Use Cases: Expense and Leave Management

Back to Welcome hiring with Horizons

INTRODUTION

We provide our clients and their overseas employees with a comprehensive management solution for Expense & Leaves on the Horizons EOR platform. This includes customized approval policy setup, employee claim or submit request, approval by designated approvers etc.

You may find the step-by-step guide as below,

Process
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)
Expense	Invite Approver as users	Setup Approval Policy	Assign Policy to Employee	Employee Submit Reques	Client Approvers Approve	Export Report of Expense		Claim Expense on Employee's behalf
Leaves	Invite Approver as users	Setup Approval olicy	Assign Policy to Employee	Employee submit Request	Client Approvers approve	Export Report of leave summary	Import taken Leaves Record

Considering that clients may already have in-house OA or tools to manage the Expense or Leaves in place, and would like to selectively use Horizons Portal for the Leaves and Expense management. 

We recommend finding an appropriate options of use cases based on their specific circumstances and internal regulations in the following scenarios. 

Expense

As the EOR, Horizons treats all employee reimbursement receipts as business expenses and records them in the accounting book of the local entity before issuing reimbursements to employees. Therefore, regardless of the chosen scenario for adaptation, all receipts and amounts must be inputted into Horizons' platform for recording and subsequent actions.

Expense Option I - All processes implemented on the Horizons platform applicable 

Use case: 

All relevant approvers are allowed to conduct expense approvals outside of Client In-house HRIS or OA.

• Invite all relevant approvers to become users on the Horizons platform. (1)
• Configure multi-level approval policies and assign corresponding approval policies to each employee (2) & (3)
• Employees submit expense on the Horizons platform. (4)
• Relevant approvers (in a hierarchical manner) approve for reimbursements (5)
• Horizons proceed the remibursement
• Client users can choose to export approved reimbursement reports for internal record-keeping if needed (6)

Note: Conducting the entire process on a single platform ensures transparency in workflow and progress, guaranteeing accuracy and consistency of information. There is no longer a need to rely on traditional paper documents or spreadsheets for recording and approving progress, or sending emails or text messages for manually querying approval status. Both employees and client users can access real-time information regarding reimbursement approval progress, amounts, approval comments, issuance time, etc., through the Horizons platform."

Expense Option II - Horizons → Internal OA → Horizons Cross-platform Approval

i. Employee submission → Client Rep as Horizons User export from Horizons App →Import into HRIS or OA for Internal review → Client Rep as Horizons User  for final approval → Horizons execution reimbursement

Use case: 

Some approvers (e.g., finance or hiring managers) must handle approvals on the internal OA. 

• Invite approval representatives as Horizons platform users. If the approval representative is already a user, this step can be skipped. (1)
• Configure the approval policy by adding the approval representative as a single-layer and final approver (2)
• Assign corresponding approval policy to each employee (3) 
• Employees submit reimbursements on the Horizons platform. (4)
• After receiving a notification email from the platform, the approval representative exports pending reimbursement reports from Horizons and imports them into the internal OA for review 
• Once reviewed in the internal OA, the approval representative performs final approvals on the Horizons platform  (5)

Note:
The company strives to balance both internal and external needs, although there is room for improvement in terms of transparency. Employees may not have immediate access to information regarding approval progress and status queries.

ii. Employees submit reimbursement across platforms simultaneously → Internal review → Approval representative platform operation for final approval → Horizons execute reimbursement 

Use case: 

 Some approvers (e.g. finance or HR managers) must handle approvals on the internal OA and approval representatives (e.g. HR) cannot import reports into the internal OA

• Invite approval representatives as Horizons platform users, if they are already users, this step can be skipped.(1)
• Configure the approval policy to add the approval representative as a single-layer and final approver  (2)
• Assign corresponding approval policy to each employee  (3)
• Employees submit reimbursement on both Horizons platform and internal OA simultaneously (4)
• After completion of internal OA review, the approval representative performs final approval on the Horizons platform. It is necessary to ensure that the content and amount submitted by employees on both platforms are consistent here  (5)
• Horizons proceed approved for reimbursements
   

Note: 

The company strives to balance both internal and external needs, while employees can keep track of real-time progress and status of reimbursement approvals. However, it requires more time for the approval representative to verify them accurately.

