Expense reimbursements
This article refers to a feature that might not be available in your current Brex plan. If you'd like to learn more about this feature and how to unlock additional capabilities in Brex's upgraded plans, please have your account or card admin reach out to Brex Support by clicking on Support in your dashboard.
Overview
We support comprehensive reimbursement capabilities for your entire global team. Even if employees happen to spend on their personal cards, you can still leverage the comprehensive approval, compliance, policy, automation, and accounting capabilities in Brex’s spend platform. The reimbursement features let you:
- Invite employees to submit reimbursement requests, even if they don't have a Brex card.
- Ensure all submitted reimbursements are to policy and have necessary compliance information.
- Approve a reimbursement in two clicks or less from your Expenses tab.
- Set up managers to approve reimbursements before they come to your finance team.
- Set up payment settings per entity, with custom funding sources, payment cycles, and accounting.
- Instantly reconcile reimbursements through our comprehensive accounting integrations.
Enable reimbursements
Account and card admins can set up reimbursements for their company by following the steps below. Note: Please first allowlist the ACH ID 9121145349.
For your main account (parent entity)
Step 1: Go to Accounts and click Reimbursement Setup or Company settings > Plan > Set up employee reimbursements. Step 2: Go through our step-by-step guide to set up funding sources and payment settings. Step 3: Choose whether to fund your reimbursements through your Brex business account or a US-based external bank account that has already been linked to your Brex account. If you cannot connect your external bank account through your dashboard, you won’t be able to use it for reimbursements. Note: The main account needs to be funded by a US-based bank account. Step 4: Set up hierarchical approvals and invite employees. All your invited employees can utilize Brex reimbursements through the web or mobile app. You can also adjust your employees’ permissions to let them submit reimbursement requests even if they don’t have access to a Brex card. By default, payments for your main account are pulled daily. Your payment cycle determines the frequency of the bulk pulls from your funding source and the batched payouts to your employees.
For each subsidiary entity
By default, reimbursements for all your subsidiaries are funded by your parent entity in USD. However, you can choose to separate reimbursement payments by configuring different funding sources, or locally funding your reimbursements for each individual entity.
Step 1: Go to Account > Reimbursements.
Step 2: Under Balance, you can see the entities that are paid with the parent. Click Manage.
Step 3: On the side panel, click Set up individual payment for the specific entity. Each entity can configure its own funding source and payment cycle, as applicable.
Note: Payment cycles are defaulted to “daily.” Your payment cycle determines the frequency of the bulk pulls from your funding source and the batched payouts to your employees.
Step 4: Click Review. Review details, agree to the terms, and click Confirm.
Require spend limits for reimbursement requests
New for FallYou can make spend limits required for reimbursements in Company settings > Expenses. If you enable this, you’ll make selecting a spend limit for reimbursements required. If disabled, the spend limit will be optional when a user submits a reimbursement, they can choose to associate the expense with a spend limit, which applies the spend limit’s policy and approval chain to the reimbursement. If they choose not to associate a spend limit, the default policy and approval chain will apply to the reimbursement, instead. All reimbursements will appear in Expenses, whether or not it has a spend limit. If the submitter doesn’t select a spend limit, approvers have the option to choose one during the review.
