Policy for old Receipts

We recently had an auxiliary submit receipts for activities from over a year ago. I tried to find a policy on when a receipt becomes too old to reimburse but I couldn't find anything. Is it just up to the unit leader to make a call on whether or not he wants to approve those receipts for reimbursement? It seems like it would be helpful for to be able to have a policy to fall back on so there is a consistent approach.

If it was a valid expense, properly documented and the bishop approves the reimbursement I don't know of any reason why it can't be reimbursed. For a practical matter it's hard to manage a budget if expenses aren't submitted in a reasonable time frame but assuming the expense isn't that large, a single late request shouldn't cause any great budget difficulty either.

It's impossible to write a check from an old budget. So, that expense will come out of this year's budget. If the ward decides to take it from this year's auxiliary budget, that should motivate the auxiliary in question to be a bit more timely in their receipts in the future.

We received some large reimbursement requests in Jan 2018 for expenses from 2017. Some were from the big ward Christmas party, and others were just a pile of receipts for Young Women expenses. They tried to get the receipts in before the end of the year, but the weather turned bad, so we couldn't get together before the end of the year. That $385 check really cut into the 2018 YW budget, but I think everything will work out fine for them. We have extra money in other budget categories to cover it if needed.

drepouille wrote:We received some large reimbursement requests in Jan 2018 for expenses from 2017.

Although it is not as easy to keep track budget wise, the funds from 2017 should still be available in 2018. Others have commented on different ways to display the budget and expense information when this happens.

It is much more difficult to do when the expense was over a year old.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. These receipts were over 1 year old. I’ve advised the clerk of the unit to work with the bishop to approve (or disapprove) the reimbursement and to council with the auxillerary leader on the importance of turning in receipts more timely for budgeting purposes.