Reviewing and Paying Expense Claims

A single trip or camp often mixes a handful of receipts a leader has paid on their own card with one or two invoices from a campsite or coach company that still need paying. The Claims & Payments page now handles both in one place. Treasurers and approvers review each item on a claim individually, approve or reject it, and mark it as settled either by reimbursing the leader or by paying a supplier direct.

Where to find this#

Go to Finance → Claims & Payments in the main navigation. The page opens on the Claims tab, with all claims visible in a single table. If you're a group admin there's a second Settings tab for the claim limits, mileage rates, approver setup, notifications, and supplier directory.

You don't need to keep checking the page — when a member submits a claim that needs your review, it also lands in your inbox:

Finding the claims that need you#

At the top of the table, the view selector lets you jump between saved views of the list. The built-in views for treasurers and approvers are:

Pick the one that matches what you're doing. You can save your own views on top of these — filter by section, event, budget, or restricted fund, then save the combination under a name that makes sense to you. Pin the ones you use often so they sit at the front of the selector.

Reading the table#

Each row is one claim. A claim can contain several items (for example, six receipts from a camp). The summary cards at the top count and total claims in each status. Inside the table, the most useful columns are:

Click any row to open the claim in a side drawer with everything on it.

Working through a claim#

The side drawer shows every item on the claim in its own row. Each item has its own status — pending, approved, settled, or rejected — so you can work through them one at a time. A claim with six items can be half-approved, one-rejected, two-settled, and two still pending, all at once.

The drawer has three tabs:

• Lines — the items on the claim. This is where you approve, reject, and mark items as settled.
• Receipts — every receipt and invoice attached to the claim, in one gallery. Click to open, download if you need to.
• Activity — a timeline of what's happened and when — submitted, approved, rejected, settled.

The three kinds of item#

Every item on a claim is one of three kinds, and the drawer labels each one clearly:

• Reimburse claimant — the leader paid for this on their own card and needs the group to pay them back. The attached file is a receipt, and it's optional below the group's receipt threshold.
• Mileage — the leader drove their own car. There is no receipt, and the amount was worked out from the journey rather than typed in.
• Pay supplier — the leader has an invoice from a third party that you need to pay direct from the group's bank account. The attached invoice is required, and the supplier's details (sort code, account number, reference) come with the item.

Mileage and reimburse-claimant items both pay the leader, so they settle in exactly the same way.

Checking a mileage item#

A mileage item carries its own panel under the row, so you're not asked to take the figure on trust. It shows:

• The journey — the place name for each end where the claimant gave one, with the postcode beside it. Postcodes are what make the journey identifiable if anyone asks later.
• The sum — the chargeable miles (marked return trip where the leader drove both ways) multiplied by the rate the item was priced at, the passenger supplement where anyone travelled along, and the total.
• A straight-line cross-check — how far apart those two postcodes are as the crow flies. Road distance is always longer, so this is only ever a sanity check, never the figure anyone is paid on.

If the distance claimed looks wrong against that straight line, the panel says so in amber: either the claim is shorter than the straight line, which isn't possible, or it's several times longer, which usually means a digit went astray. The claimant sees the same note while they're filling the form in, so most are fixed before they reach you. It's a note, not a block — you can approve the item as it stands, or reject it and ask for the distance to be checked.

The rate shown is the one the item was priced at when it was submitted. Changing your group's mileage rate never restates a claim that already exists. See Claiming Mileage for how the rate is set.

Approving an item#

On a pending item, the Approve button approves just that item. Before you click it, you can change the attribution on the row — category, section, event, budget, or restricted fund — if the leader picked the wrong one. Your changes save together with the approval.

Keyboard shortcuts help if you're working through a long list: J and K move between items, A approves the focused item, and R opens the reject dialog.

Rejecting an item#

Click Reject to decline one item with a reason (at least ten characters, so the claimant has something useful to work from). The rest of the claim isn't affected — the leader can resubmit the rejected item separately later.

Paying or reimbursing#

Once an item is approved, Mark settled is how you record that it's been paid. The dialog that opens adapts to the item type:

• For a reimburse-claimant item, it shows the claimant's bank details (account name, sort code, account number, and payment reference) with copy-to-clipboard buttons, plus a Pay from account dropdown to pick which of your group's bank accounts covers it. Make the bank transfer, then tick Mark as settled.
• For a pay-supplier item, it shows the supplier's details instead, along with any invoice reference. Make the payment from your chosen account, then confirm.

Marking an item settled creates a matching entry in your group's accounts, attributed to the line's category, section, event, budget, or restricted fund — whatever was set on the item. One item equals one transaction in the ledger, so reports line up even when a claim mixes several events or budgets.

Paying suppliers direct#

When leaders pick Pay supplier on an item, they either choose a supplier from your group's directory or add a new one inline.

The supplier directory lives in Settings → Supplier directory on the Claims & Payments page. From there you can:

• Add a supplier with a payment method — Bank transfer (sort code and account number), Payment link (an https URL to a payment page), or Other (free-text instructions for cash, cheque, or a card machine).
• Edit an existing supplier. Switching payment method clears the previous method's fields so nothing stale is carried over.
• Soft-delete a supplier you no longer use. Deleted names can be reused later if the supplier comes back.

Supplier bank details are masked in the directory list — the full number only shows when you're actively editing that supplier, so an over-the-shoulder glance doesn't leak an account number.

Overdue supplier reminders#

If a pay-supplier item has a due date and it passes without being settled, Scoutworks sends the treasurer a weekly digest summarising anything that's overdue. The drawer also shows a red Overdue tag on the item. You won't get daily nagging — one digest per treasurer per week, and only if there's something to mention.

Nominated approvers#

Group admins can nominate a specific person to approve expenses on Settings → Approver configuration. Nominated approvers see the same Claims & Payments page with a focused view — To approve shows only the claims assigned to them, and the My … views stay personal to them as a claimant for anything they've submitted themselves.

A nominated approver keeps read access to a claim while any item on it is still pending their review, even after they've already approved some of the items. That way they can come back to finish a claim without losing sight of it.

What's next#

• Submitting and Approving Expense Claims — the claimant-side view of submitting a claim, with receipts and bank details.
• Claiming Mileage — what a claimant enters for a journey, and how a group admin sets the rate per mile.
• Accounting and Bookkeeping — where settled items land in your group's transaction ledger.
• Budgets and Financial Reports — tracking spend against budgets, including the line-level attribution set when you approve a claim.