Reimbursement Workflow

What is this page about: How Light moves an expense from submission through approval to payment, covering both automatic and manual reimbursement, paying multiple employees at once, and how employees track their own repayments. Read this first if you're setting up reimbursement automation, training employees on submission, or troubleshooting a late or incorrect payment.

On this page

• What counts as a reimbursement
• Expense and reimbursement statuses
• Automatic reimbursement
• Processing reimbursements manually
• Paying multiple employees at once
• Checking for stalled reimbursements
• Handling reimbursement issues
• Choosing how often to process reimbursements
• How employees track their own reimbursements
• Related articles

Reimbursement is the path an expense takes from submission to landing in an employee's bank account. Light automates most of that path and gives Finance control at the points that need a human decision.

# What counts as a reimbursement

A reimbursement happens when an employee has already paid out of pocket and the company owes them money back. That covers:

• Personal funds used. The employee paid for something themselves (travel, a meal, a supply purchase) and submitted the expense afterward.
• Personal card or cash. The employee paid with their own card or with cash.
• An advance request. The employee is asking for money before they spend it, rather than being paid back after.

Reimbursement is different from corporate card settlement, where the card charge bills the company directly and the employee is never out of pocket.

# Expense and reimbursement statuses

Individual expenses move through four statuses. You'll see these reflected in Light's UI and in any export that includes a raw status field:

1. CREATED: the expense is being read from a receipt. Light's OCR and AI parsing are extracting the details.
2. IN_DRAFT: the employee is preparing the expense.
3. SUBMITTED_FOR_REVIEW: the expense has been submitted as part of a reimbursement.
4. CANCELLED: the expense was cancelled.

When an employee submits, their draft expenses group into a single reimbursement (also called an expense report). The reimbursement itself moves through five statuses:

1. IN_PROGRESS: submitted, processing started.
2. SUCCEEDED: a reimbursement bill was created in accounts payable (AP).
3. FAILED: processing failed. The expenses return to draft so the employee can resubmit them.
4. REJECTED: declined during review.
5. RESET: a rejected reimbursement was reset. Its expenses return to draft so the employee can correct and resubmit them.

# Automatic reimbursement

Light can take a submitted expense report all the way through on its own, leaving Finance to handle the exceptions.

1. Open Settings → Workflows and configure the Expense reimbursement workflow.

2. When an employee submits an expense report, Light's AI agent reviews it against your expense policies.

3. Based on that review:

   • Compliant: the reimbursement is approved automatically.
   • Non-compliant: it's sent to the Inbox for manual review.

4. For a compliant report, Light creates the reimbursement bill in AP and routes it to approval and payment processing on its own.

Automatic approval only applies once this workflow has been published. Until then, every submitted reimbursement lands in the Inbox for manual review, regardless of policy compliance.

With this on, compliant expense reports run straight through to payment, and anything outside policy still lands in front of a person.

# Processing reimbursements manually

For more control, work through reimbursements yourself in Light.

# Reviewing submitted reimbursements

1. Open Reimbursements in Light.
2. The page has five tabs: Inbox, Approving, Scheduled, Paid, and Discarded. Each reimbursement groups one employee's submitted expenses.
3. Open a reimbursement to see the included expenses, the total to reimburse, and the employee to pay.

# How the AP bill gets created

Light creates one accounts payable (AP) bill per submitted reimbursement automatically:

• Payee: the employee, paid as an individual, not as a vendor.
• Amount: the total of the submitted expenses.
• Line items: the individual expense lines.
• GL accounts: each line is coded to the general ledger (GL) account tied to its reimbursement category.

The bill appears in Bills and on the Reimbursements page. It starts in Draft status and sits in the Inbox for review, unless it was auto-approved.

# Approving the bill

1. Open the reimbursement bill.
2. Review the amounts and GL accounts.
3. Submit it for approval when it's ready.
4. Once approved, Light creates the accounting entries and the bill is ready for payment.

# Creating the payment

1. After approval, schedule the payment.
2. Light shows the employee's banking details, pulled from their reimbursement profile, and the amount to pay.
3. Payments go out as bank transfers using the details on file: reimbursement currency and bank country, plus either an IBAN with BIC, or a local account number with routing or bank code (for example, a US account and routing number).
4. Payments group into payment batches for release.

# Executing the payment

1. On the scheduled date, Light initiates a bank transfer using the appropriate rail (domestic or international).
2. The bank processes the transfer, typically within 1 to 3 business days.
3. The employee gets a notification once the payment goes out. The exact wording depends on the channel, Slack and Microsoft Teams read "Your reimbursement has been paid," while the mobile app and default in-app notification read "A payment has been sent to your account."

# Paying multiple employees at once

You can settle several employees' reimbursements in one release:

1. Each reimbursement still produces its own AP bill, one per employee.

2. Light shows the batch total, for example:

   • Employee 1: $345
   • Employee 2: $120
   • Employee 3: $890
   • Total batch: $1,355

3. Payments group into a single payment batch.

4. Release the batch to pay everyone at once.

5. Each employee still receives their own separate bank transfer.

# Checking for stalled reimbursements

To make sure approved expenses actually get paid, open Reimbursements and check the Approving and Scheduled tabs. Anything sitting there longer than expected is worth investigating before it turns into a late-payment complaint.

# Following up on a late payment

If a payment hasn't reached the employee:

1. Check the bank status. Transfers typically take 1 to 3 business days.
2. If it's running late, confirm the payment batch was actually released, and check whether the payment bounced back for invalid bank details.
3. Follow up with the bank directly if needed.
4. Reissue the payment if it's confirmed lost or returned.

# Handling reimbursement issues

# Duplicate expense payment

If an employee gets paid twice for the same expense:

1. Identify the duplicate. Light may flag it for you.
2. Contact the employee to let them know they were paid twice.
3. Recover the overpayment one of three ways: the employee returns it voluntarily, the company recoups it from their next paycheck, or it's deducted from a future reimbursement.
4. Reverse the duplicate payment in AP.
5. Update the bill so it reflects a single payment.

# Incorrect reimbursement amount

If an employee is paid the wrong amount:

• Overpaid: process a credit to the employee, adjust their next reimbursement, or ask them to return the difference.
• Underpaid: process an additional payment for the shortfall, or issue it as a separate payment.

Either way, check why it happened. Data entry errors and forgotten receipts are the usual causes.

# Choosing how often to process reimbursements

• Daily: approved expenses get paid the same or next business day. Fastest for employees, and it needs automated setup to keep up with the pace.
• Weekly: the most common cadence. Process every Friday or Monday, so employees know exactly which day to expect payment, while Finance still controls batch size.
• Monthly: fewer batches to manage, which cuts Finance's overhead, but an employee can wait close to a month for payment. Worth weighing against how that lands with your team.

# How employees track their own reimbursements

Employees can check where their own reimbursements have got to at any time:

1. Log in to the Light app or portal.
2. Go to Expenses.
3. Expenses show as Draft (not yet submitted), Processing (submitted, waiting on review and payment), Paid (with payment date and amount), or Rejected. A rejected reimbursement can be reset, which returns its expenses to draft for correction and resubmission.
4. The expected payment date shows alongside each expense.
5. Employees can open a support ticket in Light if a payment hasn't arrived.

# Related articles

• Expense Approval Workflows
• Employee Reimbursements
• Issuing and Managing Corporate Cards

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