Add Guest Expenses to a Report

Certain expense items, like meals and events, include the option to distinguish between attendees who belong to your organization and those who don’t. If you are already familiar with the Allocations functionality, you will find the Guest Selector functions similarly. The Guest Selector appears at the bottom of the expense entry screen. It automatically adds the expense owner as a guest, eliminating the possibility of counting him or her twice.

Internal Guests

Internal guests are those who are Emburse Expense Enterprise users at your organization. Emburse Enterprise automatically identifies internal guests who are listed in the InterAction database and adds them to line items automatically. They are distinguishable by a CRM Number.

To add non-InterAction internal guests to a line item, click the Guests field to open the Guest Selection pane. Recently selected guests will be listed at the top. As you begin to type a name into the search bar, a list of all guests will appear in the lower half of the screen. Use the scroll bar to navigate through the list, if necessary. Then click the desired name to select it.

External Guests

External guests are all other types of guests who are not Emburse Enterprise users at your organization. Searching for external guests who are already in the system is the same process described above, with recent guests denoted by a clock icon.

Add New Guest

If the external guest is not in the system, click + ADD NEW EXTERNAL GUESTS. Multiple fields will appear to capture the new guest's information. Depending on your company's policies, you may not be able to click ADD until information has been entered into every field.

Delete External Guest from History

You may delete external guests from the guest selector drop-down in order to streamline and shorten the list of potential guests. Simply click the trash can icon next to external guests' names to remove them from the list.

Other Guest Types

Depending on your organization's configuration, you may see other types of guests in the Guest Selector drop-down menu. These are supplied by an integration with your organization's CRM system and may have different labels than the examples pictured below. Choose the appropriate type to access your organization's list of guest contacts.

Guest Loader

For large groups of guests, Emburse Enterprise's Guest Loader feature enables users to upload a list of guests directly to the report rather than entering each guest’s information by hand. Note that the uploaded file will replace any guest information already present on the expense.

1. Create a .CSV file containing internal guest names and any external guest names, including titles and companies.

• For internal guests you only need to list the guest's Emburse Enterprise Login name or the primary email address on the account.
• Optionally, you may specify an expense amount for each guest. If no amounts are given, the expense line-item amount will be divided evenly among all guests.
• Do not put commas in the CSV file; this will cause an Invalid File Format error.

Click here for a sample .CSV file you can customize.

2. Click the UPLOAD CSV button in the Guests area of the expense entry screen and attach the .CSV file.

3. You will be asked to confirm that you want to override any guests already entered on the report. Click UPLOAD.

4. An error message will alert you if the file is invalid or if specific rows need to be corrected.

Allocation

The system automatically divides the cost equally among each of the guests so that the total amount is 100% allocated. You may manually adjust the per-person percentages or amounts individually to reallocate portions of the expense. The total percentage will be shown in gray at the bottom so you can be sure the adjusted amounts add up to 100%.

You can allocate a 0.00 amount to one or more guests, as long as the other guests' amounts add up to 100% of the total for that expense.

Create Guest Expense from Meeting Invitation

You may import guests from business meals and meetings by inviting Emburse Enterprise as an attendee on a calendar invitation (.ics) in applications such as Gmail or Outlook. Send the invitation to the same email address you use to submit receipts. See Create Expense Items Via Email for how to find that address.

When Automerge finds an eligible match between the calendar event and an eligible meal receipt, it pairs them in the eWallet, whether the calendar invitation or the receipt arrives first. A matching corporate card transaction may subsequently join the same merged item. See Merge Receipt and Credit Card Transactions for Automerge rules, indicators, and notifications. When the system does not automerge the items, use the manual merge steps below.

After you add the merged item to an expense report, guest data from the calendar event can populate the Guests section. Receipt or credit card details populate other expense fields when those sources are part of the merged item.

1. Add Emburse Enterprise to the calendar meeting by sending an invitation to the same email address you use to submit receipts. (See Create Expense Items Via Email for more details.)

2. After the invitation is processed, the calendar transaction displays in the Offline section of the E-Wallet while it remains separate from the receipt.

If Automerge has already combined the calendar event with a matching receipt, select All to find the combined item (for example, Receipt + Calendar Event).

3. If the calendar event and receipt or card transaction remain separate, merge them manually:

1. From inside the expense report, select + to add expenses, then select All to view all your eWallet items together.
2. Select the calendar event and the corresponding receipt or credit card transaction, then select the Merge button.

4. Select the merged item and select the + button or drag it onto the expense report to add it.

5. The line item you created displays for editing. Scroll down to Guests to see the guest data captured from the calendar event. Emburse Enterprise uses the email addresses of the other attendees to determine whether they are Internal or External guests when adding them to the expense.

• For External guests, Emburse Enterprise will try to extract the first name, last name and company name if the event metadata includes that data

The system splits the line item amount equally among all guests.

In Downloaded Details, select the arrow on the Calendar Event or Receipt/Credit Card to view more extracted data.

When you have filled out all the required fields, select Save.