The tables behind Expense Reporting System

The submitter’s report header. One report aggregates many expense lines for a single trip, project, or pay period. Lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → approved by mgr → approved by finance → Reimbursed; with branches Held and Rejected. Reimbursed is set when the downstream Payroll or AP cycle confirms payment.

The line grain. One row per receipt / per per-diem day / per mileage trip. Carries the GL coding, project costing, approved amount (set by the approver — may differ from Amount when a partial disallowance applies), and payment method (out of pocket vs corporate card) that drives the reimbursement branch.

The supporting documentation — phone snap, PDF, emailed receipt forwarded to a capture inbox. OCR runs on upload and backfills the parsed fields; the submitter (or auto-fill on high-confidence parse) writes the canonical values onto the expense line.

The daily transaction feed from the card program. One row per posted swipe / charge / refund. New rows land via the card-transaction-feed-import workflow with Status: Unmatched; the card-txn-to-expense-line-match workflow advances them to Matched on a unique expense line pairing.

One row per business trip drive. Either the user enters From / To addresses and the mileage-calculation-from-google-maps workflow computes Miles, or the user enters Miles directly with an odometer-style override. Calculated reimbursement uses the active mileage rates row for the entry date’s tax year.

The meals and entertainment classification log for tax review. One row per expense line where Category.MealsAndEntertainment = true. Carries the attendee list and business purpose required for the deduction; drives the M&E memo on the GL posting and the M&E detail report.

Policy header. Scope: Org / Department / Role. One default Org policy plus targeted overrides. Active policies are evaluated by policy-violation-flag on every line submission.

The declarative rules. One row per per-diem cap, alcohol limit, weekend trigger, single-meal ceiling, receipt-required override, or M&E attendee-list requirement. Each rule has a Severity that governs whether it warns, requires justification, or blocks submission.

The category catalog. Drives default GL coding, receipt-required threshold per category, M&E classification flag, and per-category policy hooks. Active categories appear in the line-entry picker.

One row per breached policy rules row per expense line. The policy-violation-flag and fraud-pattern-detection workflows write these. Violation count on the parent report rolls up. Severity governs the submission gate — Block prevents the submitter from advancing the report.

The submitter’s report header. One report aggregates many expense lines for a single trip, project, or pay period. Lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → approved by mgr → approved by finance → Reimbursed; with branches Held and Rejected. Reimbursed is set when the downstream Payroll or AP cycle confirms payment.

The line grain. One row per receipt / per per-diem day / per mileage trip. Carries the GL coding, project costing, approved amount (set by the approver — may differ from Amount when a partial disallowance applies), and payment method (out of pocket vs corporate card) that drives the reimbursement branch.

One row per business trip drive. Either the user enters From / To addresses and the mileage-calculation-from-google-maps workflow computes Miles, or the user enters Miles directly with an odometer-style override. Calculated reimbursement uses the active mileage rates row for the entry date’s tax year.

The per-tax-year mileage reimbursement rate. Defaults to the IRS standard mileage rate published annually (e.g. 67¢/mi for 2024, 70¢/mi for 2025); a company-override row supersedes the IRS row for a given year and RateScope.

GSA-style per-diem rates by US city / locality and effective fiscal year. Drives the PerDiemCap Policy rules rows for Lodging, M&IE, and Conference per-diem. Refreshed annually from the GSA per-diem publication.

The submitter’s registered personal vehicle(s) used for business mileage. Mileage entries reference one Vehicle so the audit trail captures which car drove which trip.

The line grain. One row per receipt / per per-diem day / per mileage trip. Carries the GL coding, project costing, approved amount (set by the approver — may differ from Amount when a partial disallowance applies), and payment method (out of pocket vs corporate card) that drives the reimbursement branch.

The submitter’s report header. One report aggregates many expense lines for a single trip, project, or pay period. Lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → approved by mgr → approved by finance → Reimbursed; with branches Held and Rejected. Reimbursed is set when the downstream Payroll or AP cycle confirms payment.

The meals and entertainment classification log for tax review. One row per expense line where Category.MealsAndEntertainment = true. Carries the attendee list and business purpose required for the deduction; drives the M&E memo on the GL posting and the M&E detail report.

