Nothing is forever. Whether it’s a transition to a job at a new company, retirement, or an unfortunate layoff situation, every company deals with the exit of employees. Communicating dates, knowledge transfer, removing access to systems, and an exit interview are essential steps to close out an employment period properly. Another crucial step is to ensure that company assets are correctly returned. Laptops, cell phones, key cards, and badges are typical items that a company will want the employee to return after their employment period is complete.
Here’s the challenge, though. The transitioning employee’s company credit card (if they had one) has been closed. So when shipping the items back through FedEx, UPS, or the post office, the employee is paying out of pocket. But their access to the company reimbursement solution has also been removed!
How do you reimburse a person who is no longer an employee and not connected to your payroll system? The incorrect but common “solution” is to create the non-employee as a vendor and issue the payout as part of your scheduled invoice payments. Do you want to set up your former employee as a vendor? The answer is always no, but many companies feel like this is their only option. Even with the “set up as a vendor solution,” you still have the challenge of efficiently collecting your former employee’s reimbursement requests and receipts. Payouts need to be auditable with the necessary approval captured.
Similar to reimbursements to job candidates, interns, and other people that are not employees, companies should have a process in place to easily, quickly, and accurately reimburse former employees. Here we have Reimbi’s sweet spot: non-employee reimbursements. Reimbi has issued well over $2 million in reimbursements to non-employees. Reimbi provides substantial time savings for our customers, and the easy and quick reimbursements are especially appreciated by non-employees (including former employees!).
