Should Accounts Payable be allowed to reduce claimed expense amounts?

This is a conundrum faced by many organisations. An employee submits an expense report of USD 450. A/P feels that USD 390 is the justified amount which can be reimbursed. In some companies A/P edits (reduces) the amount and reimburses. This however has the drawback that employees learn to pad up expenses since they know that A/P is possibly going to reduce the expense amount.

In other companies, A/P sends back the expense report with a suggestion of what can be claimed and hence what the employee can edit and resubmit. This is the better way of handling this situation. From now on, the submitter understands the expectation of A/P better and takes care to comply. Expenzing has a neat feature in its Employee Expense Management Software  called “Send Back” which A/P can use with their suggestion, and a neat feature called “Edit and Resubmit” which the submitter can use.