The one page that ends receipt archaeology. Most small businesses run two payment systems and only control one of them: suppliers get paid through the terms you negotiated, but employees pay for the company out of their own pockets and hand you the bill at month-end. Unmanaged, that second system produces three familiar failures — the shoebox of receipts reconciled at midnight, the employee who has been quietly lending the company $400 for six weeks, and the duplicate claim nobody catches. Not fraud in the main — just what happens when the rules live in the owner's head instead of on a page.
The three questions every claim answers:
- Was it for the business? The claim names the job, client, or category. "Client dinner — Kestrel Foods site walk, $84" clears. "$84" does not.
- Was it approved? Under the pre-approval threshold, the category list is the approval. Over it, one line of approval before the spend — a text naming the job counts, saved to the claim.
- Can you prove it? A receipt (photo counts), or the declaration path with its cap for the rare receipt that got away.
The seven lines — the whole policy, printable on one page:
- Card-first. The company card is the default; a personal card is the exception, not a second payment system with rewards points.
- Pre-approval threshold: $150. Under it, buy and claim. Over it, one line of approval before the spend. A speed limit, not a prohibition.
- Submit within 7 days. Older claims roll to the next batch — not refused, just not urgent.
- Proof: receipt above $10. No receipt: the declaration form, once a month per person, capped at $50. The cap keeps the exception an exception.
- Categories, named. Yes: travel to jobs, tools and materials, client meals (client named), software. Never: parking fines, personal upgrades, the commute.
- Mileage at the ATO cents-per-km rate, logged date + job + km, reviewed each July.
- No self-approval. The owner's own claims are approved by the bookkeeper — the rule that keeps the policy honest is the one that applies to its author.
Payment timing closes the loop: approved claims paid with the next pay run. Ten business days is the outside edge — past that the policy quietly turns employees into lenders, and lenders start keeping receipts as hostages.
The five traps: the personal-card culture ("just put it on yours and I'll sort you out" costs a month of reconciliation); no-receipt-still-paid (the day the rule bends without the declaration path, it's a suggestion with a mood attached); reimbursing late (a six-week-old $400 claim is an interest-free loan from your employee); self-approval (the hole every other rule is sized to); the cash float with no register.
The worked example. A twelve-person electrical contractor: nine field techs on personal cards, $23,400/yr reimbursed, and a month-end ritual the office manager called "receipt archaeology" — 3.1 hours matching paper to memory. The prior year: $4,100 of unreceipted spend and two duplicate claims worth $310, found by luck in a bank statement. The owner wrote the seven lines on one page on a Sunday; the only purchases were the card-first switch and a photo-of-receipt habit. One quarter later: reconciliation down to 40 minutes, unreceipted spend $0 (declaration used three times, all under the cap), duplicates zero, the card feed doing the matching the shoebox used to do. The owner: "I thought a policy was for companies with HR departments. It turns out it's for companies with shoeboxes."
Full page (all seven lines, the traps, the worked example): Expense Reimbursement Policy for Small Businesses — HIVE80lab ops-notes
Kits — the paid tools behind the free advice:
- The First 30 Minutes — free incident quick-start checklist
- Ops Starter Kit — incident response for small teams — $14
- Ops Mega Bundle — all 5 kits in one download — $49
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