What is Brex’s recommended expense policy?
For card expenses
A memo is required.
Expenses over $75 require the following:
Itemized receipt is required for
Airline Expenses
Car Rental
Event Expenses
Facilities Expenses
Gambling
General Merchandise
Lodging
Private Air Travel
Public Transportation
Rideshare and Taxi
Vehicle Expenses
Non-itemized receipt is required for all other categories.
The user’s manager must approve.
For reimbursements
A memo and itemized receipt are required.
The user’s manager and then any admin must approve.
How did Brex come to this recommendation?
We met with compliance experts to determine best practices for expense substantiation. We determined:
Itemized receipts are essential for transactions >$75 for certain expense categories such as travel, entertainment, and spend from multiple categories.
Receipts with basic details (date, amount, and merchant) can be sufficient for other categories of spend.
Why should I use this policy?
Our starter T&E policy ensures you have what you need to meet best practices for expense substantiation while minimizing employee burden and maximizing compliance. With this policy, we can automatically generate receipts for the majority of all transactions — meaning less receipt chasing for you and your team.
Expenses which require itemized receipts may be automatically generated or be satisfied with an employee uploading an itemized receipt. Expenses which require non-itemized receipts can be met with the information Brex has as a credit card provider. Brex will generate a receipt which will include the amount, date, and merchant.
This policy includes automatic receipt validation by default, which verifies receipts match expense details to speed up the process of reviewing receipts.
How do I use the starter policy?
Your Brex representative will work with you to configure policies. When you create new budgets, you can select the “Starter T&E Policy” to be used as the policy for that budget.
Can I modify this policy or create a new policy?
You can modify this policy or create a policy to fit your needs, but we encourage you to follow the recommended requirements. Employees should only need to add documentation when they are absolutely required, and Brex can do the rest.
How can I make sure employees are still held accountable for spending?
Empower has many ways to ensure employee accountability:
Flexible budgets ensure employees can’t spend more on their card than allocated.
Budgets allow you to block spend for certain categories.
Policy details educate employees on what they can spend on.
AI-driven anomaly detection auto-flags suspicious or out-of-policy transactions.
Audit trails allow you to see stages of an expense — like policy review or payment — for ultimate visibility.