Expense policies
This article refers to a feature that might not be available in your current Brex plan. If you'd like to learn more about this feature and how to unlock additional capabilities in Brex's upgraded plans, please have your account or card admin reach out to Brex Support by clicking on Support in your dashboard.
Overview
An expense policy is a set of guidelines and rules established by a company to manage and control employee spending. It helps ensure that expenses are legitimate, reasonable, and compliant with company policies. Account and card admins can create and manage expense policies in the Brex dashboard. The policy can be customized to indicate which transactions need receipts and memos, set deadlines for submission, and send automatic follow-up reminders. Expense policies also allow admins to review out-of-policy transactions and send reminders to employees who need to take action. By default, you'll have 3 policies that can be customized to your company’s needs:
- Travel
- Stipends
- General
Expense policy setup and management
For Essentials Essentials
To edit your default policy, follow the steps below. Step 1: In your dashboard, click Cards and limits > Manage policies. Step 2: Customize your policy by indicating the names and details, receipts and memos, merchant and category rules, and approval chains. Here are some examples of how you can customize your policy:
- Toggle on
- Use this policy for Bill Pay
- Write this policy in a non-USD currency to choose from any of the available currencies.
- The currency you choose will be the base currency that we write your policy in. Transactions made in any other currencies will be converted. You can choose from any of the available currencies. For more information on available currencies, see the section on Manage Expense Policy Currency.
- Require receipts and memos based on merchant or category exceptions.
- Flag or block expenses with customizable merchant and category rules.
- Add approval chains, which you can read more about here.
As soon as you update a policy’s rules, current and future expenses will start referencing the new rules.
For Premium, Enterprise, and P-card Premium Enterprise Smart card
To create and manage your company’s expense policy, follow the steps below. Step 1: In your dashboard, click Cards and Limits > Manage policies. Step 2: Select the policy you wish to manage and click Edit next to Expense policy. Step 3: Customize your policy by indicating the receipts and memos, merchant and category rules, and approval chains. Here are some examples of how you can customize your policy:
- Toggle on or off:
- Use this policy for
- Brex travel
- Creating travel and expense rules, such as creating parameters for spend on meals. Read about customizing travel policies here.
- Bill pay
- Brex travel
- Write this policy in a non-USD currency
- The currency you choose will be the base currency that we write your policy in. Transactions made in any other currencies will be converted. You can choose from any of the available currencies. For more information on available currencies, see the section on Manage Expense Policy Currency.
- Use this policy for
- Requiring reviews/documentation for specific merchants or categories. Read about approval chains here.
- Additional documentation controls:
- Require employees to set expense category
- Require VAT documentation
- Setting smart merchant and category blocks on Brex cards
- Define automated audit rules to flag high-risk items on itemized receipts, such as those that contain alcohol, cigarettes, gift cards, flight upgrades, lottery tickets, or political spend.
- Setting role-based dynamic policy exceptions for receipts, memos, and merchant or category rules.
- Selecting Add rule for certain users allows you to customize exceptions based on employee attributes, including role, department, and cost center or specific employees.
- Note: You can drag and drop exceptions in the order you wish to take priority if an employee falls into multiple exceptions
Step 4: Click Next. Step 5: Review your expense policy before sharing them with your company. As soon as you update a policy’s rules, current and future expenses will start referencing the new rules.
Set default policy
Make spend limits optional
New for FallYou can choose whether or not to require spend limits on bills or reimbursements in Settings > Expenses.
New for Fall If, after you’ve made them optional, a reimbursement or bill doesn’t have an assigned spend limit, we'll apply the default policy. As a result, any approval chains that policy has will also apply to the expense. You can fully customize your default policy by following the steps below. Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Cards and limits > Manage policies. Step 2: Select the policy you want to define as the default and click the three dots > Set as default policy.
Manage expense policy currency
Available currencies are set policy-wide. They dictate how we translate currency policy rules and what currency your employees can choose from when they request spend limits.
To edit your policy’s currency, follow the steps below. Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Company settings > Expenses. Step 2: Under Manage currency, choose your desired currencies. In this setting, FX rates can be refreshed.
Expense review
Account and card admins can review expenses that fall outside their company’s policy from the Brex dashboard. We’ll send weekly reminders to account admins, card admins, and managers to review expenses for their direct reports. All employee purchases that fall out of your policy will be flagged for review on the Expense review page under Expenses in your dashboard. Use the search bar if you’d like to search for a specific transaction, user, or merchant within expense alerts. You can filter out-of-policy alerts using the dropdown menus by department, user, or issue (missing receipt, memo, etc). To resolve alerts, an account or card admin can click on each transaction individually or use the bulk selection tool by clicking the checkboxes on the left. Select from these actions:
- Mark as reviewed: Approves the transaction.
- Follow up: Sends an email reminder to the cardholder with an optional note. Cardholders can resolve missing receipt alerts by uploading a receipt.
- Mute alert: Makes an exception and excludes the user or merchant from your policy.
If you accidentally approve a transaction, click Archive at the top of the Expense review page, find the transaction, and click Undo review.
Turn off receipt/memo request
Reminders to add a receipt or memo to a transaction will stop being sent once an account or card admin marks the transaction as reviewed.