Reimbursement receipts: Requirements and best practices

- What is a reimbursement receipt?
- What information should reimbursement receipts contain?
- Expenses that require receipts for reimbursement
- Why are reimbursement receipts so important?
- Common challenges with reimbursement receipts
- Reimbursement receipt best practices
- Streamline receipt capture and expense reimbursement with Ramp

Reimbursement Receipt
A reimbursement receipt is a document that confirms an employee incurred an out-of-pocket business expense. Reimbursement receipts prove employees can justifiably request and receive reimbursement for purchases they've made on behalf of the company.
If your employees frequently use their own money to make purchases on your company’s behalf, it's important to have a reimbursement policy in place to pay them back. A critical component of that policy is ensuring you collect a receipt that verifies every reimbursement request. These receipts are, fittingly enough, known as reimbursement receipts.
Below, we take a closer look at what reimbursement receipts are, when they are and aren't required, and what information they should contain. We also walk through some common challenges businesses face when dealing with reimbursement receipts and share strategies to help streamline your processes.
What is a reimbursement receipt?
A reimbursement receipt serves as proof that an employee incurred a business expense on your company’s behalf. When the employee requests reimbursement for the expense, they submit the reimbursement receipt as supporting documentation that justifies the purchase and proves they paid for the expense with their own money.
Reimbursement receipts come in various formats, from paper receipts issued at the point of sale to e-receipts that are texted or emailed to the purchaser. Other supporting documents that can sometimes act as proof of a business purchase include credit card statements paid invoices, or canceled checks, though itemized receipts are by far the preferred form of evidence.
What information should reimbursement receipts contain?
A reimbursement receipt confirms that your employee made a legitimate business purchase. With that in mind, all receipts should ideally contain the following information:
- Retailer: The name of the retailer, vendor, or supplier where the purchase was made
- Payment date: The date and time that the employee made the purchase
- Description: A detailed description of the items or services purchased, including quantities and unit prices
- Total amount: How much was spent on the purchase
- Payment method: How the purchase was completed, whether via cash, debit card, credit card, or some other form of payment
Reimbursement receipts are typically submitted alongside an itemized expense report that provides context for each business purchase, including why it was necessary. When reimbursement is justified, the expense report and receipts are then routed for review and approval.
Expenses that require receipts for reimbursement
Any purchase employees make on your company’s behalf must be supported by a receipt or other documentation. This is true regardless of whether reimbursement is required.
If your employee made a purchase using their own money, a receipt is necessary to trigger reimbursement; if the purchase was made with company funds—for example, with a company credit card—you still need a receipt for your business records.
Some common reimbursable expenses that require receipts include:
- Travel expenses: Airfare, rental cars, lodging expenses, train tickets, tolls, etc.
- Business meals: When traveling or in other business situations
- Networking expenses: Registration fees for conferences, conventions, and trade shows
- Office supplies: Paper, pens, cleaning supplies, markers and whiteboards, etc.
- Equipment and electronics: Laptops, monitors, mice, keyboards, etc.
Expenses that don’t require receipts
While it’s a good business practice to always collect reimbursement receipts, there are instances where they aren’t strictly necessary.
For example, if you provide your employees with a stipend or per diem, you don’t need to collect a receipt since you don’t actually need to reimburse the purchases. Whether or not you require receipts in these instances is ultimately a matter of corporate policy.
Likewise, if your employees use personal vehicles for business travel and you use the standard mileage rate for mileage reimbursement, you don’t need to collect any receipts. You should, however, require other supporting documentation in the form of a mileage log or trip log.
Why are reimbursement receipts so important?
Even when it’s not strictly required, it’s best practice to document all business expenditures by collecting and retaining receipts. When it comes to employee reimbursement receipts, it’s even more important for a couple reasons:
Reduces errors and fraud
Without adequate documentation of each business purchase, it’s impossible for you to thoroughly review employee reimbursement requests. This creates the risk that you might reimburse employees for purchases that fall outside company policy, whether due to error or expense fraud. Simply put, reimbursement receipts protect your business from these mistakes.
Serves as tax proof
As a business owner, you’re entitled to write off any deductible business expense as a business tax deduction when you file your taxes. If you plan on claiming deductions, you must have proof of purchase for every expense you write off. Failure to provide proper documentation of expenses can result in penalties and fines if your business gets audited by the IRS.
What is the $75 receipt rule?
The IRS requires receipts for all business expenses of $75 or more should you deduct those expenses on your taxes. This has come to be known as the "$75 rule." For that reason, it's especially important to retain copies of receipts for business purchases for at least seven years.
Common challenges with reimbursement receipts
Just because you’ve collected receipts as proof of payment for all employee reimbursements doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet. In fact, a number of receipt-related challenges often trip up large and small businesses alike:
Lost or missing receipts
Lost receipts are one of the most common challenges related to employee expense reimbursements. Consider all the opportunities for receipts to be misplaced. The employee who incurred the expense may lose or accidentally throw away the receipt before submitting their expense report. Maybe they forgot to ask for a receipt with their purchase to begin with.
While this may not affect your ability to process a reimbursement, it can affect your ability to write off the expense.
Damaged receipts
Just as physical receipts can be lost, they can also become damaged, faded, or otherwise illegible. Traditional paper receipts are printed on a special type of thermal paper that is sensitive to heat. This makes fading a common issue, especially if the employee kept their receipt in a warm place like their wallet or vehicle during travel.
On top of that, all physical receipts, regardless of material, are susceptible to pest damage and water damage whether stored correctly or incorrectly.
Unmatched receipts
If you collect and store physical receipts without a plan for how to organize them, you could run into several challenges. In the event of an IRS audit, it's not enough to simply turn over your receipts. You must also be able to associate each receipt with the corresponding purchase, the business purpose of that expense, and the tax write-off you claimed.
Storing all your business receipts in a shoebox or filing cabinet without a system in place to meet these requirements can lead to a major headache if you get audited.
Reimbursement receipt best practices
With the above challenges in mind, below are some best practices you may want to incorporate into your reimbursement policy:
Require digital scans
One way to avoid damaged, degraded, or lost physical receipts is to require employees to upload a digital scan of their receipts along with their expense reports.
Having a digital copy eliminates the risk of degradation or other damage, and makes it easier to associate each receipt with the corresponding purchase in your accounting software or records. That being said, it’s always a good idea to hold onto the original receipt in case you’re asked to produce it for inspection.
Enable real-time receipt upload
While employees can lose receipts anywhere, it’s especially common when employees are on the road or traveling for business. In these situations, employees will typically stockpile all the receipts related to their trip and upload them en masse when the business trip is done.
Of course, this increases the chance that a receipt might be misplaced or damaged. Facilitating the real-time upload of receipts—for example, by choosing expense management software that includes a mobile app with receipt scanning capabilities—reduces this risk.
Retain receipts for at least 7 years
As proof of purchase for business-related expenses, receipts serve an important role in documenting your business’s activities. This is especially true if you deduct business expenses from your tax return come tax time.
Unfortunately, if the IRS decides to audit your business, it can go back several years—up to seven, depending on the circumstances. With this in mind, it’s a good idea to retain all reimbursement receipts for at least seven years, though some businesses choose to keep records for longer.
Streamline receipt capture and expense reimbursement with Ramp
Collecting and organizing your business’s reimbursement receipts doesn’t need to be a headache. With Ramp’s expense management platform, you can solve many of the receipt-related challenges mentioned above, empowering your employees to:
- Capture digital scans of physical receipts
- Submit electronic receipts via email or text
- Report expenses on the go via Ramp’s mobile app
- Accurately code, categorize, and map expenses
On top of that, Ramp’s all-in-one finance platform makes it easy to issue unlimited physical and virtual corporate cards that can help eliminate the need for frequent expense reimbursements. Enforce your expense policies automatically and view all your spending in one place with Ramp.

