Review, approve, and pay reimbursements

When someone at your church submits an expense, it lands in your Expenses page for review. From there you send the money yourself (through Venmo, Zelle, a check, and so on) and then record whether you paid it or turned it down.

Before you begin

You need permission to approve expenses. This is usually an admin or a team lead.
Churchday does not move money for you. You send each reimbursement from your own bank, Venmo, or Zelle, then mark it paid here to keep your records straight.

Find what needs paying

Go to the Expenses page. Open Expenses from the dashboard.
Use the tabs to sort submissions. Across the top you'll see All, Pending, Logged, Paid, and Rejected. Logged holds church-card purchases that are on file for your records and need no action. Each row shows a colored status pill and a Ref # (its reference number).
Start with the To pay section. When you owe money, a To pay section sits at the top of the page. It groups everyone you owe by person, so each card is one payment you need to send.

Send the money, then mark it paid

Copy the recipient's payment handle. On a person's To pay card, click the Copy button next to their Venmo, Zelle, or PayPal handle. For a check, it copies the Pay to the order of name instead.
Send the payment in your own app. Open Venmo, Zelle, your bank, or write the check, and pay the amount shown. Paste the Ref # into the payment note or bank memo so the payment is easy to match up later.
Mark it paid. Click Mark as paid on that person's card to record it. You can also open any single expense and click Mark as paid, then confirm with Yes, I sent it. Either way, the submitter gets an email letting them know they were paid.

Reject an expense

Open the expense. Click the row to see its details and receipt.
Click Reject. A window asks for a reason.
Write a reason of at least 10 characters. The submitter gets an email with your reason. Rejecting is final: they cannot edit and resubmit that expense. If you only need a small correction, edit it yourself instead (see below).

Fix a mistake

You have two ways to correct an expense:

Edit the details. On a pending expense, change any field (amount, merchant, category, purpose, payment method) and click Save changes.
Revert to pending. If an expense is already marked paid or rejected, open it and click Revert to pending to move it back to your review queue, then edit it. Reverting does not email the submitter.

Good to know

The Copy button and the Ref # are there to save you retyping. Handles are exactly what the submitter entered, and the reference number is the memo you'll want on the payment.
Church-card purchases under Logged have no payee and no approval step. They're just on file, so you won't see them in To pay.
If money needs to come back to the church after an expense was paid, handle it with a return rather than a rejection.