Approving expenses

You are reminded that when authorising claims, you should be fully satisfied that the claim is genuine and reasonable before approving that the claim can be paid from the allocated budget.

Fusion expenses approver

If you are a Fusion Expenses approver and have thoroughly checked the information in an expense report and the required uploaded receipts, you can approve a claim. Certain claims may be audited by payroll, particularly if they fall outside the policy criteria. It is therefore vitally important that only valid claims are approved. These may be returned to the employee for further information or justification.

Employees must upload receipts to support relevant claims, and these must be reviewed before claims are approved.

If you require to become a fusion expenses approver, you will need to complete the Authorised Signatory for Payroll Only form. Once completed and approved by your manager, the form should be sent to the Payroll Section for action.

Approval of paper travel and subsistence claims

Paper based expenses claim forms are only accepted in exceptional circumstances; prior to submission, approvers should ensure that the forms are legible, claims contain sufficient information on the location and purpose of journey/claim, and calculations are accurate. Such claims can only be approved if the original receipts have been provided and these must be retained by the approver for 2 years for audit purposes.

Overtime, stand-by and callouts claims

All overtime must be pre-approved prior to the employee working it. There may be circumstances where this is not possible, for example, responding to emergencies. Once the employe has worked the overtime, they should submit their completed fusion timecard, and when approving overtime you should ensure the following:

• the employee is entitled to claim at the rates specified;
• the total hours claimed are calculated correctly. Extra time of less than half an hour in any one day will not count as overtime. All overtime of half an hour or more on any one day will be aggregated for each week and only completed half hours will be paid;
• where the employee is claiming for call outs, there is a 2 hour period between each call out;
• overtime has been claimed for any call-out lasting more than 1 hour.  

Once you are satisfied that the claim has been been completed correctly, you should send it for processing before the deadline date.