Employee repayments

Overview

Occasionally, one of your employees may accidentally use their Brex card or request a reimbursement for a personal expense. If this happens, you can use our employee repayments feature to request repayment for their card transaction or (for domestic employees) previously approved reimbursements. Brex does not set your expense policy, so if an employee declines a repayment request or has not repaid a particular expense that you believe should be repaid, that’s a discussion that would not be facilitated by the Brex platform. Note: Brex can only facilitate money movement for a repayment in the US. For employees outside of the US or employees that have been paid outside of Brex, you can use Mark as paid to track the repayment, but must handle money movement outside of the Brex platform, such as a deduction in the employee’s next paycheck.

Enable repayments

Initiate repayment

Any user—admin or otherwise, can submit a repayment for an expense made on their Brex card by following these steps. Note: The transaction must be approved before you can request that an employee repay it. Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Wallet and click on the transaction you want to repay. Step 2: Click Repay in the transaction details window. Step 3: If you haven’t already done so, connect a bank account where the payment will draw from. Note: Be sure to connect your bank account via Plaid. You cannot use a bank account connected manually via account and routing number for an employee repayment. Step 4: Click Submit repayment. Your repayment will take 4-6 business days to process. Note: Requests for repayments can be tracked through the dashboard for employees with both US-based and internationally-based bank accounts. Employees with internationally-based bank accounts will need to pay requests back outside of Brex.

Request repayment

If you notice that an employee has an expense on their card that they need to repay, an account admin, card admin, or manager can send them a repayment prompt. Note: The transaction must be approved before you can request that an employee repay it. Step 1: In your dashboard or mobile app, go to Expenses and click on the card transaction or reimbursement you’d like to request a repayment for. Step 2: In the transaction details window, click Request repayment. Step 3: Provide a reason for the request and click Send request. If you’d like to remove the request, open the transaction anytime before it’s been paid, click the three dots at the bottom of the pane, and click Cancel repayment request. Requests that are already paid cannot be canceled.

Repayment request response

Note: If you received an email prompt to repay a transaction or reimbursement, you can skip the first step by clicking View expense from the email. Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Tasks. Find and click on the transaction in the repayment requests section at the top of the page. Step 2: In the transaction details window, click Repay. Step 3: If you haven’t already done so, connect a bank account where the payment will draw from. Step 4: Click Submit repayment.

Partial repayment

Partial repayment is only allowed on card expenses. It isn’t available for reimbursement repayments. To partially repay a card expense, the expense needs to be itemized to isolate the portion of the expense for repayment. You can click Itemize this expense in the transaction details window to do this. After itemizing the expense, go to the portion of the expense you want to repay and follow the steps listed above. Itemization will only be possible if the following conditions are true:

• You are an account admin/card admin/bookkeeper, owner of the expense, or manager of the expense owner
• Repayment hasn’t been requested yet
• The transaction has cleared/posted and isn’t pending
• There isn’t a merchant dispute in process
• The expense isn’t already itemized
• The expense hasn’t already been exported to your company’s ERP or is preparing to export

Mark as paid

Employee repayments where the actual money repayment is processed through Brex aren’t supported for the following situations:

• The employee is using a non-USD bank account to repay
• The billing currency for the expense isn’t in USD
• The employee has not connected US supported bank account via Plaid

In these situations, you can click Mark as paid to track repayments and handle the monetary element outside of Brex through your payroll process. No journal entries will be created or sent to your ERP. Step 1: Follow the same steps to request an employee repayment. Step 2: Once the repayment has been handled, in your dashboard, go to Expenses > All expenses and click on the transaction you requested a repayment for. Step 3: In the transaction details window, click Mark as paid.

Review repayments paid outside of Brex

Admins can review repayments made outside of Brex by going to Tasks > Repayments. If you mark a repayment as paid, it will remove the task without initiating a payment.

Retry failed repayment

Your repayment could fail to complete for a number of reasons. For example, if you’re trying to use an invalid account or routing number, or if your personal bank account has restrictions in place. Details on why a repayment failed can be found in your Brex dashboard. Once you’ve addressed the problem to ensure successful repayments in the future, follow these steps to retry any past failed repayments. Step 1: Go to Expenses or Wallet and click on the failed repayment to view its details. This is where you’ll find the failure reason, as well as possible suggestions to fix it. Step 2: Click the Retry payment button at the bottom of the detail pane to resubmit the repayment. Step 3: In the popup menu, confirm that the correct bank account is selected and its details are correct. Then click Repay.