How do employee expense claims work in InstantDrive?

Last updated: 5 November 2026

What is an employee expense claim in InstantDrive?

An expense claim is a database record created from one receipt. It ties the receipt file in the vault to an employee, a merchant, a date, an amount, a currency, an accounting category and a status. Claims live in the Employees (HR and Expense AP) area of the app, and the installable mobile web app (PWA) has a receipt screen and a manager approvals screen.

The feature has one purpose, which is to get a receipt from an employee phone into the books with the evidence attached and the tax flags set. It does not pay anyone. Recording a reimbursement writes a journal entry, and the transfer itself happens in your bank.

How does an employee submit a receipt?

There are three routes. The employee can scan a receipt with the phone camera, upload a photo or PDF, or email it to the expenses address of the company when the company has routed its domain mail to InstantDrive. Whether a given company has that routing in place depends on its own mail setup.

The scan route reads the image with local text recognition and a pattern engine. It picks the merchant, the total, the VAT, the currency, the date and a supplier TRN when printed, and it matches a list of known UAE merchants such as taxi apps, fuel stations, hotels and airlines to a category. The upload route also accepts values typed by the employee. Both routes store the file under the employee folder in the vault with an automatic file name and create the claim. The 100 MB upload cap applies.

If the VAT line cannot be read, the system estimates it as total times 5 divided by 105. The confidence shown after a scan is a fixed value, so read the extracted fields before you rely on them.

What does InstantDrive check on a receipt?

A non-receipt check looks at the text and the file name. An image with almost no readable text and no money words, or a file named like a selfie or portrait, is flagged. A flagged claim is created with the status REJECTED and a reason, and a manager cannot approve it until a proper itemised receipt replaces it.

The check is a heuristic. A genuine receipt with poor print can be flagged, and a photo of something else that contains words like total or invoice can pass. Managers should still look at the image.

How do foreign-currency claims and card statements work?

When a receipt currency is not AED, the claim starts as AWAITING_STATEMENT. The AED amount is provisional, calculated with fixed rates of 3.6725 for USD, 4.00 for EUR and 4.70 for GBP, and the settled amount stays at zero. The rates are built into the code and are not market rates.

To settle it, the employee or finance attaches the card statement as a vault document and types the AED actually charged. The system stores that figure as the settled amount, links the statement, and moves the claim to AUDITED. The statement is not read automatically. The amount is the number a person types.

The approval step is meant to refuse a foreign claim with no statement and no settled amount. The scan route, however, writes the receipt amount into the settled field at the time of scanning, which satisfies that check. In practice, treat the statement as a rule your team enforces and do not rely on the system to stop an unsupported foreign claim.

How are deductibility and VAT recoverability flags computed?

Each claim carries a deductible rate and a VAT recoverable flag. The pattern engine sets them from the receipt text, merchant and file name by looking for category keywords in a fixed order. Most categories get a rate of 1.00 and VAT recoverable. Client entertainment and dining, matched on words such as restaurant, dinner, lunch, cafe or coffee and on named venues, gets a rate of 0.50 and VAT not recoverable. The built-in rule of thumb follows the common treatment of business entertainment, so confirm it against current Federal Tax Authority guidance and with your adviser.

Two cautions. The dining words are tested before the staff-meal words, so a receipt that says lunch is classed as client dining even when the lunch was internal. Check the category on every food receipt. Second, the flags are stored and shown on the claim, but they do not change the journal, which posts the full amount, and employee claims do not feed the VAT 201 screen, which reads vendor invoices. Finance applies the flags when it prepares the tax computations.

What is the retention-until date?

Each claim stores a retention-until date equal to the expense date plus 2,557 days, which is seven years including two leap days. A lock flag is set to true. The date is a stored field for your own records and for filtering. Nothing in the code blocks a delete or purges a file when the date passes, and document delete in the vault is a soft delete.

InstantDrive does not state a legal retention period in the product. Ask your tax adviser how long your company must keep expense records, and use the stored date as a reminder, not as proof of what the law requires.

How do managers approve, and what do approvals post?

On the web, the approve action checks the claim is not flagged as a non-receipt, then sets the status to APPROVED and records the approver and time. It posts a balanced journal that debits the expense account of the claim category for the settled amount and credits account 20200 Employee Reimbursements Payable. The payout action then requires an approved claim, blocks paying more than the balance, and posts a second journal that debits 20200 and credits the bank ledger account 10200. It also writes a disbursement record with a number such as DISB-2026-00001, the method label and your reference.

The payment method list includes bank transfer, WPS payroll, petty cash and corporate card. These are labels. Nothing is sent to a bank or to a salary system. No role check separates a manager from another signed-in user of the company in these endpoints, so limit app access to the people who may approve.

What can a manager do from the mobile approvals screen?

The mobile admin screens offer one-tap approve, reject, approve-all and payout. They are quicker than the web screens and they are less strict, and you should know the differences.

Claims in AWAITING_STATEMENT are not included in approve-all. Because mobile approvals skip the journal, use the web approve action when you need the general ledger entry, or review the claim list for approved claims that have no journal.

Worked example: three receipts from one employee

Palm Crescent Consulting LLC is a fictional company. Its fictional consultant Sara submits three receipts in March 2026.

Approval posts three journals: debit 7540 for 52.50, debit 7530 for 840.00 and debit 7010 for 445.20, each credited to 20200. The payable to Sara is 1,337.70. The dinner is reimbursed in full at 840.00. The 0.50 rate and the unrecoverable VAT are tax flags for finance, and they do not reduce what Sara receives.

Finance records a payout of 52.50 for the taxi claim and 840.00 for the dinner claim, which moves each to PAID, then 445.20 for the software claim. Payouts are recorded per claim, and a smaller amount would leave a claim PARTIALLY_PAID. Each is a journal entry. Finance makes the real transfers in the company bank.

What does the feature not do, and what are the next steps?

It does not pay employees through a bank, run payroll, apply per-diem or mileage rates, enforce spending limits or approval chains, read card statements automatically or fetch market exchange rates. It does not submit anything to the Federal Tax Authority, and its tax flags are a starting point and not tax advice. It does not provide a self-service export of claims, and it does not purge records on the retention date.

Next steps. Ask employees to submit receipts the same day. Review the extracted merchant, amount, VAT and category on each claim, correct food receipts, attach card statements to every foreign claim before approval, and use the web approve action when you need the ledger entry. Reimburse in your bank, then record the payout with the bank reference.