Claim, approve and pay expenses

How a claim moves

Every claim starts as Waiting. An approver approves or rejects it, and an approved claim is marked paid once the money has gone out. Nothing is ever deleted: a claim the person takes back stays in their list as Withdrawn.

Make a claim

Expenses → My claims → New claim. Pick the date (today or up to 90 days back), the category and the amount, and add a note saying what it was for so the approver does not have to ask. Optionally link the lead the cost was for. Submit claim sends it for approval.

• Categories: Travel, Fuel, Food, Hotel, Phone and internet, Client meeting, Parking and tolls, Supplies and Other, or the ones your workspace keeps
• By distance: for Travel and Fuel, when your workspace has a rate per km, enter the kilometres instead and LumaKol works out the amount from the rate
• Receipt: a photo (JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC) or a PDF, up to 8 MB, saved to your own Google Drive

Add a receipt, edit or withdraw

My claims shows the month’s claims with their status, and totals for Waiting for approval, Approved but not paid, Paid and Rejected. While a claim is waiting you can edit it, add or replace its receipt, or withdraw it. A rejected claim shows the approver’s reason: edit it, or add the missing receipt, and it goes back for approval.

Approve or reject

Approvers have a To approve tab with every claim waiting for them, oldest first, and the sidebar shows how many. Open the receipt from the claim, then press Approve, with an optional note, or Reject with the reason. The person sees the decision and the note.

• Team leads approve claims from the people in the teams they lead
• Owners and admins approve anyone’s claims
• Nobody approves their own claim, except owners: nobody stands above them, so they may approve their own
• A claim marked Receipt needed cannot be approved until its receipt is added

Mark claims paid

Owners, admins and billing admins have an All claims tab. Each approved claim has Mark paid: add a payment reference if you like, such as a bank reference, a cheque number or “Cash”, and confirm. Paid cannot be undone. Only an owner may mark their own claim paid.

Month totals and the export

All claims shows one month at a time with totals by status, then By person and By category, each split into waiting, approved and paid. Filter by person, status or category. Export downloads the filtered claims as CSV or Excel, with the date, person, category, amount, distance and rate, status, note, lead, whether there is a receipt, who reviewed it and why, and when and how it was paid.

Set the rules

Owners and admins open Expenses → Expense settings. Amounts are in your workspace currency.

• Categories: tick the ones your team may claim; at least one stays on
• Rate per km: lets Travel and Fuel be claimed by distance; leave it empty to turn distance claims off
• Receipt needed above: claims above this amount need a receipt before they can be approved; leave it empty if receipts are never needed, or enter 0 to need one on every claim

Who hears about what

A new claim notifies the person’s team lead, or the owners and admins when they have no team lead. The person hears when their claim is approved or rejected and when it is paid. These arrive in LumaKol’s notifications and as browser notifications where you have turned those on. Expense claims never send email, and each person can turn these notifications off under Notifications → Preferences.