Define spending limits, receipt requirements, and category restrictions to enforce your organization's expense rules in Eloope.
What policies do
Expense policies set the rules employees must follow when submitting expenses. They help you control spending, ensure compliance, and reduce manual review. Policies can enforce limits on amounts, require receipts, restrict categories, and set travel-specific rules.
View policies
- Go to Admin Settings > Policies.
- Browse the list of active policies.
Create a policy
- Go to Admin Settings > Policies.
- Click New Policy.
- Enter a policy name and optional description.
- Configure the policy rules (see below).
- Click Save.
Policy rules
You can configure the following rules within a policy:
Spending limits
- Maximum expense amount: Set a global cap on any single expense.
- Category-specific limits: Set different maximum amounts for specific categories (e.g., Meals capped at $75, Software capped at $500).
Receipt requirements
- Receipt required above amount: Automatically require a receipt when an expense exceeds a threshold (e.g., receipts required for expenses over $25).
Mileage rate
- Rate per mile or kilometer: Define the reimbursement rate for mileage expenses.
Category restrictions
- Prohibited categories: Block certain expense types entirely so employees cannot select them.
Hotel folio variance
- Allowed variance (% of receipt): The maximum gap allowed between the sum of hotel folio line items and the receipt total, expressed as a percentage of the receipt. Common settings are 5% for strict and 15% for lenient. Leave blank to disable the check. See Hotel folios for how the editor works on the employee side.
Hard vs soft violations
When an expense breaks a policy rule, Eloope flags it as a violation. There are two types:
| Type | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Hard violation | Blocks the employee from submitting the expense. They must correct the issue before resubmitting. |
| Soft violation | Shows a warning but allows the employee to submit the expense with a written justification. |
Note: Configure each rule as hard or soft based on your organization's needs. For example, you might make spending limits a hard violation but receipt requirements a soft violation.
Travel policies
Travel policies add rules specific to business travel expenses:
- Budget limits: Set maximum budgets for travel-related spending.
- Flight class restrictions: Restrict bookings to economy or business class based on trip duration or role.
- Advance booking requirements: Require flights to be booked a minimum number of days before departure.
- Hotel rate limits: Set maximum nightly rates by city or region.
- Per diem rates: Define daily allowances for meals and incidentals during travel.
View policy violations
- Go to Admin Settings > Policies.
- Click the Policy Violations tab.
- Browse all violations across the organization, including the employee name, expense, rule broken, and violation type.
- Click Export CSV to download violation data for further analysis.
Hotel folio variance report
Hotel folio expenses with a non-zero variance get their own dedicated report so you can monitor reconciliation patterns across the organization.
- Go to Admin Settings.
- In the admin sidebar, find the Monitoring section and click Variance Report.
- Filter by date range using the From and To filters.
The report lists every hotel folio expense with a variance, including:
- Date of the expense
- Submitted by — the employee
- Expense name and type
- Receipt total in the expense currency
- Variance — the signed gap between line items and the receipt total
- Reason — the reason the submitter provided
- Report status — whether the parent report is draft, submitted, approved, etc.
Use the report to spot patterns: a single employee with consistent unexplained variance, a hotel chain that systematically under-itemizes tips, or month-over-month variance trends ahead of an audit.
Warning: Policies apply to new expense submissions. Changing a policy does not retroactively flag existing approved expenses.