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The new Reimbursement and Expense Recovery Bonus Policy and Standard is effective beginning January 1, 2023. |
| Standard Name: | Reimbursement and Expense Recovery Bonus Standard |
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| Relevant Policies: | Reimbursement and Expense Recovery Bonus Policy |
| Relevant Forms: | |
| Creation Date: | |
| Last Revision Date: |
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General Guidelines
Stewardship Responsibility
As noted in the policy linked above, field staff are expected to utilize sound judgment and careful financial management in regard to ministry-related expenses. This means ensuring that Reliant financial resources are used appropriately; support the ministry; comply with Reliant policies, applicable laws, regulations, and donor restrictions; and consider the reputation of the ministry in the sense that we strive for propriety in both fact and appearance. Our stewardship responsibility also means utilizing Reliant's non-profit status for ministry purposes alone and not for personal benefit (e.g. avoiding state sales tax on personal items).
General Criteria for Determining A Permissible Expense
As noted in the policy linked above, the general criteria for determining whether an expense qualifies for reimbursement are that the expense must be
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Note: Reliant reserves the right to determine whether or not an expense fulfills the above criteria and to decline reimbursement of expenses that do not meet the criteria.
Submission Request Types
Payment of a ministry expense may be done through the following types of submission requests:
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Expense Recovery Bonus: Submissions requesting recovery of expenses that do not qualify for non-taxable reimbursement under the IRS guidance are referred to as “Expense Recovery Bonus”or ERB. ERB payments take the form of a bonus which will be treated as additional taxable wages (compensation) for the field staff. Due to the fact that only paid employees can receive a taxable bonus, associates are not eligible to submit a request for an ERB or for any expense that has a taxable (ERB) component.
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Key Change to the Standard: Expense Recovery Bonus (ERB) is the new term for what was formerly known as a taxable reimbursement. |
As with other taxable wages, estimated income taxes will be deducted from the employee's payroll for the item purchased and recovered using an ERB, based on the employee's current tax settings. To help offset the amount of tax that will be deducted, an automatic 25% bonus will be added to all ERB submissions. For example, an ERB submission for a $100 expense would result in an ERB of $125 in order to account for the estimated taxes associated with this taxable bonus. Employees may opt out of the 25% bonus for estimated taxes by selecting to exclude the tax bonus in the expense submission.
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Key Change to the Standard: The bonus for estimated taxes has been increased to 25% (instead of the previous 20%). It is also now defaulted to automatically be added to the expense recovery bonus expense. In the past, the default was to not add the bonus, and field staff had to check the box to request that it be added. |
Alternative Expense Submission Types
While most expense submissions by field staff will be in the form of either a Reimbursement or an ERB, there are several alternative means of recovering the cost of ministry expenses. They are listed in the drop-down below:
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Relevant Forms
All expense submissions should use the appropriate form, each of which is listed in the drop-down below with accessible links. Please open a new form for each month's expense submission (rather than copying a form that has previously been submitted) in order to ensure the use of updated forms and to aid accurate and timely expense processing.
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Links for Applicable Expense Submission Forms
With each expense submitted on the relevant form there should be:
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Submission Timeframe
For all Reimbursements and ERBs, requests must be received within 60 days after the end of the month in which the expense is incurred. An expense is incurred when an item is purchased or, in the case of pre-payment for travel, when the travel has actually taken place, as long as both the payment date and travel date are listed on the receipt for documentation.
Late submissions exceeding this timeframe require an exception request. Late submissions are not guaranteed reimbursement and will be considered on a case-by-case basis. The exception request must include a valid reason for the late submission and include supervisor approval.
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Key Change to the Standard: Under the previous policy and standard, approved late submissions were automatically considered taxable wages. Going forward, that will no longer be the case. Approved late submissions will be treated like any other expense regarding taxability. Therefore, if an expense Reimbursement would normally be considered non-taxable, it will remain non-taxable if approved for late submission. |
Please review the table below for more details on the timing of receiving Reimbursement/bonus funds based on the submission date.