Expense Option III - Internal OA → Horizons Platform 

Use Case: The applicant (e.g. employee) and all approvers find it inconvenient to manage the reimbursement process on a non-internal platform. 

• No need to configure approval policy
• Employees submit expense  through the internal OA system  
• The client company completes the in-house review process internally
• Admin users from the client company on the Horizons platform export approved expense reports (including amount, merchant information, category, and receipts)
• Admin users from the client company on the Horizons platform submit expenses on behalf of employees(8)
• Horizons proceed approved expenses 

Note: No requiring cross-platform management of approval processes. However, client representatives need to monitor internal approval progress and promptly submit expenses on behalf of employees on the Horizons platform, while ensuring consistency in amount and expense information.

Leaves

Employee leave records are closely related to employee income, welfare and other factors in each stage of employment. Therefore, as a nominal employer, Horizons needs to work closely with client to ensure the real-time update of employee leave records.

Leave Option I - All processes are implemented on the Horizons platform

Use Case: 

All relevant approvers are allowed to conduct leaves approvals outside of Client In-house HRIS or OA.

• Invite all relevant approvers to be users of the Horizons platform (1)
• Configure multi-level approval policy (2)
• And assign the corresponding approval policy to each employee (3)
• Employees submit applications on the Horizons platform (4)
• Relevant approver (layer by layer) approves holiday application (5)
• Additional benefits that may result from the implementation of approved holidays by Horizons 
• Customer users can choose to export approved leave summary for in-house records (if necessary) (6) 

Note: The whole process is on the same platform to ensure the transparency of the process and progress, and to ensure the accuracy and consistency of information. There is no longer a need to rely on traditional paper documents or spreadsheets to record and approve progress, or to send email messages to manually inquire about approval progress. Both employees and customers can query the holiday approval progress, approval opinions, and time through the Horizons platform in real time. At the same time, the Horizons platform has integrated the national holiday calendar of all covered countries, so that customer representatives can easily manage and employees' overall leave, including leave and national leave.

Leave Option II -Horizons → Internal OA → Cross-platform approval of Horizons

Use Case: Key approvalers (e.g. hiring managers) must handle approvals on in-house OA

• Invite the approver representative to be a user of Horizons platform. If the approver representative has already become a user, this step can be skipped. (1)
• Configure the leave approval policy,  adding the approver representative as a single layer and final approver (2)
• And assign the corresponding approval policy to each employee (3)
• Employees submit their leave request on the internal OA when they submit it  on the Horizons portal (4)
• After In-house process within the client company. , the approver's representative will conduct the final approval on the Horizons platform. It is necessary to ensure that the content and date submitted by employees on the two platforms are the same  (5)
• Additional benefits that may result from the implementation of approved leaves by Horizons 

Notes: both internal and external needs are taken into account, and employees can master the real-time progress and status inquiry of reimbursement approval. However, the approver's representative takes more time to check and ensure that there are no cases in which the employee mistakenly applies the annual leave or other leave to the national leave or other statutory leave days

Leaves Options III - Internal OA → Horizons platform

Use Case: Applicants (e.g., employees) and all approver must go through the leaves process on a in-houses OA system

• No need to configure the approval policy for leaves 
• Employees submit leave application in in-house HRIS or OA
• In-house process within the client company
• The client's users (HR, Finance, Admin) on the Horizons platform will export the taken leaves records including holiday types, periods and other information
• The clients' users (HR, Finance, Admin) on the Horizons platform  import the leaves records on the platform (7)
• The Horizons support team will review the holidays to ensure no misalignment or repeated submissions before final import
• Additional benefits that may result from the implementation of approved leaves by Horizons

Notes: both internal and external needs are taken into account, and employees can master the real-time progress and status inquiry of reimbursement approval. But the approver's representative takes more time to check. In addition, there are cases in which employees mistakenly apply for annual leave or other holidays on national leave or other statutory leave days. At the same time, it is necessary to regularly check the balance of various holidays.

Back to Welcome hiring with Horizons