Employee expenses encompass the expenditures that an employee bears while carrying out job-related tasks for their employer. These expenses may encompass items such as travel, meals, communication, and office supplies. Consequently, the employee is initially responsible for covering these expenses personally, after which the company reimburses them. Odoo plays a significant role in facilitating this efficient management of expenses within the business. The reimbursement process may involve direct payment to the employee or occasionally be processed through the employee’s payslip.

With Odoo 16’s Expense module, companies can seamlessly incorporate the process of reimbursing employee expenses through payslips.

To reimburse the expenses incurred by employees in their upcoming payslips, users need to configure this functionality from the settings. Navigate to the settings menu and activate the “Reimburse in Payslip” option.

Expenses > Configuration > Settings

=> Activate Reimburse in payslip and save.

Expenses > Configuration > Expense Categories

An expense category is a classification that encompasses an employee’s various expenses, including items such as travel, food, and communication expenditures.

To create and manage a new category, navigate to the “Expense Categories” section under the configuration tab.

=> Click on the New button to create a category.

Here you need to input specific details such as the Price, Unit of Measurement, Internal Reference, and applicable Taxes. When it comes to re-invoicing the client for the expense, you have the option to use either the Cost or the Sales Price. Additionally, you can include an internal note for reference purposes.

Expenses > My Expenses

Let’s now create a new expense for an employee.

Here, the employee is initiating the expense report. The expense pertains to a lunch meeting with a client, and the chosen category is “Meals.” The total expenditure for this lunch is $200. The expense was incurred on September 18, and it will be reimbursed in the payslip for September.

If you need to attach a receipt or bill to the expense, you can do so by using the “ATTACH RECEIPT” button. After attaching the necessary documents, click on the “CREATE REPORT” button to generate the expense report.

Reimbursement only occurs after verifying the legitimacy of the expense. To facilitate this verification, the expense report needs to be submitted to the manager for approval.

Once the report is submitted for the manager’s approval, the manager will have the option to either approve or reject the expense report.

After approval, the manager has two available options. The first option is to post the journal entries, and the second option is to include the approved expense in the employee’s upcoming payslip.

To refund the employee’s expense through their payslip, simply click on “Report on Next Payslip.” This action will ensure that the approved expense is reimbursed in the employee’s upcoming payslip.

Generating Employee Payslips

Payroll > Payslips > To Pay

=> Click the “NEW” button to initiate the creation of a payslip for the employee.

=> Select the Employee

=> Choose the period for which you are generating payslip

=> Save & click on the compute sheet button

In the Salary Computation tab, you can access the calculated salary. Within this section, you will find that the Expense Reimbursement rule has included a $200 allowance, representing the expenses incurred by the employee in September.

You will find a smart button for expenses, and upon clicking it, you can access the records of expenses.

This implies that any expenses incurred by the employee are reimbursed through their subsequent month’s payslip. Leveraging the advanced features of Odoo 16, businesses can effectively streamline their expense management, leading to improved efficiency and financial control.