The submitter’s report header. One report aggregates many expense lines for a single trip, project, or pay period. Lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → approved by mgr → approved by finance → Reimbursed; with branches Held and Rejected. Reimbursed is set when the downstream Payroll or AP cycle confirms payment.

The line grain. One row per receipt / per per-diem day / per mileage trip. Carries the GL coding, project costing, approved amount (set by the approver — may differ from Amount when a partial disallowance applies), and payment method (out of pocket vs corporate card) that drives the reimbursement branch.

The audit trail of approver actions on the report. One row per step in the chain — Manager, Finance Reviewer, optionally Controller for high-value. Each step records who approved / rejected / held, when, and what they wrote in the comment.

One row per breached policy rules row per expense line. The policy-violation-flag and fraud-pattern-detection workflows write these. Violation count on the parent report rolls up. Severity governs the submission gate — Block prevents the submitter from advancing the report.

The supporting documentation — phone snap, PDF, emailed receipt forwarded to a capture inbox. OCR runs on upload and backfills the parsed fields; the submitter (or auto-fill on high-confidence parse) writes the canonical values onto the expense line.

A scoped employee identity directory synchronized from the organization identity or HR source. This reference supports ownership and approval attribution; it does not add payroll or HR administration. Role membership alone never grants access to every directory field. External auditors and portal users receive only the identities needed for their granted work.

The paid-out record. One row per expense report per reimbursement channel. Reimbursement method selects whether the cash leg rides the next Payroll run as an OneTimePayment or the next AP cycle as a separate ACH PaymentsMade against the Employee-as-Vendor record. Reimbursement method copies from expense policy reimbursement channel at creation but persists independently — policy changes after report submission do not retro-route an in-flight reimbursement. The dual-destination pattern (payroll one time payment ref vs payment run ref) means an in-flight reimbursement keeps its original routing path.

The submitter’s report header. One report aggregates many expense lines for a single trip, project, or pay period. Lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → approved by mgr → approved by finance → Reimbursed; with branches Held and Rejected. Reimbursed is set when the downstream Payroll or AP cycle confirms payment.

The line grain. One row per receipt / per per-diem day / per mileage trip. Carries the GL coding, project costing, approved amount (set by the approver — may differ from Amount when a partial disallowance applies), and payment method (out of pocket vs corporate card) that drives the reimbursement branch.

The audit trail of approver actions on the report. One row per step in the chain — Manager, Finance Reviewer, optionally Controller for high-value. Each step records who approved / rejected / held, when, and what they wrote in the comment.

A scoped employee identity directory synchronized from the organization identity or HR source. This reference supports ownership and approval attribution; it does not add payroll or HR administration. Role membership alone never grants access to every directory field. External auditors and portal users receive only the identities needed for their granted work.

Issued company cards. One Cardholder per card; a Cardholder may hold multiple cards. Card last4 is the only card-number field stored — the full PAN never enters the system (the card-program integration uses tokenized references).

The daily transaction feed from the card program. One row per posted swipe / charge / refund. New rows land via the card-transaction-feed-import workflow with Status: Unmatched; the card-txn-to-expense-line-match workflow advances them to Matched on a unique expense line pairing.

Period-end (typically monthly) reconciliation per corporate card. Compares the issuer statement balance to the sum of imported card transactions. On Controller-approved reconciliation, advances all eligible in-period card transactions from Matched → Reconciled and the corresponding AP Bills row to the card issuer is marked ready for payment.

The submitter’s report header. One report aggregates many expense lines for a single trip, project, or pay period. Lifecycle: Draft → Submitted → approved by mgr → approved by finance → Reimbursed; with branches Held and Rejected. Reimbursed is set when the downstream Payroll or AP cycle confirms payment.

The line grain. One row per receipt / per per-diem day / per mileage trip. Carries the GL coding, project costing, approved amount (set by the approver — may differ from Amount when a partial disallowance applies), and payment method (out of pocket vs corporate card) that drives the reimbursement branch.

The supporting documentation — phone snap, PDF, emailed receipt forwarded to a capture inbox. OCR runs on upload and backfills the parsed fields; the submitter (or auto-fill on high-confidence parse) writes the canonical values onto the expense line.

A scoped employee identity directory synchronized from the organization identity or HR source. This reference supports ownership and approval attribution; it does not add payroll or HR administration. Role membership alone never grants access to every directory field. External auditors and portal users receive only the identities needed for their granted work.