# Expense Reimbursement Benchmark SOP

- **Document ID:** ER-BENCH-SOP-001
- **Version:** 0.3.1
- **Status:** Approved synthetic controlled benchmark
- **Approval:** Approved by the benchmark owner in the Codex session on 4 August 2026
- **Supersedes:** v0.3 for new Expense Reimbursement benchmark runs. The frozen v0.2 and v0.3 sources and evidence remain unchanged.
- **Process owner:** Finance Operations Manager (synthetic role)
- **System:** Generic Finance System
- **Classification:** Synthetic controlled benchmark, not client policy

## 1. Purpose and source boundary

Define a portable benchmark for employee expense reimbursement and provide complete inputs for structural BPMN modelling and directional simulation. The original catalogue supplied only these themes: report creation and receipt attachment, policy validation, manager approval, finance audit for high-value or flagged claims, reimbursement, notification and retention. Every additional value below is an explicitly labelled synthetic assumption approved for this benchmark.

This document is not tax advice, a compliance opinion, an operating authorisation or a decision-grade forecast.

## 2. Trigger, scope, exclusions and outcomes

**Trigger:** An Employee begins preparing a reimbursement claim after incurring an eligible business expense.

**Scope:** Claim preparation, validation, correction, policy-exception handling, manager approval, control investigation, finance audit, reimbursement processing, technical recovery, notification and record retention.

**Exclusions:** Corporate-card settlement, travel booking, procurement, tax treatment, bank execution, settlement confirmation, fraud-investigation procedure and policy design.

**Terminal outcomes:**

1. Reimbursement processed and recorded.
2. Claim rejected.
3. Claim withdrawn by the Employee.
4. Claim closed without resubmission after the correction period.
5. Reimbursement cancelled after unrecoverable technical failure.

Correction, escalation, exception, investigation and technical-recovery states are non-terminal. They resume the same case or reach one of these five outcomes.

## 3. Participants and responsibilities

| Responsibility | Accountable work |
| --- | --- |
| Employee | Creates, submits, corrects, resubmits, withdraws and receives outcomes. |
| Finance System | Captures claims, validates rules, routes work, sends notifications, records evidence and issues reimbursement instructions. |
| Line Manager | Confirms business purpose and cost-centre relevance. Cannot override policy. |
| Finance Auditor | Reviews high-value, flagged and cleared-investigation claims. |
| Finance Operations Manager | Owns the process, decides delegated exceptions, appoints substitutes and manages technical recovery. |
| Finance Director | Decides prescribed exceptions above the Finance Operations Manager's authority. |
| Records Service | Retains the complete claim record as an external black-box service. |

The BPMN collaboration has one modelled participant, **Organisation: Expense Reimbursement**, containing the first six responsibilities as lanes. **Records Service** is the only black-box participant.

## 4. Procedure

1. The Employee prepares and submits a report containing date, amount, currency, business purpose, cost centre and required receipts.
2. The Finance System validates completeness, receipt, duplicate, date, policy category and risk indicators.
3. An incomplete claim is returned to the Employee. The Employee may correct and resubmit, withdraw, or take no action. Resubmission returns to validation. The same correction loop may repeat.
4. The Finance System closes an unanswered correction request after 14 calendar days.
5. A policy-compliant claim proceeds to manager review. A policy breach is routed to ineligible rejection, Finance Operations Manager review, Finance Director review or above-authority rejection according to the assumption register.
6. An approved exception proceeds to manager review. A rejected exception reaches **Claim rejected**.
7. The Line Manager approves, rejects or requests correction. Correction returns to the Employee and then to validation on resubmission.
8. An approved claim is assessed for audit routing. High-value or flagged claims enter the finance-audit route.
9. An audit-routed claim may first require control investigation. A cleared claim proceeds to finance audit. A substantiated control issue reaches **Claim rejected**.
10. The Finance Auditor approves, rejects or requests correction. Correction returns to the Employee and then to validation on resubmission.
11. The Finance System processes an approved reimbursement instruction.
12. A processing confirmation reaches **Reimbursement processed and recorded**.
13. A technical failure creates a recoverable work item. Finance Operations resubmits after correction or reaches **Reimbursement cancelled after unrecoverable technical failure**.
14. The Finance System notifies the Employee of every material outcome and sends the final record to the Records Service.