Fund reimbursements
By default, reimbursements are processed daily. This means that your funding source will have a bulk pull once per day, and employees will receive a batched payout once per day. All of these transactions are accounted for via Cash accounting. With certain ERPs, you can customize your payment cycle as per your needs, scheduling them to occur weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. You can also set custom configurations for your separate entities. Each entity can configure its own payment configuration. When using custom payment cycles, these transactions are accounted for via Accrual accounting. Custom payment cycles can help align reimbursements with your accounting process or corporate reimbursement policy. It is important to note that payment cycles will increase the time for your employees to receive their reimbursements. For USD-funded entities, one bulk amount covering all approved reimbursements will be pulled via ACH from your entity's configured funding source. For locally funded entities, an account or card admin will need to push money to the payment instructions provided to fund the payouts. For locally funded reimbursements with EU and UK based entities, an account or card admin must authorize new employee accounts viaStrong Customer Authentication (SCA) before funding a reimbursement due to EU and UK regulations. You can see all the employee accounts that are waiting to be added by going to Accounts > Reimbursements > Make payment. Verify the one-time password and click Authorize to proceed. You’ll only be asked once for any new employee account that you’ll reimburse to in the EU and UK. Upon receipt of funding, Brex will process batched payouts to your employees. This means that if there are five approved reimbursements for $10 each for a single employee since the last payment cycle, that employee will see a single transaction for $50 to their bank account. The employee will receive communication of this payment and the reimbursements that contributed to the total of $50 received. You can set your preferred billing cycle in your dashboard and, if you have multiple entities, can customize the funding source and billing cycle per entity. This is all done in your dashboard under Accounts > Reimbursements. Here, you can click on your specific entity and choose either Make payment or Manage payments. Note: You can make a payment at any time, even mid-cycle. At the end of the cycle, the statement will reflect that the payment was initiated mid-cycle and will be accounting for the final balance.
See who can receive a reimbursement
In order for a team member to submit a reimbursement request and receive a reimbursement, they must connect a personal bank account , where they’ll receive their reimbursed payment. Account and card admins can see which team members are eligible for reimbursements by following the steps below. Note: Only the employee themselves can see the status of their personal bank account connection. Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Team. Step 2: Click on the name of any employee whose status you want to know. Step 3: Under Roles & Access, find Submit reimbursements.
- If this is toggled on, the employee is eligible for reimbursements.
- If this is toggled off, the employee is not eligible for reimbursements.
Submit reimbursement request
Employees can submit reimbursement requests for business expenses that were paid out of pocket by following the steps below.
All reimbursement types
In your dashboard
IStep 1: Go to Wallet and click Request reimbursement. Step 2: Select Out of pocket or Mileage based on your reimbursement. If you haven’t already, you will be asked to connect your personal bank account to receive your funds. Step 3: Upload one or more receipts when prompted. We’ll automatically read all the receipts and pre-fill data for you. If you’re missing or weren’t issued a receipt, click Missing or don’t have a receipt?. Your account or card admin may reach out to you before approval for more information. Step 4: If required, choose the spend limit to fund your reimbursement request. Step 5: Enter the details for all the required fields and press Submit.
In your app
Step 1: After opening your app, tap Request reimbursement. Step 2: Select Out of pocket or Mileage based on your reimbursement. If you haven’t already, you will be asked to connect your personal bank account to receive your funds. Step 3: Upload one or more receipts when prompted. You can take a photo of your receipt or upload multiple images from your phone’s photo library. We’ll automatically read all the receipts and pre-fill data for you. If you’re missing or weren’t issued a receipt, click Missing or don’t have a receipt?. Your account or card admin may reach out to you before approval for more information. Step 4: Enter the details for all the required fields and tap Submit.
Via email
Requesting a reimbursement via email creates a draft reimbursement request in your dashboard. You can then sign in to your dashboard and submit the reimbursement request for account or card admin approval. Step 1: From the same email address you use to sign in to Brex, begin drafting an email to reimbursements@brex.com, with your desired memo as the subject line. Note: You can forward an existing receipt email to reimbursements@brex.com with your desired memo as the subject line. No need to upload any additional documentation to the email body. Step 2: Attach one or more receipts for the transaction(s) you want to be reimbursed. A reimbursement request will be created for each receipt attached. Step 3: Sign into the Brex dashboard and find the draft reimbursement(s) in your Inbox. Step 4: Fill out any remaining details and submit the reimbursement(s).
Bulk upload
You can upload all your receipts at once, and our top-of-class algorithms will automatically parse your reimbursement receipt images. Prior to submission, you can make adjustments to the information or fill out any missing details. We recommend using the memo field to enter your trip or report description, so account and card admins can quickly approve all relevant reimbursements. Note: Bulk uploading still creates individual reimbursements.
Reimbursements for trips
If you booked a trip using a personal credit card, you can request a reimbursement by following the steps below.
