How do you reimburse yourself for an expense?
If you are not familiar with it, a reimbursement form template is used for reporting the amount of expenses paid and expecting a return from the company. Reimbursing yourself includes collecting the receipts to the company and expecting for a return.
Normally, such expenses happen on business trips where the expenses for food, lodging and travel are initially covered by the employee. And the employee writes a reimbursement form to reimburse the money he/she has spent. If it’s your first time writing a reimbursement form, you will need to keep the following things in mind while writing it.
Determine what is considered to be an expense
So, here is all of the stuff that should be considered as an expense to be reimbursed by the company.
- Advertising costs: All of the costs spent by an employee to advertise the company is to be paid by the company itself.
- The office supplies: You will definitely use a lot of pens, printer cartridges, papers etc in the office. All costs related to office supplies can be given in the reimbursement form.
- Maintenance and repairs: costs for maintenance and repairs of all of the machinery used in the office or business like the AC’s, printers etc should be reimbursed.
- Taxes: Taxes should definitely be reimbursed, well not the ones on the employees salary but the ones like sales tax etc.
- Travel: Employees are often sent on various business meetings, the cost of traveling to go to the meeting can be included in the reimbursement form.
- Utilities: Working in a company involves a lot of costs, where I work; everyone’s phone is constantly ringing, which means the phone bill is always going up. Costs for stuff like phone bills, software subscriptions are to be paid by the company itself.
All of the stuff mentioned above should be expensed by the company according to the IRS rules. But that doesn’t mean that you will definitely get a reimbursement for them, who follow the rules nowadays, right ladies and gents.
Do not get rid of your receipts
The company does not blindly pay you for the expenses, most of the time, the company will need documentation of your reimbursement. So it’s important for you to keep the receipts of your purchases and they should be submitted along with a reimbursement form.
All of that’s good but you may not be able to prove the mileage, gas. So, the toll receipts should work. In case you are traveling a particular distance, you may also print and submit the directions from goggle maps or any other online mapping services.
If you have thrown away all of the receipts, don’t worry guys there’s a solution. If you’ve used your credit or debit card to make most payments, the bank will make records of the debit or credit card activity. Go to your online banking website and find the ‘account activity’ section. You should be able to find the electronic records for the purchases.
But if you have made the payments with liquid cash, the receipts are your only way to go.
Make categories for your expenses
Take the help of reimbursement form templates that are available online to categorize your expenses properly. Make sure that you are as clear and detailed as possible when listing down the expenses.
- First, mention the date when the expense was done.
- Secondly, insert the mode of payment, was it through credit card, check, cash, debit card etc.
- And finally, put in the purpose of your expense, was it to travel or was it for lodging etc.
Receive the reimbursement
Most of the reimbursements take at least 30 days, but it’s also possible for you to get an instant reimbursement. According to the company’s policy, an employee might also have to submit external paperwork. After all of that is done, the employee should get an untaxed check of the amount.