## 5. Controls, authority and escalation

| Control | Synthetic rule approved for this benchmark |
| --- | --- |
| Receipt | Required for each expense of AUD 75 or more. |
| Required fields | Date, amount, currency, business purpose, cost centre and required receipt. |
| Late claim | More than 60 calendar days after expense date requires a policy exception. |
| Duplicate flag | Matching employee, merchant, date, amount and receipt reference requires finance audit. |
| Finance audit | Required above AUD 1,000 or for duplicate, foreign-currency, missing-receipt-exception or policy-risk flags. |
| Exception authority | Finance Operations Manager up to AUD 1,000. Finance Director above AUD 1,000 through AUD 5,000. Above AUD 5,000 is rejected. |
| Separation of duties | Employees cannot approve their own claims. Managers cannot approve their own claims or requested exceptions. Auditors cannot approve exceptions they initiated. |
| Manager escalation | Reminder after one business day. Substitute manager assigned at two business days. No automatic approval. |
| Audit escalation | Reminder after four business hours. Substitute auditor assigned at one business day. No automatic approval. |
| Technical escalation | Three failed resubmissions or one business day without recovery requires a continue-or-cancel decision. |

## 6. Records and messages

The controlled definition must associate activities with these records: Expense report and receipts; Validation result; Policy-exception decision; Manager decision; Control-investigation record; Finance-audit record; Reimbursement instruction; Processing confirmation or failure; Employee notifications; Retention record.

The only cross-pool BPMN message flow is delivery of the Retention record from the modelled organisation to Records Service. Employee submission is an internal start event.

## 7. Synthetic assumption register

Probabilities are conditional on reaching the named decision and sum to 100 percent at each gateway.

| ID | Input | Approved value |
| --- | --- | --- |
| A-01 | Volume | 200 claims over 20 business days, used as a disclosed multiplier only |
| A-02 | Complete at validation | Complete 85%; incomplete 15% |
| A-03 | Correction outcome | Resubmit 85%; withdraw 5%; expire without resubmission 10% |
| A-04 | Policy result after complete validation | Pass 92%; breach 8% |
| A-05 | Policy-breach route | Ineligible 30%; Finance Operations Manager 45%; Finance Director 20%; above AUD 5,000 5% |
| A-06 | Finance Operations Manager exception decision | Approve 80%; reject 20% |
| A-07 | Finance Director exception decision | Approve 80%; reject 20% |
| A-08 | Manager decision | Approve 90%; request correction 7%; reject 3% |
| A-09 | Finance-audit routing | Audit 20%; no audit 80% |
| A-10 | Control investigation among audit-routed claims | Investigate 10%; direct audit 90% |
| A-11 | Control-investigation outcome | Cleared 80%; substantiated 20% |
| A-12 | Finance-audit decision | Approve 85%; request correction 10%; reject 5% |
| A-13 | Reimbursement processing | Confirmed 99%; technical failure 1% |
| A-14 | Technical-recovery threshold decision | Continue recovery 50%; cancel reimbursement 50% |
| A-15 | Employee initial preparation | 900 seconds elapsed and 900 seconds touch time |
| A-16 | System validation | 300 seconds elapsed; automated touch time excluded |
| A-17 | Employee correction response | Mean elapsed 345,600 seconds; standard deviation 604,800; minimum 900; maximum 2,419,200; touch time 600 seconds |
| A-18 | Finance Operations exception review | Mean elapsed 14,400 seconds; touch time 900 seconds |
| A-19 | Finance Director exception review | Mean elapsed 28,800 seconds; touch time 900 seconds |
| A-20 | Manager review | Mean elapsed 28,800 seconds; standard deviation 21,600; minimum 480; maximum 115,200; touch time 480 seconds |
| A-21 | Finance audit | Mean elapsed 14,400 seconds; standard deviation 10,800; minimum 1,200; maximum 57,600; touch time 1,200 seconds |
| A-22 | Control investigation | Mean elapsed 28,800 seconds; touch time 1,800 seconds |
| A-23 | Reimbursement processing | 1,800 seconds elapsed; automated touch time excluded |
| A-24 | Technical recovery | Mean elapsed 14,400 seconds; standard deviation 10,800; minimum 1,800; maximum 57,600; touch time 1,800 seconds |
| A-25 | Notification and retention delivery | 60 seconds each; automated touch time excluded |
| A-26 | Correction expiry | 14 calendar days, BPMN duration `P14D` |
| A-27 | Manager escalation | Reminder at one 8-hour business day; substitute at two 8-hour business days |
| A-28 | Audit escalation | Reminder at four business hours; substitute at one 8-hour business day |
| A-29 | Technical recovery limit | Three resubmission attempts or one 8-hour business day |
| A-30 | Receipt threshold | AUD 75 |
| A-31 | Audit threshold | AUD 1,000 |
| A-32 | Finance Operations exception authority | Up to and including AUD 1,000 |
| A-33 | Finance Director exception authority | Above AUD 1,000 through AUD 5,000 |
| A-34 | Above-authority claim | More than AUD 5,000 is rejected |
| A-35 | Employee labour cost | AUD 55 per productive hour |
| A-36 | Line Manager labour cost | AUD 90 per productive hour |
| A-37 | Finance Auditor labour cost | AUD 80 per productive hour |
| A-38 | Finance Operations Manager labour cost | AUD 75 per productive hour |
| A-39 | Finance Director labour cost | AUD 150 per productive hour |
| A-40 | Resource capacity, arrival queues and calendars | Unknown and not modelled; no queue-delay or staffing claim is permitted |
| A-41 | Finance System and Records Service | Generic portable systems with no vendor-specific behaviour or marginal system cost |

