Nonprofit Reimbursement Approvals: Ditch the Old School Paper Chase

Simplifying Reimbursements for Nonprofits

Processing reimbursements can be a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating part of your role as a nonprofit treasurer. Depending on your organization’s bylaws, your nonprofit reimbursement policy may require you to obtain approvals and signatures before reimbursing an expense. This can lead to delays in group members being reimbursed, potentially causing financial strain on the very volunteers and members who are supporting your mission.

To keep things running smoothly, it’s essential to establish a reimbursement process that is both efficient and easy to maintain.

✘ Not Ideal: Old School Paper Trail

Hopefully your nonprofit is not still using this tiresome method for reimbursements. Traditional reimbursement processes often involve paper nonprofit expense reimbursement forms:

Printing and filling out paper forms
Attaching physical receipts
Hand-delivering or mailing documents for approval
Waiting for multiple signatures
Cutting and mailing physical checks

This outdated approach leads to lost paperwork, delays in approvals, and frustrated volunteers or employees who are waiting to be reimbursed.

✔ Better: Moving Toward a Digital Reimbursement System

As more organizations transition from paper-based systems to digital solutions, the need for secure and streamlined receipt storage has become critical. Many nonprofits have turned to cloud storage, but this often presents challenges:

Should you grant access to everyone submitting a reimbursement request?
Or should a single person be responsible for collecting and uploading documents?
Then, there’s the added complexity of tracking requests, processing payments, and ensuring everything aligns with your organization’s financial records.

It’s a lot to manage—but it doesn’t have to be.

★ Best: Fast-Track Digital Reimbursement Approvals and Payments

MoneyMinder’s reimbursement tool simplifies the entire process from start to finish. With this tool, you can create your own custom digital workflow to accept, review, approve and process reimbursements quickly and efficiently:

Create custom reimbursement request templates
Share an external link for easy submission from your members and volunteers
Receive automatic notifications for pending reimbursements
Set approval rules that align with your organization’s policies, such as requiring multiple approval signatures, a description or receipt(s)
Import transactions and related receipts directly to your bank account register

See MoneyMinder’s Nonprofit Reimbursement Tool in Action

With a seamless, user-friendly process in place, you can eliminate unnecessary delays and make reimbursements easier for everyone involved. Ready to streamline your nonprofit’s financial workflows? Learn how to use reimbursements in your MoneyMinder account.