With all the changes to the modern world which have come from us using and developing technology, you would think there would be an efficient way for volunteers and people not on payroll to claim back their expenses after working with charities and businesses. Modern problems require modern solutions and that’s where vHelp comes in. With our team’s extensive knowledge surrounding payment systems, we’ve built a service which not only saves time but also is extremely effective and simple to use. In addition, we’ve also researched 60 charities of various sizes and found that 100% of them still pay expenses manually! This could take up to eight weeks for the volunteer to get their expense reimbursed.
In this article, we will be touching on what reimbursable expenses are, how to get started with vHelp, what the rules are surrounding getting your expenses paid back and how vHelp can support you!
What Are Reimbursable Expenses?
Firstly, let’s start off with what a reimbursable expense is…For example if you are a volunteer, you may find yourself spending money on things such as travel, food or even equipment, which helps you in completing work for the charity in which you are supporting, on an adhoc or regular basis. These expenses should be reimbursed by your charity. After submitting a claim to your charity, such as receipts, showing what you have spent, they then should review your expenses and reimburse you for it.
How To Get Started With vHelp
To get started with vHelp, the organisation must first register with us and set up what we call ‘Cost Codes’ which could be projects or areas they want to track these costs against. In addition, the organisation can also set the price per mile they will reimburse mileage at.
Afterwards, they can invite their volunteers, research participants, speakers or anyone who isn’t on their regular payroll to register as well. The volunteer is then able to log their expense claim through our app or dashboard. To do this, they will have to enter their expense details and scan any receipts they may have.
It will then be with the organisation, who would have an assigned admin to go through and approve or reject these expense claims . Once an expense has been approved, vHelp will then charge the organisation and reimburse the volunteers bank account with the correct amount.
If the expense is rejected, a notification will go back to the volunteer with feedback on why it was rejected. The volunteer can amend the claim accordingly and re-submit in seconds.
What Are The Rules for Claiming Expenses?
If you are regularly volunteering for an organisation and are looking for an easier way to get your expenses paid, then vHelp could be the perfect solution. But, when it comes to claiming expenses, what are the rules?
Each organisation has their own set of rules of what they can reimburse and the amounts they will approve, they usually communicate this directly to their volunteers.
When using vHelp, the organisation you are supporting will need to have an account so that they can review and approve your expenses . Without them being registered with us, you won’t be able to claim throughout vHelp.
Any claim you make should also be inline with the business or charity expense policy. For example, if you are using petrol to drive to a location for an activity, you will most likely only request the amount used on the journey and not the full tank’s worth. vHelp makes this easy by only asking you for the number of miles you need to claim and it calculates the amount to be reimbursed based on the organisation’s set mileage price. Following on from this, you will also need to validate your claims. vHelp makes this extremely easy, as you can submit images of receipts alongside your expense claim, which will back up any of your claims with visual proof.
Can vHelp Support You Or Your Organisation?
Our team, with their years of experience surrounding payment knowledge, have got you covered when it comes to reimbursing your users who aren’t on your regular payroll. vHelp set out to bring the outdated process of paying volunteers, research participants and speakers back into the 21st century and modernise it.
With vHelp you can not only pay your expense claims faster, offering you back time you would have spent wading through these requests and forms, but also it allows you to communicate with your volunteers more effectively. Gone are the days of missing an email with an invoice attached. You can now log in and see what your volunteers are requesting and simply accept or decline these claims.
There is also evidence in our case studies that vHelp helps organisations save up to 88% on time spent processing expenses. This significant reduction in admin helps your team focus on doing the work that matters.
If you are a volunteer yourself, this is also a great way to save time when it comes to requesting reimbursement on your expenses. Once your organisation has an account on vHelp, you can put in all your requests and images to back up these claims, straight onto our app. This will allow you to easily keep track of all of your expenditures and claim back what you have spent.
vHelp helps organisations with inclusion by ensuring the volunteer is reimbursed within 24 hours of the claim being approved. This helps people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds who can not afford to wait weeks for their expenses.