## 8. Probability calibration and simulator disclosures

- The 14-day correction timer closes approximately 10 percent of correction requests. Before expiry, the response gateway uses resubmit `0.944444` and withdraw `0.055556`. Combined with timer expiry, this preserves the overall A-03 split of 85 percent resubmit, 5 percent withdraw and 10 percent expire.
- The manager-review and finance-audit timing distributions make their escalation timers fire approximately 10 percent of cases. Escalation assigns a substitute reviewer and never approves a claim automatically.
- At the one-business-day technical-recovery threshold, continue recovery and cancel reimbursement each have probability `0.5`. Continue recovery loops to the same recovery activity; cancel reaches the technical-failure terminal outcome.
- The three-attempt technical-recovery control is disclosed but cannot be directly enforced because the current simulator has no attempt counter.

## 9. Simulation and value limitations

- All values are synthetic, illustrative and directional.
- Elapsed time drives cycle-time simulation. Labour touch time alone may be used for a transparent labour-capacity scenario.
- Calendar durations are approximated as continuous seconds. Public evidence must explain that the simulator does not apply working calendars.
- Volume is a disclosed multiplier. Current simulation does not model arrival queues, concurrency, resource capacity or staffing contention.
- Monetary values are not produced by the Flow simulation engine. Any website value scenario must calculate disclosed touch-time capacity separately and must not convert elapsed waiting time into labour savings.
- Non-interrupting reminder events may be present in descriptive BPMN but are outside the current simulation engine. Escalation timers must not be described as automatic approvals.
- The current simulator has no recovery-attempt counter, so the three-attempt technical-recovery limit is a documented control rather than an enforced simulation condition.

## 10. Document control

The benchmark owner approved A-01 through A-41, the repeated correction and technical-recovery loop behaviour, the five terminal outcomes, the v0.3.1 errata and the stated limitations on 4 August 2026. This complete approved v0.3.1 document is the sole business source for the next controlled Sanctum Chat run. It supersedes v0.3 only for new runs and does not alter or retrospectively replace the immutable approved v0.2 or v0.3 evidence.