Reimbursing Crew and Collaborators for Expenses
How to see what each crew member and collaborator is owed for expenses they paid, put those expenses on a reimbursement order, and mark them paid.
When a crew member pays for the band's late-night food or a collaborator covers a parking lot, the event owes them that money back. BackOps tracks what is owed per person from the expenses themselves, and pays it back through an order, so a reimbursement is recorded and paid the same way a vendor bill is.
Who Paid: the Payee
Every expense has a payee, set in the Payee field:
- No payee means the company paid, with a company card or petty cash. Nothing is owed to anyone.
- A crew member or a collaborator on the event means that person or company paid out of pocket and is owed the money back.
Recorded, Owed and Paid
The Payment column, and the Payment row on an open expense, shows where each expense stands. You never set it by hand; it follows from the payee and the order the expense is on.
| Payment | When |
|---|---|
| Recorded | The company paid (No payee). The expense is a record of spend, nothing more. |
| Owed | A crew member or collaborator paid, and the expense is not on a paid order yet. |
| Paid | The expense is on an order that is fully paid. |
Paid is all or nothing at the order level. Until the order's payments cover its whole total, every expense on it stays Owed.
See Who Is Owed
The Owed figure at the top of the Expenses page is the total owed across everyone; select it to filter the table to owed expenses. For a per-person view, select Balances in the toolbar. Each payee is listed with what they are owed, what has been paid, and how many receipts that covers, with whoever is owed the most first. Select a name to filter the table to that person's expenses.
Put Expenses on a Reimbursement Order
Select the expenses
Choose how to pay them
In the bar that appears, choose Create reimbursement order to start a new order for them, or Add to existing order to put them on an order you already have. The same two actions are in each row's menu and on an open expense.
Review the order
Create reimbursement order opens the new order. It is named after the payee and the date range, for example "Reimbursement - Marcus Lee, Oct 3-Oct 5", which you can rename. Each expense is one line at its total.
If an action is greyed out, hovering it says why: the selection mixes payees ("One payee at a time"), an expense has No payee and so is not owed to anyone, or an expense is already on an order. An expense can be on only one order. Adding to an order whose content is locked (an External order marked Sent or Confirmed, or an Internal order marked Ordered) is refused until a new revision of that order is opened.
Pay It Back
Record the payment on the order's Payments tab, as you would for a vendor (see recording payments). When the order's payments cover its total, the order becomes Paid and every expense on it turns Paid. Its payee's balance drops by the same amount.
To pay someone back for several days at once, wait until their receipts are in and create one reimbursement order for all of them. Balances shows when someone has expenses still waiting.