In your dashboard
Step 1: Go to Trips and click on the trip you want a reimbursement for. Step 2: Click the three dots and choose Request reimbursement.
Partial reimbursements
Request less than expense amount
When going through the flow to submit a reimbursement request, the Amount field may auto-populate to the entire cost of the expense you’re requesting reimbursement for. If you need to request a partial reimbursement that is less than the amount of the expense, you can manually change the Amount field during the submission process.
For example, let’s assume you made a purchase for $150 but only need to reimburse $100. You can manually update the Amount field to $100.
Separate one receipt across multiple spend limits
You can separate your receipt across multiple spend limits by submitting multiple reimbursement requests with the same receipt and assigning to the right spend limit. For example, if you made a purchase for $150, but $80 is for spend limit A and $70 is for spend limit B, you’d start by submitting one reimbursement request for spend limit A. For this request, you can upload the receipt and set the requested reimbursement amount to $80. After submission, submit another reimbursement request for spend limit B by uploading the same receipt and setting the requested reimbursement amount to $70. You can use the memo and comment thread to provide context to expedite approval.
View saved reimbursement draft
You can save reimbursements as a draft to be submitted later. You can find draft reimbursements in the Inbox page and the status of your reimbursement under Expenses > Your requests.
Cancel reimbursement request
You can delete a pending reimbursement request by following the steps below, so long as it hasn’t been approved yet. If the reimbursement has already been approved, domestic employees can arrange a repayment. If you’re an international employee, we recommend reaching out to your account or card admin to address the situation.
In your dashboard
Step 1: Go to Wallet and click on the personal reimbursement request you want to cancel. Account admins and card admins can see reimbursement requests submitted by their entire team in Expenses. Note: You cannot cancel a pending reimbursement that you didn’t request. Step 2: At the bottom of the details window, click Cancel request. Your account or card admin can also deny your reimbursement request by clicking Deny here, instead.
Delete reimbursement
Account and card admins can delete denied, failed, or canceled reimbursements so that they no longer appear in their dashboard. Employees can delete their own canceled reimbursements.
In your dashboard or app
Step 1: Select the reimbursement you want to delete. Step 2: At the bottom of the details window, click Delete. Note: Once a reimbursement is deleted, it cannot be undone. If you’ve exported the to your ERP, you can remove it by manually un-exporting from your provider.
Approve reimbursement request
Account and card admins will see a list of reimbursements needing approval in Inbox > Reimbursements On your app, these will appear in your Inbox. To approve a reimbursement, click an expense, view details on the right, and click Approve. To request more information from the employee, click on the Comments section to add a comment or Remind about documentation to receive reminders. After an account or card admin approves a reimbursement, employees will be notified by email and can expect to receive the funds based on the payment settings of the entity. Note: Once a reimbursement has been approved, it cannot be cancelled.
Rapid approval
Account and card admins can rapidly filter and bulk approves reimbursements from the Expenses page in your Brex dashboard. Here, you’ll find a side panel that lists out all of your company. By clicking Group, you can organize the list based on employee, trip, or other commonalities, so that you can view reimbursement requests in context to one another. Clicking Add Filter narrows down your search by parameters such as how many reimbursements have yet to be paid out, what expenses are pending for a specific subsidiary, or which expenses aren’t compliant. You can use more than one filter at a time. From here, you can bulk approve reimbursements by checking the boxes on the left side of each individual reimbursement or the box above to select all requests in a common group.
You can leave comments on a reimbursement request to ask the employee for more information about the transaction. Add a ‘@’ followed by the user’s name to tag them, or click Remind about documentation to send them an automated reminder.
Automated approval rules
You can configure your policies to auto-approve reimbursements that are under a certain dollar amount.
In your dashboard Premium Enterprise
Step 1: Go to Cards and Limits > Manage policies and click View all. Read this help article for more information on expense polices. Step 2: Select the policy you want to edit and click Edit. Step 3: You can skip the first page by clicking Next. Step 4: Click Edit to modify the approval flow for reimbursements. Step 5: Under Approvers, click Add rule. The default rule lets you choose the minimum dollar amount that requires approval from an account or card admin. For example, if you want reimbursements under $25 to be automatically approved, change For expenses equal to or above to $25.
