Business Documents
Build an expense claim with a receipt column, mileage priced from distance, and personal spend listed but excluded — then download it as a PDF with a space for approval.
Overview
Enter what you spent, tick whether you kept the receipt, and get a claim form with the total, the recoverable tax and a space for approval. Mileage is priced from the distance at a rate you set, and anything you are not claiming is listed but kept out of the total.
The arithmetic on an expense claim is addition. What decides whether it gets paid quickly is everything around the addition, because a claim is a piece of evidence rather than a list of numbers. The commonest reason one is held is a missing receipt, and the second commonest is that it disagrees with a card statement — neither of which is a problem with the sum.
So the receipt is a column here rather than an afterthought, and lines without one are counted, marked and totalled separately. That is deliberately uncomfortable: the point of seeing “three lines, £68, no receipt” before you send it is that you can still do something about it.
No mileage rate is filled in. Rates are set by employers and by jurisdiction, they vary by vehicle and sometimes by distance band, and they change — so a number baked into a web page would be right for some people for a while and quietly wrong for everyone else. Look up the one that applies to you.
Step by step
Your name, staff reference and employer. These are remembered in this browser; what you spent never is.
Take it from your employer's policy or your tax authority's current figure, and pick miles or kilometres to match. Mileage lines stay unpriced until a rate is entered.
Date, category, what it was for and the amount, or a distance for mileage. Tick whether you kept the receipt and whether you are claiming it back.
Anything without a receipt is counted and flagged. Download the PDF, attach the receipts, and send it for approval.
Background
An expense claim is a request for money supported by proof, and it is the proof half that fails. Finance teams are not checking your arithmetic; they are checking that each line is business spending, that it is allowable, and that there is something behind it. A claim that is perfectly totalled and half-receipted is a claim that comes back, while a slightly messy one with every receipt attached goes through.
The receipt is doing more work than people expect. It is not simply confirmation that the money left your account — a bank or card statement already shows that. What it shows is *what was bought*, from whom, when, and how much of the price was tax. That is what makes an expense allowable rather than merely real, and it is why a statement line reading “£62.40 — SERVICE STATION” is not a substitute for anything.
Tax is where the distinction bites hardest. For a registered business the tax within an expense can often be recovered, but generally only against a proper tax receipt showing the supplier's registration and the tax charged. A card slip is not one. This is why tax entered against a line with no receipt is shown separately here rather than folded into the recoverable figure — adding it would produce a number the business cannot actually claim, which is a worse outcome than a smaller one.
Mileage causes the most double-claiming, and almost always innocently. A mileage rate is not a fuel reimbursement: it is set to cover fuel *and* wear, servicing, insurance, depreciation and the rest of the cost of running the vehicle. So claiming the rate for a journey and also submitting the fuel receipt for it is claiming the same cost twice. Most people who do it are simply attaching every receipt they have.
Company cards create the opposite problem, which is omission. If the card statement shows a personal purchase and the claim does not mention it, the two documents disagree, and the person reconciling them has to raise a query to find out why. Listing it and marking it as not claimed takes one tick and removes the question entirely — which is why it belongs on the form rather than being quietly left off.
The last thing worth understanding is that approval is a step, not a formality. A claim is a request until somebody with authority signs it, and the signature is what converts it into a payable item and into a record that survives an audit. A form with no space for that is a form that will be printed, signed in the margin, and filed looking like something nobody checked.
Reference
Most of it is obvious and two columns are not, which is why so many templates leave them out — and why claims built on those templates are the ones that get sent back for a question rather than paid.
Who is claiming, and for what period
A name, a staff or supplier reference, and the dates covered. Approval processes match claims to periods, and one without dates waits until somebody asks.
Required
A line per expense, with a date
One purchase, one line. Bundling a week of meals into a single figure removes the ability to check any of it, which is what makes an approver ask for the detail anyway.
Required
What it was actually for
“Client lunch — Acme contract review” rather than “lunch”. The business purpose is what makes an expense allowable, and it is much harder to reconstruct three weeks later.
Required
Whether there is a receipt
The column that decides how fast the claim is paid. Marked either way rather than left blank, because a blank cell reads as an oversight rather than a statement.
Required
The tax within the amount
Recoverable only where the business is registered and a proper tax receipt exists. Kept per line so the recoverable part can be separated from the part that is not.
Optional
Whether you are claiming it
Personal spend on a company card belongs on the form and out of the total. Listing it is what stops the claim disagreeing with the statement.
Required
A space for approval
A claim is a request until somebody signs it. The signature is what makes it payable and what makes it a record rather than a note.
Required
Who it helps
The core case. Travel, meals, parking and the software subscription bought in a hurry — all recoverable, and all dependent on the receipt still existing.
Reconciling a statement rather than claiming money, which means accounting for the personal spend as well as the business spend. Omitting it is what creates the query.
Recharging costs to a client, where the same discipline applies and the client is stricter about it. Many contracts require receipts to be attached to the invoice.
The commonest expense and the one most often over-claimed by accident, because the rate already includes the fuel that people also attach a receipt for.
Where the process is a spreadsheet and an email. A consistent form with a receipt column is most of what an expenses policy actually does.
Who need the tax separated, the categories totalled and the unsupported lines flagged — all of which is faster to receive than to reconstruct.
Do it properly
Not at the end of the month. Thermal receipts fade, paper gets lost, and a claim written from memory is the one that gets queried on detail nobody can now check.
“Lunch” is a category; “client lunch, Acme contract review” is a reason. The reason is what makes the expense allowable and what an approver is actually looking for.
The rate already covers fuel along with wear, insurance and depreciation. Submitting the fuel receipt as well is the same cost claimed twice, and it is usually accidental.
One tick removes the disagreement between your claim and the card statement, and with it the query that would otherwise hold the whole claim up.
A card slip is not one. Reclaiming against it produces a figure the business cannot support if asked, which is a worse problem than a smaller reclaim.
Monthly, at the same time. Claims submitted late are harder to evidence, harder to approve, and land in a period the budget has already closed.
Payment is not the end of it. Tax authorities generally require the underlying records for several years, and the person who needs them will be you.
Avoid these
Submitting a card statement instead of receipts
Attach the receipts. A statement shows that you paid somebody and how much; it does not show what you bought or what tax was charged, which is the part that matters.
Claiming mileage and fuel for the same journey
Pick one. The mileage rate is set to cover fuel and the running costs of the vehicle together, so the fuel receipt on top is a second claim for the same money.
Leaving personal spend off a company-card claim
List it and mark it as not claimed. The statement will show it either way, and a claim that disagrees with the statement generates a question rather than a payment.
Reclaiming tax without a tax receipt
Separate it out. Tax is generally only recoverable against a receipt showing the supplier's registration and the tax charged — a card slip does not qualify.
Bundling a week into one line
One purchase, one line, with its own date. A single figure for “meals” cannot be checked against anything, so an approver has to ask for the breakdown anyway.
Forgetting the advance you were paid
Deduct it. Claiming the gross amount after taking a float means being paid twice for part of it, and it is the kind of error that is noticed later rather than sooner.
Assuming everything reimbursed is tax-deductible
Check the category. Client entertainment in particular is commonly reimbursable to the employee and neither deductible nor recoverable for the business — two different questions with two different answers.
FAQ
The Expense Claim Form is at the top of this page — free, no signup, nothing uploaded.
Guides
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