
Now, the report once again has all the information it needs to present the different lines of currencies with the amounts to return/be paid. The exchange rate (calculated from the source currency, EUR) is calculated based on the information given, and since more dollars have been obtained than have been spent, it indicates that there are fewer GBP to return, and also that the surplus USD should be returned:
CASE 3: The amount spent is greater than the amount of the advance.
Following the example, more has been spent in EUR than those taken in the advance (we have paid with our own EUR). In this case, there is no longer a need to return EUR, although there are excess amounts in other currencies. And as a result of the settlement, it is indicated that the company must reimburse the surplus EUR (the other currencies must be returned):
