Submitting Expenses

Go to the Collective you're submitting the expense to and click "Submit Expense".

On the Submit expense page, you can submit two types of expenses, reimbursements and invoices. On this page, you can also check the Collective balance, review expense policies and get the answers to a few of the most frequently asked questions.

Payee information

In the first step, you can specify who will be paid for this expense (an individual or an organization) and which payment method you wish to use.

If you are invoicing through a company, create an organization profile for your company and select it here instead of using your personal profile, so the correct entity is recorded as being paid for tax purposes.

Additionally, the invoice form will ask for your country, physical address, and give you the option to add more info.

Payout Methods

The availability of certain options depends on which plan the organization adopts, and may include bank transfers, PayPal, or a custom method.

Bank transfers

You can either select a saved bank account or add a new one. To add a new bank account:

1. Select the currency in which you would like to receive your payment.

2. Transaction Method: Select 'local bank account'

Account Information

1. Select Personal or Business

2. Fill all fields with the requested info, making sure to not use any acronyms. All fields are mandatory and may vary depending on the selected currency.

Our bank transfer feature uses Wise and is only available in countries Wise serves. For an up-to-date list of countries, please refer to their website.

If your country does not allow Wise payment, and no other alternatives exist, we will suggest looking into Payoneer as a possible option.

PayPal

To use PayPal, you can either select one of the saved PayPal accounts or add a new one by adding the email address registered in said account.

Custom payment method

Add any relevant info necessary to complete the transaction.

Reimbursements

A reimbursement allows you to be reimbursed for a purchase you already made. To open the submission form, click on Reimbursement and add a title to your expense.

Adding receipts

Reimbursements must have receipts. Upload one or multiple receipts by dragging and dropping files or opening the file selector. Describe each item and add the date of purchase and amount spent.

A valid receipt contains:

1. Name of the vendor (person or company you paid)

2. Transaction date (when you paid)

3. A detailed description of goods or services purchased (what you bought)

4. Amount paid

5. Form of payment (cash, check, or last four digits of the credit card)

Invoices

An invoice allows you to be paid for your work, or to get funds in advance of a purchase. If you don't have a receipt for a reimbursement, you can submit an invoice instead.

To open the submission form, click on Invoice and add a title to your expense.

If you have an invoice ready, you can upload it as an attachment to the expense. However, you are still required to set invoice details such as description, date and amount.

If you don't upload an invoice, the expense itself functions as an invoice for accounting purposes, as it contains all required information.

Expense summary

The Expense summary provides you with an overview of the expense to be submitted, including attached files, items being paid for, payout preferences, etc. The summary allows you to review all info and quickly edit it if needed by clicking on Edit expense.

For invoices, the expense summary serves as the official invoice document. You can download it for your accounting records if you wish.

You can also add a private note to the admins. Once your expense is ready, click on Submit expense.

Regular, Recurring Expenses

You can set an expense to automatically recur on a periodic basis in the Expense Summary:

Selected the desired Frequency and (optionally) an End Date.

After the period of time selected has passed a new, draft expense will be created and the author is notified to review, complete and submit the expense.

Draft expenses are based on the previous Expense submitted in the same group. Each edit made to the previous expenses will persist to the next.

It is also possible to set an End Date for this recurring expense, which can be useful for setting up reminders for pre-defined contracts.

While editing a new draft, you'll also see a banner displaying information about the recurring nature of the expense:

You can also cancel any recurring expense, just click on Edit details in the recurring expense information banner and later, click on the Cancel Recurring Expense button. Done, this draft is now deleted and you'll no longer receive recurring drafts about this expense.

Multi-Currency Expenses

When submitting an invoice or reimbursement you can now choose to submit in the currency of the Collective, or the currency of your payment method.

Supported Currencies

• Wise: Collective currency or payout method currency, with the limitation of the currencies that are supported by Wise

• PayPal: any currency supported by PayPal

• Other: Any currency accepted by the host. Please contact the host admin if you're unsure about whether it will be accepted.

When making a payment you will receive the full amount in the currency you selected, regardless of fluctuations in currency rates.

How do we calculate our Exchange Rate?

• We rely on the payout provider (Wise, PayPal) whenever possible

• Otherwise, we fall back on internal caching and third-party APIs, mostly https://fixer.io