#21 Is reimbursement to staff considered payroll cost?

It's common business practices to reimburse some of the expense incurred by the employee for business purposes. For instance, phone bill. The reimbursement will be credited into employee accounts in conjunction with its regular pay.

How should the accountant account for this reimbursement ?

Some of the HR manager would account reimbursement into its payroll costs, and included the amount as total payroll costs for the respective period. Hence, accountant should separate the payroll cost and the reimbursement, said Reimbursement for phone bill or etc.

This is to ensure that the account reflect the fair view of the business operation. To illustrate, if reimbursement has been included in the payroll costs. Outsider, who rely on the financial statement of the Company, might have the opinion that the payroll cost of the company is unnecessaily high. Whereas, other operational costs are below the industry average.

The implication for auditing in here is : be aware of any reimbursement while doing the payroll analysis and reclass the reimbursement out from payroll, if necessary.