You can configure secondary approvals for reimbursements by clicking Add another approval step. This adds another approver to pass the approval chain to after the primary approver has signed off.
You can also click Add another rule to make the required approval threshold even more specific. For example, you can configure auto-approval under $25, add single approval for expenses from $25 to $75, and a secondary approval for expenses over $75.
Delivery time
Employees will receive their reimbursement payout 4-8 days after it’s batched. Different types of reimbursements may have different timelines due to cross-border transfer timelines or payment settlement times. If your entity has configured custom payment cycles (i.e., weekly on Fridays), then funding will only occur as per that payment cycle and will still take 4-8 business days to be received by the employee. The estimated time of arrival for a reimbursement can be seen by clicking on the detailed pane of that reimbursement in the dashboard. Note: New accounts and new funding sources may experience longer than normal reimbursement periods due to ACH settlement risk. Please contact Brex Support if this is a prolonged issue.
Track reimbursement payout
After you have submitted your reimbursements, you can track the status of your reimbursement in your Brex dashboard by going to Wallet. To track another employee’s reimbursement, an account or card admin can go to Expenses. Locate the reimbursement you want to track from the list and click on it. In the detail pane, if the reimbursement is already approved and is processing, you will see the estimated time of arrival in the blue box:
The Audit trail helps you understand if the reimbursement is still pending approvals so you can reach out to your company admin to get more insights on the approval. Under Payment status, you will see if the reimbursement has been initiated to your bank account:
- Not Paid: Not yet initiated from the company
- Paid: The reimbursement should have arrived in your bank account
If the reimbursement has been paid, check your bank account for a transaction from your company’s name. The amount may be higher than your individual reimbursement amount since it will be batched with any other reimbursements that have been paid at the same time. This means that one transaction may include the amounts of multiple reimbursements. Check your email for a breakdown of the total amount into the individual reimbursements that have contributed to the batched payment.
Reimbursement accounting
All of our powerful accounting integrations are available for reimbursements. If your company/entity is configured to custom payment cycles (subject to ERP), reimbursements are exported by being accrued at the time of reimbursement approval and closed at the time of payment. Otherwise, reimbursements are exported as cash movements from your funding source. Each entity can configure its own reimbursement accounting settings and set global entities to be accounted for in local currency by following the steps here.
Global reimbursements
Read more about Brex’s comprehensive global capabilities in this help article.
Locally funded reimbursements
Premium Enterprise
Read more about Brex’s ability to receive local currency from your local bank accounts to fund reimbursements in this help article.
View reimbursement liability
Brex provides a global view of all your unpaid reimbursements liability across all your subsidiaries for easy global management. As reimbursements are paid out, this total balance will update automatically. You can view your total approved reimbursement balance in your dashboard under Account > Reimbursements.
Troubleshoot
There are multiple reasons why a reimbursement request might fail, but it can usually be attributed to a recipient issue or a funding issue. You can see if a reimbursement has failed by going to either the Expenses page for employee reimbursements, or the Wallet page for personal reimbursements. Filter for Payment status and click Declined/Failed. When you click on the expense, it will let you know why the reimbursement failed. In some cases, we automatically retry the failed reimbursements after the failure reason is identified and addressed. For example, we’ll re-attempt once a recipient user fixes their bank account issues or passes KYC.
Recipient issues
If the personal bank account information is not valid, the employee will need to reconnect their bank account. You can leave a comment in the details pane to help communicate this. After the employee has updated their bank account, we’ll automatically retry any failed reimbursements.
Funding issues
An error message referencing the company bank account may indicate that the bank account used for funding reimbursements doesn’t have enough funds available. If you still want to use this account to fund the reimbursement, you’ll need to increase its balance before retrying. Otherwise, you can choose to use a different bank account that already has the funds available.
After making sure your designated bank account has enough funds to cover the reimbursement, an account or card admin can click Retry payment at the bottom of the detail pane to pay the employee’s reimbursement.