Payment Dates
| Reimbursement Submitted By... | Paid to the Bank Account of Field Staff By... |
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| Between 1st - 15th of the month | The last business day of the same month |
| Between the 16th - 31st of the month | The 20th of the following month, or the preceding business day if the 20th falls on a weekend or holiday |
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| Expense Recovery Bonus (ERB) Submitted By... | Paid to the Bank Account of Field Staff By... |
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| Last day of the month | Payment included in the following month's paycheck |
Submission Review and Approval
If the criteria for determining a permissible expense are not met on the original submission, the expense may be resubmitted on a new submission form with the corrected information (in the event it was due to insufficient documentation) or an appeal may be submitted through an exception request in the event that the reason for denial was related to other criteria that require a director review for approval.
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Project Fund Expenses In addition to individual MTD accounts, Reliant also manages funds for ministries, non-profits, and churches. When an expense is not related directly to a field staff's specific job role but is more closely aligned to a project or ministry, a project fund Reimbursement can be submitted. Reimbursements from a project require all the same documentation as those from an MTD account and are processed according to the same submission deadlines. Project fund reimbursements also require approval by a designated signer for the fund. These types of Reimbursements are paid directly from the project fund, based on available funds as well as based on the order in which they were received. The MTD account balance the field staff is responsible for does not incur the expense for these reimbursed costs (therefore the order of pay from the MTD account does not apply) so it is possible for an employee who has backpay and back Reimbursements to receive payment for a Reimbursement that was submitted to be paid from a project fund. Reliant pays project fund Reimbursements if there are available funds in the project fund. It is possible for a project fund to accumulate back Reimbursements. (See Project Fund Reimbursements for more details.) If an expense being submitted through a project fund will be owned, stored, and considered solely the property of the church/ministry (with no personal usage by the individual submitting the request) then the expenses are attributable to the church/ministry, which is not taxed for expenses that are normally fully or partially taxed to the field staff MTD fund. If an expense is not for an item that will be considered the sole property of the church/ministry, then a field staff can still specify that the project fund (rather than an MTD account) should be the source of funds for a Reimbursement or ERB. In the case of an ERB, the taxable expenditure (including expenses with a partial taxable component) is processed in a manner similar to ERBs funded through MTD accounts. The ERB for project funds can only be routed through a paid employee's payroll; therefore, Reliant associates may not request an expense recovery using a project fund for payment for any taxable expenditures. |
Sufficient Funds
As noted above, expense submissions may draw on funds from either the MTD account for which the field staff or associate is responsible or a project fund pertinent to the field worker's ministry. In either case, sufficient funds are required before payment is issued for the expense submission. (See also "Lack of Funding for Reimbursements and ERBs" below for details on what occurs when sufficient funds are not available.)
Lack of Funding for Reimbursements and ERBs
If the funding source (i.e., MTD account or project fund) lacks sufficient monies to cover the submitted expense, then the expense submission is considered a back reimbursement or back pay, as described below.
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Exiting Employment with Unpaid Reimbursements If a field staff is exiting employment and has reached his/her final month of payroll without receiving enough funds to fully cover the total amount of a submitted reimbursement, Reliant will automatically reimburse a portion (based on available funds) of the submitted reimbursement without the field staff needing to submit a request for partial payment of the reimbursement.
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Order of Pay
Reliant will pay approved Reimbursements and ERBs following Reliant's Order of Pay. While Order of Pay considers a variety of additional payroll-related elements, expense submissions follow this order:
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As a reminder, timecards must be up to date for hourly employees to be eligible to receive Reimbursements and ERBs. |
Resolution of Removed or Denied Reimbursement Requests
Upon its review of expense submissions, Reliant may remove or deny expenses or return submitted expense forms due to a variety of reasons. Explanations for the return or denial of submitted expenses can be found in Google comments within the Google Doc, the Reliant email of field staff, or Staffnet. Field staff are responsible for checking their Reliant email and Staffnet for reimbursement notes and to initiate with Reliant if there are questions about those notes. Reliant will notify field staff via email or Google Drive comments if a form is fully denied.
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If the expense was removed due to a policy issue, a formal exception request must be submitted.
Receipt Guidelines
Reliant requires that itemized receipts for expenses greater than $75 must be submitted along with the appropriate form. (The only exception to the $75 limit is that a receipt is always needed for all hotel/lodging receipts regardless of the amount requested for reimbursement.)
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