To assign employees' expenses to advance payments

If you grant an advance to an employee, for example, to cover traveling costs, you can assign the employee's expenses to the advance payment.

Usually, the following sequence of events takes place:

  1. The employee requests for an advance.
  2. The manager approves the request.
  3. The company makes an advance payment to the employee.
  4. The employee spends (part of) the amount during a business trip.
  5. The employee returns the receipts.
  6. The manager approves the expenditures.
  7. The employee returns the approved receipts and the remaining cash to the company.

To assign advance payments to expenses, in the Assign Unallocated/Advance Payments to Invoices (tfcmg2106s000) session, click New and in the Assignment Type field, select Expense. Next, you can enter the details in the Enter Payment Amounts for Assignment (tfcmg2119s000) session.

The following rules apply:

  • You must define a business partner for the payments and the advance receipts. You can define one, or a few, business partners and use these for advances and expenses from multiple employees, or you can define a business partner for each employee. For the business partner you must define at least the invoice-from and the pay-to roles.
  • The expenses must be posted to a ledger account of the Profit & Loss type which is not used as a control account, an intercompany account, as an integration account, or for fixed assets.
  • The tax code of the transactions must be for Singular Tax and the Tax Type must be other than Shifted.

Example of the postings

You give your employee an advance of USD 1000 to meet travel expenses. The employee returns receipts for USD 600 and USD 400 remaining cash. This results in the following postings:

Register the advance payment to the employee
Debit Advance Payment 1000
Credit Cash 1000
Assign the expenses to the advance payment
Debit Costs 600
Credit Advance Payment 600
Register receipt of the cash returned by the employee
Debit Cash 400
Credit Advance Receipt 400
Link the advance receipt with the advance payment
Debit Advance Receipt 400
Credit Advance Payment 400