Expenses

No specific limit on the number of expense lines is anticipated. There is a universal file size allowance across Atlas (sized to accommodate large attachments in areas like recruitment and promotions), but the exact size is still to be confirmed.

Approvers can add attachments. They cannot amend costing. If there is an error in the claim, it must be rejected with a clear reason (e.g. specifying the correct code), and the claimant asked to correct and resubmit.

Approvers approving their own changes is not considered good practice. 

Yes, each expense item has a free-text description field that can be used to explain any discrepancy or provide additional context. 

The expenses policy is published on the Finance webpages.

Policy limits are owned and determined by the Director of Procurement, informed by HMRC allowable rates and the organisation's responsibilities as a (partly) publicly funded body. The policy is considered comprehensive and edge cases can be discussed with Procurement.

Yes, the expense claim must be approved by all cost centre managers that have been charged. Where a department has multiple cost centres but the same approver across all of them, that is a valid and supported setup, and those claims will be handled consistently. 

Yes, the same 5-day Principal Investigator timeout that applies in the current system will be carried over into Atlas. 

They can be on the same claim. A single expense report can contain items coded to different accounts including a mix of project (P) codes and GL codes. 

No, exceeding a policy limit triggers a warning but does not reject or block the claim. It is then for the approver to assess.

A justification is not system-mandated at the warning stage, but it is current practice (and will remain so) to use the description field to explain any overage. For example, noting that a hotel was the conference venue with a set room rate. 

There is no in-system routing for exceptional approval steps. If prior approval from central Finance, Procurement or Faculty Finance is needed for an unusual case, this would still need to be obtained outside the system and the evidence attached to the claim on submission. 

Yes, two functions are available: (1) Delegate: asks someone else to approve on your behalf; (2) Reassign: fully transfers the approval to someone else. Guidance on when each function is most appropriate will be developed and issued ahead of go live.

Yes, approved claims and their receipts should be accessible for reference after approval. The exact navigation and access rights are still being refined, but making this information self-serviceable for departments is an explicit aim. This will be covered in training. 

Taxable expenses (e.g. visa fees, childcare costs at conferences, staying with family during travel) will be submitted and paid through Atlas expenses in the same way as other expenses and at the same turnaround speed.

The tax adjustment will then be fed into payroll to recover the tax on the claimant's behalf. This means faster payment for the claimant compared to the current payroll route. 

Yes, a delegate can submit a cash advance request on behalf of an employee or contingent worker. 

A returns process will be required for the individual to pay back the unused portion to Imperial. Finance will then manually reconcile and offset that payment against the cash receipt. The detailed process for this is still being finalised given the very low volume of such cases. 

There will be a new internal expenses form hosted in ProcessSense (an additional module within Atlas). They will access it via their Imperial login.

The form uses the same expense item types as employee claims, enabling consistent reporting. If a supplier record already exists for the person, it is reused; if not, one is created automatically on submission. 

Approvals are driven by cost centre, consistent with all other transaction types in Atlas.

Departments should consider who should be set up as cost centre approvers for these transactions. 

Departmental administrators will be given the ability to raise these forms on behalf of claimants. 

Yes, the intent is that approved transactions and their attachments are accessible for reference without needing to contact Accounts Payable. Exact access rights are still being confirmed and will be covered in training. 

Rejected claims would need to be resubmitted. Once a transaction has entered the Accounts Payable workbench in Atlas (which is how approvals are driven for these transactions), it does not revert to being an editable form in ProcessSense. A rejection means starting again with a new submission. 

Yes, there is no specific restriction on this. Expenses can be claimed when they are incurred, using the receipt date, even if the event is in the future.

As with current practice, any refund received by the claimant would be expected to be returned. 

There is no in-system preview or interim review step.

The approach instead relies on: (1) system-side validation preventing invalid codes or expense types from being entered; (2) improved guidance to students and claimants on what to submit and how, to reduce errors at source.

The team acknowledges this will not eliminate all iteration but aims to reduce it. 

External claimants will use a ServiceNow form. They will receive a link, register for an account using their personal email address (no Imperial login required), and complete the claim there.

Accounts Payable will extract claims daily, create a supplier record and import the claim into Atlas for coding and approval. This is an interim solution pending a more fully integrated approach. 

No, the contact (typically a departmental administrator) codes the transaction but cannot amend the claim itself.

If a change to the claim is needed, the claim must be rejected and the claimant contacted externally to resubmit via ServiceNow. 

There is no automatic return to the claimant. A rejection in Atlas leaves an open ServiceNow ticket in Accounts Payable, which they would need to close.

Whether the department or Accounts Payable then contacts the claimant  will depend on the circumstances and the relationship between the department and the individual. This area is still being worked through. 

No, the external ServiceNow process is specifically designed to be initiated by the claimant using a personal email outside Imperial systems.

For cases where a staff-side submission is needed, an alternative mechanism (such as a non-invoice payment request) would be more appropriate. 

Key controls include consistent cost centre-based approvals across all transaction types, expense auditor checks for duplicate payments (e.g. multiple payments to the same claimant for the same amount) and cybersecurity controls on the ServiceNow instance and Atlas infrastructure.

The approval step is the primary financial control point where transactions can be stopped, queried or rejected.