AWRA Help Center

Employees raise claims from Human Resources → My Claims (the self-service tab beside My Leave and My Payslips). Approvers work from Human Resources → Overview → Expense Claims, a queue that opens on Awaiting approval with tabs for approved-not-yet-repaid, repaid and returned claims. A claim moves from draft to submitted, then approved, then repaid; a returned claim goes back to its owner to correct and submit again.

Raising A Claim (Employees)

1. Open My Claims → New claim. Your login has to be linked to your employee record; if it is not, ask HR to link it.
2. Give the claim a title and its currency as a three-letter code (for example KES or USD).
3. Add one line per expense: the date (not in the future), a category such as travel, accommodation, meals, fuel, airtime, supplies or fees, a description, the amount and, optionally, the project it was for. A claim can carry up to 50 lines.
4. Attach receipts — PDF or photos (JPG, PNG, WEBP or HEIC), up to 10 MB each and ten per save. They are stored in the Document Vault against the claim.
5. Save draft, or Submit for approval. Everyone who can approve claims is notified, except you.

Once submitted, a claim is fixed: what the approver sees is what you sent. To change it, ask for it to be returned. You are notified when it is approved, returned (with the reason) and repaid.

Approving A Claim

1. Open the claim from the queue, check the lines and open the receipts.
2. Choose how it will be repaid: through payroll in a payroll month you pick, or directly.
3. Approve, with an optional comment, or return it with a reason the claimant can act on (the reason is required).

• Nobody approves their own claim while anyone else in the organization can approve claims, whatever permissions they hold. In a workspace where nobody else can, the owner may decide it, and the audit log records that it was self-decided.
• Change of plan: an approved claim that has not been repaid can be moved to another payroll month or switched between payroll and direct repayment.
• Approval given in error: withdraw it with a reason. The booking is reversed, any queued payroll line is removed, and the claim goes back to its owner as returned.

Repaying It

Through payroll. The claim becomes a one-off earning on the employee's payslip for the month chosen. It is not taxable and not pensionable, because it repays the employee's own money rather than paying them. The claim is marked repaid automatically when that payroll run is posted. Three checks apply when you choose payroll:

• The month's run must not already be approved or paid — choose a later month.
• The employee needs an active employment contract, since a run only pays employees with one.
• The claim must be in the currency the employee is paid in. Payroll never converts currencies, so a claim in another currency is repaid directly.

Directly. Once the money has been paid, open the claim, enter the payment reference and the account it was paid from (Bank when you leave it), and mark it repaid. Choosing a petty cash box records a voucher on that float, so the box's own list explains the payment and it cannot pay out more than it holds.

What Posts To The Ledger

• At approval the spend is booked, because the organization owes the employee from that moment: each line is debited to the expense account its category is mapped to, tagged with its project and the employee's department, against Staff Reimbursements Payable.
• A direct repayment clears that payable against the account the money left.
• A payroll repayment clears the payable inside the payroll posting, so the claim is not counted again as payroll cost.
• Withdrawing an approval reverses exactly what the approval booked.

Map each claim category to an expense account under Human Resources → Overview → Targets & alerts, in the Expense claim accounts section. A category left unmapped books to Operating Expenses. The ledger runs in your organization's base currency and is never converted, so a claim in another currency is repaid without a journal and the audit log notes it.

Permissions

• Submit own expense claims — use My Claims for your own claims only.
• View expense claims — open the queue, claims and their receipts.
• Approve expense claims — approve, return, change repayment, withdraw an approval and mark a claim repaid.

Common Mistakes

• Typing a currency that is not a real code, such as KSH. The form refuses it; use the three-letter code.
• Choosing payroll for someone with no active contract. Repay them directly instead.
• Picking a payroll month that has already been approved. Choose the next open month.
• Returning a claim without saying what to fix. The reason is what the claimant sees.
• Leaving every category on Operating Expenses when your chart of accounts has travel, fuel or subsistence accounts.

Related

• Payroll — how a payroll run repays approved claims.
• Employee Self-Service — My Claims beside My Leave and My Payslips.
• Expenses — organization spend outside procurement, recorded by finance.