Free Expense Reimbursement Form (Excel)

What's in the expense reimbursement form

The file opens with an Employee & Approval sheet: employee name, department, expense period, business purpose, and who approved it with the approval date - the header fields a manager or finance team expects to see before paying a claim.

The Expenses sheet is a 40-row table where each expense gets a date, category (Travel, Meals, Lodging, Mileage, Supplies, or Other), description, amount, and a Receipt attached flag.

That's enough structure to run a full claim from submission through approval on one file, without a separate expense app for occasional reimbursements.

How the mileage calculator works

For a mileage row, you enter the miles driven and your rate per mile on that same line, and the mileage amount - miles times rate - calculates automatically. That figure then rolls into the line total alongside any other amount entered on the row.

This is a per-line calculation you enter yourself rather than a single fixed IRS rate baked into the sheet, so it works whether you're using the current IRS standard mileage rate or a company-specific rate.

Category subtotals at the bottom of the sheet add up Travel, Meals, Lodging, and Mileage separately, so a manager reviewing the claim can see exactly where the money went before approving the total.

Flagging missing receipts

Every expense row has a Receipt? column with a Yes/No dropdown. Mark a row No and it's flagged with conditional formatting, so anything missing documentation stands out before the claim goes to approval rather than after.

The summary counts how many rows are missing receipts, giving whoever approves the claim a single number to check before signing off - useful for keeping a reimbursement policy consistent across a team.

Who this template is for

Small businesses and teams that reimburse employees for travel, mileage, and out-of-pocket expenses but don't run a dedicated expense management platform. If you're processing a handful of claims a month, this form does the job without a subscription.

It also works well as a standard form every employee fills out the same way, so whoever approves and pays claims sees a consistent layout - category, amount, mileage, and receipt status - on every submission.