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Expense claims

File a reimbursement claim in Clyentra, add expense items across seven categories, submit it for review, approve or reject as a manager, and mark it reimbursed.

7 min read · Reviewed 2026-07-13

An expense claim in Clyentra is a container — a claim with a title, holding one or more expense items. You build it, you submit it, someone approves it, and someone marks it paid. Four states, three tabs, no spreadsheet.

The three tabs

Open /hr/hr-expenses. The screen is titled Expenses — "Submit expense reimbursement claims, attach items, and manage team approvals".

Each tab carries a live count, so you can see there are four claims waiting on you without opening anything.

The lifecycle

A claim moves through five states, and the tabs map onto them:

Approving is not paying: Approved and Reimbursed are deliberately separate. A manager agrees the spend was legitimate; finance confirms the money actually left. Two people, two steps, two records — which is exactly what you want when someone asks six months later whether a claim was ever paid.

The seven categories

Every expense item is filed under one of exactly seven categories. There is no free-text alternative, and that is the point — it is what makes the numbers add up at the end of the quarter.

• Travel & Commute
• Meals & Entertainment
• Lodging & Hotel
• Hardware & Equipment
• Software & Subscriptions
• Office Supplies
• Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous is a smell, not a category: If a large share of your claims are landing in Miscellaneous, the other six are not the problem — the descriptions are. Tell people what belongs where before you conclude the categories are wrong.

File a claim

1. Press New claim. On the My Claims tab. The panel is headed New Reimbursement Claim — "Create a claim period and submit your first expense item."
2. Name the claim. Claim Title is required — "Title is required". The placeholder shows the shape: "e.g. Client visit — Q3 offsite". Add Notes / Description for context or a project code.
3. Add the first expense item. Under First Expense Item: pick a Category, enter the Amount, set the Expense Date, and describe it in Item Details. The amount must be positive — "Amount must be greater than zero" — and takes two decimal places.
4. Press Create Claim. The claim is created as a Draft with one item on it.
5. Add the rest. On the claim's detail panel, use Add Expense Item to attach as many more as you need. A three-day trip is one claim with a hotel, two dinners and a taxi — not four claims.
6. Press Submit Claim. The claim leaves Draft and becomes Pending Review. From this point you are waiting on someone else.

Amounts are in your organization's currency: Every expense item is recorded in the currency configured on your organization — USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, whatever you set up. There is no per-item currency picker on the claim form, so a claim filed in one currency and a claim filed in another are not something Clyentra reconciles for you. If your team travels internationally, convert before you enter. See organization-settings.

What a draft looks like

The claim detail panel shows the title, the status badge, who submitted it, and the Expense Receipts Breakdown — every item with its category, date, description and amount. While the claim is a Draft and it is yours, you get the Add Expense Item form and the Submit Claim button. Once it is submitted, both disappear: a claim under review does not change shape underneath the person reviewing it.

Approve or reject

On the Pending Approvals tab, open a claim and scroll to Process Claim.

1. Read the breakdown. Every item, with its category, date and amount. This is the whole point of making people file items rather than a single lump sum.
2. Set the Decision. Approve or Reject.
3. Write the Note / Justification. The placeholder is direct: "Explain approval or rejection reason..." A rejection without a reason generates a conversation you could have avoided by typing one sentence.
4. Press Submit Decision. The claim moves to Approved or Rejected, and your note is stored against it.

You never see your own claims here. The Pending Approvals tab filters out anything you submitted yourself, so nobody approves their own dinner.

Reimburse

Approved claims collect on the Reimburse Claims tab. Open one and the panel reads Mark as Reimbursed — "Clicking confirm will mark the claim as officially reimbursed to the employee."

Add a Reference / Payment Note — the placeholder asks for a "Bank reference number or payroll note..." — and press Confirm Reimbursement Payout. The claim reaches Reimbursed, its terminal state, with a payment reference attached to it.

Put the reference in: It takes four seconds and it is the difference between "we paid that in April" and "we paid that in April, transaction 8841". When an employee says they never received a reimbursement, the reference is the entire conversation.

The summary tiles

The My Claims tab leads with three tiles, computed from your own claims:

The gap between Total Claimed and Reimbursed is what you are owed. If Pending has been sitting still for two weeks, that is a conversation to have with your approver, not a bug to report.

Who can do what

My Claims is open to everyone with HR access. Pending Approvals appears for managers with direct reports and for HR admins. Reimburse Claims is HR-admin only. Access is governed by the HR permission on your role — see roles-and-permissions.