| Standard Name: | Reimbursement and Expense Recovery Bonus Standard |
|---|---|
| Relevant Policies: | Reimbursement and Expense Recovery Bonus Policy |
| Creation Date: | |
| Last Revision Date: |
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).
As noted in the policy linked above, the general criteria for determining whether an expense qualifies for reimbursement are that the expense must be
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.
Payment of a ministry expense may be done through the following four types of submission requests:
Key Change to the Standard: Expense Recovery Bonus (ERB) is the new term for what was formerly known as a taxable reimbursement. These bonuses are now being routed through payroll rather than through the reimbursements queue. An unpaid bonus due to insufficient funds is now short-checked and held in the backpay queue. Please review the Order of Pay below for more detail. |
Add sufficient funds section and per diem and advances
All expense submissions should use the appropriate form, each of which is listed below with accessible links. Please open a brand 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.
Key Change to the Standard: The term Expense Submission is now used rather than simply Reimbursement when describing a submitted expense since an expense could be either a Reimbursement or an ERB or a related Advance. |
Links for Applicable Expense Submission Forms
Included on the form with each expense should be:
An explanation for each expense submitted, including:
Itemized original receipts and other appropriate substantiating documents
*Please refer to all Reimbursement Standards below, which detail receipt information and other specific criteria.
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.
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.
| Reimbursement Submitted By... | Paid to the Bank Account of Field Staff By... |
|---|---|
| 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 preceeding business day if the 20th falls on a weekend or holiday |
| Expense Recovery Bonus (ERB) Submitted By... | Paid to the Bank Account of Field Staff By... |
|---|---|
| Last day of the month | Payment included in the following month's paycheck |
Reliant will pay approved Reimbursements and Expense Recovery Bonuses following the Order of Pay, which includes:
Key Change to the Standard: Terminology has changed wherein "Back Reimbursement" was formerly known as a "cabinet expense". A Back Reimbursement is a reimbursement that is held back from paying due to a lack of sufficient funds. If there are multiple back reimbursements they are put into a queue and are paid in the order from which they are received. |
As a reminder, timecards must be up to date for hourly employees to be eligible for receiving reimbursements and expense recovery bonuses. |
Reimbursements and ERBs for field staff are normally paid from the staff's MTD account. They may also be paid from a project fund if approved by the project fund approver. 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.
Back Reimbursement
If the funding source (i.e., MTD account for which a field staff is responsible or approved project fund) does not contain sufficient funds to provide full reimbursement for the amount on an expense submission request form, Reliant will hold the form and delay reimbursement, storing the expense submission as a "back reimbursement" until sufficient funds are available in the funding source, according to Reliant's order of pay protocol. If a field staff has more than one back reimbursement, they will be paid out in the order in which the reimbursement submissions were received once funds become available for the whole amount of each individual reimbursement.
If the funding source covers only a portion of a back reimbursement, Reliant will not automatically partially pay the reimbursement. Field staff may request a reduction in the back reimbursement for a partial payment or completely remove it from the queue, but in such cases, the remaining portion of a partial back reimbursement or the back reimbursement removed from the queue will not be eligible for reinstatement should funding become available later. To illustrate the process for a partial reimbursement, suppose a field staff submits a $1,000 reimbursement that is next in line for the order of reimbursement payout and only $650 is available to pay out. The field staff may elect to send an email to reimbursements@reliant.org asking the reimbursement team to pay the $1,000 reimbursement using the available funds and acknowledging that the field staff forfeits any un-reimbursed portion of that reimbursement. Note: this action is completely voluntary and at the discretion of the field staff.
Here's a sample email of how to word the email.
"I would like to request that my April (Year-20xx) reimbursement totaling $X be paid out on X date using the available funds in the MTD account for which I am responsible. I acknowledge that any un-reimbursed funds from this reimbursement will be forfeited and unable to be reimbursed at a future date. "
Unpaid back reimbursements will be retained by Reliant for the remainder of the calendar year in which the expenses were incurred, plus two (2) additional calendar years. Once this period has expired (i.e., after January 31st of that next year, when all expense reimbursements have been completely processed and paid by Reliant), any un-reimbursed back reimbursement expenses will be marked as expired and can no longer be paid. Example: expenses submitted in 2019 are eligible for payment as a back reimbursement until January 31, 2022, if the field staff has raised sufficient funds by December 31, 2021.
Back Pay for ERBs
If funds are not available to pay an ERB, then Reliant will short-check those ERBs and include them with backpay, in accordance with Reliant's approved order of pay. In the order of pay, Expense Recovery Bonuses take precedence over Reimbursements, in accordance with IRS requirements. Back pay is eligible for compensation/payment during the year in which it is incurred plus two additional years. For example, if an ERB is submitted in March 2019 and the funding source lacks sufficient funds to pay it, the back pay resulting from the ERB is eligible to be paid until December 31, 2021.
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.
Key Change to the Standard: In the past, Reliant would only pay partial payments when it was requested, which included during exiting. Now, for exiting staff only, Reliant will automatically pay partial reimbursements (without receiving a request) if the funds are available. |
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.
If expenses are removed from or denied on an expense submission request, they may be resubmitted on a new form for further review. Field staff should be sure to check the guidelines to ensure they have included proper receipt documentation and only include the items that were previously removed on the new form submission. There is no extension to the original submission timeframe deadline for re-submissions.
If the expense was removed due to a policy issue, a formal exception request must be submitted.
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.)
Receipts must include the following itemized details:
Hand-Written Receipts
On the rare occasions when a field staff is unable to obtain a formal itemized receipt, hand-written receipts are acceptable as long as they contain the following information:
Receipts from Mobile/Banking App
For receipts from mobile apps (such as Venmo, Square Cash, PayPal, Google Wallet, or a banking app), field staff should be sure to include a clear description in the memo or "what's it for?" section of the transaction, to document what expense the payment is related to. The reimbursement submission should also include any information that is required for a valid receipt, that is not visible on the mobile app "receipt" (see the guidelines above for what details must be included on the itemized receipt for it to be acceptable.) In most cases, receipts for mobile apps will be for shared expenses. Please see the section below for details on receipts for shared expenses.
Receipts for Shared Expenses
If a Reliant field staff pays an individual for a portion of an expense that requires a receipt (and the portion exceeds $75), he/she will need to submit two receipts. This includes both a copy of the original receipt with the full expense amount listed from the individual who collected the money and paid for the full expense as well as a hand-written or mobile/banking app receipt for the portion paid to the individual. These two receipts provide Reliant with sufficient documentation of transactions. The expense submission should include all details required for the hand-written or mobile/banking app receipts as detailed above.