Expense Types

Location: Travel and Expense Claims > Expense Types

Travel claim expense types, such as mileage allowances, daily allowances, and compensations for meals, are created on the Expense Types page. In travel claims, only the expense types as defined here can be entered. The daily allowance is country-specific. Because the compensations change every year, the expense types shall be updated exactly at the turn of the year. At the turn of the year, the new compensations must be retrieved from the tax authority guides.

It is wise to create expense types at the general level. However, if the companies are using different posting structures and you want to use automated posting that is based on expense and the travel types you must justify each expense type separately. Also in an international environment, different companies in different countries must use different expense types.

Expense Type field identifies the entered expense type.

The Country and Region –field's country data is relevant when the daily allowance type is Foreign Daily allowance, Partial Daily Allowance, Full Daily Allowance, Other Daily Allowance and Other Partial Daily Allowance. For other expense types, the country data are not relevant.

Region data describes the destinations within the country in more detail. The region data is used only in connection with daily allowance expense types where the size of the daily allowance depends on in which region of a particular country the travel took place. The expense type input and change section displays the Region field in the Country and Region column below the Country dropdown. If more than one Foreign Daily Allowance type expense types are saved on one country code, you can leave the Region entry field empty for one Foreign Daily Allowance type expense type of the relevant country code. Enter a region for other Foreign Daily Allowance type expense types.

Note: The automatic daily allowance calculation is only possible for Finnish travel claims. The foreign daily allowance is determined by the travel route of the travel claim according to country data. The foreign daily allowance is calculated on the basis of the country data of the travel route. Also when making domestic travel claims, the expense type country codes are checked upon calculating the daily allowance. For other countries, there is no automatic calculation of daily allowances. The daily allowance is then determined by the selected expense type and by the compensation amounts assigned to this expense type.

Summary Level defines in the expense report the level to which the expense type in question belongs and to which the amounts and totals of the expense types are summed for the report. Summary levels are created in the function Expense Type Summary Levels.

Price is the unit price proposed according to the expense type for the travel claim.

Note: After saving, editing the daily allowances and other expense type prices affects the new travel claims that are to be saved.

Tax-free is the tax-free amount of the maximum possible compensation for the expense type. For example, for daily allowances the maximum possible amount of tax-free compensation reported by the taxpayer is used in this. Daily allowances paid in excess of this are therefore taxable income.

Note: If the expense type is defined as an expense of the Tax-free Allowance type, the data in the Tax-free column is not used. In this case, the expense is always tax-free.

The Type defines the expense type. As a rule, these are used by Finnish companies and in Finnish travel claims. This information can also be used by foreign companies to group data. Some of the types are such that the type is used for only one expense type. These are marked with an * sign.

The expense type Meal Reimbursement refers to meal reimbursements that are paid in accordance with the labor agreement.
Advance category expense type refers to a travel advance based on a travel plan or some other advance payment.
Mileage Reimbursement (company Car) category expense type means a mileage allowance to be paid for a company car.
Mileage Reimbursement (own Car) category expense type means a mileage allowance paid for the use of a personal car.
Mileage Reimbursement (increase) category expense type means an extra compensation to be paid in addition to the mileage compensation, for example, an increase of the mileage allowance according to the number of persons traveling along or an increase paid according to the transported goods.
*Full Daily Allowance category expense type means a total daily allowance that is to be paid for a work trip of either over 10 hours or over 12 hours, depending on the applied calculation rules.
*Partial Daily Allowance category expense type means a partial daily allowance that is to be paid for a work trip of either 6-10 hours or 8-12 hours, depending on the applied calculation rules.
*Other Daily Allowance category expense type refers to half of the domestic daily allowance and it is half of the total daily allowance as stated by the tax authority.
*Other Partial Daily Allowance category expense type means half of the domestic partial daily allowance and it is half of the partial daily allowance as stated by the tax authority.
Foreign Daily Allowance category expense type means a daily allowance to be paid for a work trip in the country in question.
Taxed Allowance category expense type means all other taxable allowances that are not specifically included in the defined expense types.
Tax-free Allowance category expense type means all other tax-free allowances that are not included in the above mentioned expense type categories.

Code is an identifier that combines the expense type and the salary type used in payroll calculation. This code only has a meaning if travel claims are transferred to payroll calculation.

Tip: At the turn of the year, it is easy to copy the expense types from the previous year and then update the prices that have changed. Expense types are created either as general or company-specific. If company-specific expense types are in use, the new year's expense types must be created for all companies that are in use.

Postings

These are used for automatic posting of travel claims. Default postings for one expense type can be entered for employment type or for travel type. In this case the expense type of a travel claim will be posted according to what employment type has been saved for the person of the travel claim and according to what travel type has been selected for the travel claim. Travel types are managed in the screen that opens by pushing the Travel Types button in the Expense Types screen.

The posting to be used for an expense type is primarily searched through employment type. If you cannot find expense type postings directly through the employment type of the person making the travel claim person, you can look for postings for the primary employment.

Once you have found the correct employment level, the posting to be used will be determined by the travel type. If no postings have been specified for the travel type level that was selected for the travel claim, postings can be looked for in the Business Trip type level.

Discounted Distance Compensations

Some of the labor agreements in use set a limit for mileage allowances. When this limit is reached, the paid allowance decreases. You can specify discounted mileage allowances in the Discounted Kilometer Allowance screen of the Expense Types screen.

The input fields of the window show the reimbursement amounts and limits for the year selected in the Expense Types window. These are sorted per the calculation rules of the National, Municipal and Churchly levels.
For the general accounting rule, a mileage limit and the amount of the discounted mileage allowance can be defined. This is done in the Discounted Distance Compensation window by choosing In Use for the general calculation rule and by typing in the desired values in the Price and Compensation Limit fields, after which the changes must be saved.
From the Save button, a check is made that a valid monetary value has been entered in the input fields of the Price column. There must be a numeric value in the input fields of the Compensation Limit column.
The Return button closes the window without saving the changes.

Expense Type Summary Levels

Summary levels are utilized on the expense report where expense types are grouped in accordance with the summary levels.

The New Row button adds a new summary level. An optional name is given to the summary level and the type of the summary level is defined. The summary level type can be:

No Reimbursement: Travel expenses that will not be reimbursed to the traveler. Such expenses include, for example, credit card transactions. By using this summary level, all travel expenses can be processed under a single travel claim.
Mileage Reimbursement: Tax-free mileage reimbursement paid to the traveler.
Other Reimbursement: Reimbursement of other expenses.
Daily Allowances: Tax-free daily allowances and meal reimbursement paid to the traveler.

The summary level is saved with the Save button of the row.