Introduction to advances
As an admin, you can issue advances to your employees. Employees can use these issued advances to create expenses.
Advances can be issued in 2 ways on Fyle:
Directly: As an admin, you can directly issue an advance of any amount to your employee.
Through an advance request: Any employee can raise an advance request. Once approved by the respective approver, you can issue an advance against the request.
Note: Advances as a payment mode is an optional feature in Fyle. To enable this feature for your organization, please reach out to [email protected]
Issue advances to employees directly
It might not always be possible for an employee to request an advance for a trip which they are taking at last minute. Or at your company, you issue advances to your employees, without them having to raise a request for it and getting it approved from their manager.
You can issue one advance at a time or multiple advances at once, using the steps below.
Steps to issue a single advance to a single employee
From the left panel, go to the Advances page. Click on Issue Advance(s).
Click on Issue Single Advance.
Enter the details of the advance, including the amount and the employee to whom you are issuing it. Click on Issue Advance.
Review the details of the advance and click on Issue Advance to confirm the action. This will successfully issue the advance to the selected employee and the specified amount will immediately reflect in their advance balance.
Steps to issue multiple advances to multiple employees
From the left panel, go to the Advances page. Click on Issue Advance(s).
Click on Bulk-Issue Advance.
Click on Download Template to download an empty template. The template is in .xlsx format. Fill in the details of the advances you want to issue, using the instructions in the template.
Click on Upload .xlsx file and upload the filled in template. This will successfully issue the advances as per the details you have added in the template.
Process or send back an advance request
Your employees can request for advances using their Fyle account. Once the advance request is approved by the respective approver(s), you can process the advance request and issue the advance amount to the employee.
Note:
To customise the details required from employees when requesting for an advance, read this article: Set up custom fields for advance requests.
To process an approved advance request:
From the left panel, go to the Advances page. You can see all approved advance requests under the Approved tab.
Click on the advance request you want to process to open it. Click on Process Request to start processing the advance request.
Select the payment mode and click on Issue Advance to successfully issue the advance. The issued advance amount will immediately reflect in the advance balance in the employee's dashboard.
Alternatively, to send back an approved advance request:
On the advance request, open the menu using the 3 dots. Click on Send Back.
In the confirmation message, enter the reason for sending back the advance request. Confirm the action by clicking on Send Back.
Add an additional approver to an approved advance request
On the advance request, open the menu using the 3 dots. Click on Add Approver.
In the confirmation message, choose the additional approver and enter the reason for adding this approver. Confirm the action by clicking on Add Approver.
This will successfully add the additional approver to the advance request. The advance request will move back to Pending state, and will proceed to Approved state only once the additional approver has approved the advance request.
Track all advances in your organization
You can view and track all the advances requested or issued in your organization using the Advances page.
Pending: Under this tab, you can view all the advance requests that have been submitted by employees, but have not been approved by their approvers yet. As an admin, you can approve these advance requests.
Sent Back: Under this tab, you can view all the advance requests that have been rejected by approvers and sent back for further clarification from the employees.
Approved: Under this tab, you can view all the advance requests that have been approved by approvers and are waiting to be processed. As an admin, you can process these advance requests and issue the advances to the respective employees. To learn more on how to process advance requests, click here.
All Requests: Under this tab, you can view all the advance requests across different states in your organization.
Process expense reports using unused advance balance for an employee
As an admin, you can use any unused/remaining advance amounts issued to your employees while processing their expense reports. By doing so, you can close the remaining advance amount against reimbursable expenses, eliminating the need to collect a refund for the unused amount.
For example, if you issued your employee Jessica an advance of $600, out of which she used only $300. So, she has $300 remaining in her advance wallet. Next, Jessica separately submits an expense report with out-of-pocket expenses worth $500 that need to be reimbursed to her. Now, instead of paying back $500 to her, you can reduce $300 from her unused advance balance and only pay the remaining $200 to her.
To see how you can easily do this within Fyle, read this article: Process expense reports using unused advance balance for an employee
Collect refund for unused advances from employees
In case you do not have any reimbursable expenses in your organization, you can easily collect any unused advance amount from your employees through a refund.
To collect a refund from a single employee:
From the left panel, go to Advances page. Under the Refunds tab, you can see a list of all refunds you have collected from your employees. Click on Collect Refund to initiate a new refund.
Click on Collect single refund to initiate a single refund.
Choose the Employee from whom you want to collect the refund. On selecting the employee, you will be able to see the available advance balance in their account.
Fill in the remaining details, including the amount you want to collect. Click on Collect Refund to successfully create the refund. The updated amount will immediately reflect in the employee's advance balance.
To collect refunds from multiple employees at once:
From the left panel, go to Advances page. Under the Refunds tab, you can see a list of all refunds you have collected from your employees. Click on Collect Refund to initiate a new refund.
Click on Bulk-collect refunds to initiate multiple refunds.
Click on Download Template to download an empty template. The template is in .xlsx format. Fill in the details on the refunds you want to initiate.
Click on Upload .xlsx file and upload the filled in template. This will successfully create the refunds as per the details you have added in the template.
(Optional) Set up multiple advance accounts for employees
As an admin on Fyle, you can configure advances for your employees in 2 ways:
Issue multiple advances under a single advance account. This is the default behaviour on Fyle.
Issue multiple advances under different advance account. To enable multiple advance accounts, you are required to drop a request to [email protected]
For example, if an employee receives an advance of $5000, then an advance of $10000,
By default, the employee can view and use a combined balance of $15000 in their Fyle account.
If you enable multiple advance accounts, the employee can view and use 2 separate advance balances of $5000 and $10000 respectively.