Don't miss these
“When our teams need something, they usually need it right away. The more time we can save doing all those tedious tasks, the more time we can dedicate to supporting our student-athletes.”
Sarah Harris
Secretary, The University of Tennessee Athletics Foundation, Inc.

“Ramp had everything we were looking for, and even things we weren't looking for. The policy aspects, that's something I never even dreamed of that a purchasing card program could handle.”
Doug Volesky
Director of Finance, City of Mount Vernon

“Switching from Brex to Ramp wasn’t just a platform swap—it was a strategic upgrade that aligned with our mission to be agile, efficient, and financially savvy.”
Lily Liu
CEO, Piñata

“With Ramp, everything lives in one place. You can click into a vendor and see every transaction, invoice, and contract. That didn’t exist in Zip. It’s made approvals much faster because decision-makers aren’t chasing down information—they have it all at their fingertips.”
Ryan Williams
Manager, Contract and Vendor Management, Advisor360°

“The ability to create flexible parameters, such as allowing bookings up to 25% above market rate, has been really good for us. Plus, having all the information within the same platform is really valuable.”
Caroline Hill
Assistant Controller, Sana Benefits

“More vendors are allowing for discounts now, because they’re seeing the quick payment. That started with Ramp—getting everyone paid on time. We’ll get a 1-2% discount for paying early. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars, it does add up.”
James Hardy
CFO, SAM Construction Group

“We’ve simplified our workflows while improving accuracy, and we are faster in closing with the help of automation. We could not have achieved this without the solutions Ramp brought to the table.”
Kaustubh Khandelwal
VP of Finance, Poshmark

“I was shocked at how easy it was to set up Ramp and get our end users to adopt it. Our prior procurement platform took six months to implement, and it was a lot of labor. Ramp was so easy it was almost scary.”
Michael Natsch
Procurement Manager, AIRCO
