Overview
The amount you claim does not have to equal the amount on the receipt. A dinner where a colleague’s guest joined, a hotel bill covering a personal extra night, a shared taxi: in each case the receipt total is right but the reimbursable portion is smaller. Smartbills separates the two figures. Each expense on a report carries a claimed amount alongside the expense total.Claim a partial amount
1
Open the report
Go to the draft expense report containing the expense.
2
Edit the claimed amount
Set the claimed amount on the expense line to the portion you are claiming.
3
Explain why
Add a note on the line. An amount lower than the receipt without an explanation invites a change request, which costs you more time than writing the note.
4
Submit
The report totals the claimed amounts, not the receipt totals.
The claimed amount cannot exceed the expense total. Attempting it is rejected. To claim more than a receipt shows, the receipt is wrong and the expense itself needs correcting.
What the approver can do
An approver works with a separate figure, the approved amount, and can approve less than you claimed. The approval view breaks a report down into four buckets:
An approver reducing an amount is expected to leave a note explaining it, which appears alongside the expense when the report comes back to you.
Setting an approved amount to zero is blocked, with the message “Setting amount to 0 will deny this expense. Use the Deny button instead.” A denial is recorded as a decision with a reason. A zero-value approval would look like an approval and pay nothing, which is why it is not permitted.
Mileage claims
Mileage behaves slightly differently, because its value depends on your year-to-date distance. The claimed amount is locked when the report is submitted. The computed total continues to reflect the rate tier that applies now. If a later trip pushed you past an annual threshold, those two numbers diverge. When they differ, Smartbills shows both and explains: “The claimed amount was locked when the report was submitted; the computed total reflects the current year-to-date rate tier.” The claimed amount is what gets reimbursed. This protects both sides. An approver signs off a figure that cannot change underneath them, and you are not retroactively penalised for distance driven after you submitted. See Add mileage to an expense report.Reading the totals
A report shows the sum of claimed amounts, the sum of approved amounts once decisions are made, and the reimbursement total. These agree only when everything was approved in full, so a gap between claimed and approved is the fastest way to spot that something was reduced or denied.Related
Submit a report
Send your claim for approval
Requested changes
Fix a report sent back to you
Approve a report
The approver’s side