Expense does not match the receipt exactly

During a recent audit, an expense question came up. The member requested a lesser amount than the receipt as a reimbursement for their expense, not bothering to figure the exact tax amount. The clerk paid the amount requested which was slightly lower than the amount of the receipt because the tax was not added in. Is this acceptable as-is (since the amount requested was lower than the receipt) or does the expense need to match the receipt exactly? Thanks for the help!

According to the audit questions, the amounts are supposed to "match." How that is interpreted depends on the judgment of the people involved (auditor, audit committee, clerk, bishop). Personally, I would not worry about it unless the discrepancy is at least several dollars.

The member is in effect paying the tax and not being reimbursed. If the member asks for the tax, we will reimburse that, too.

More often than that, we often see reimbursement requests where the receipt is for much more than the requested reimbursement amount, because the receipt includes items that the member did not purchase for church use.