Reimbursements

How to get your monies back ;)

This user guide is addressed to all those who would be eligible for the reimbursement of a cost incurred with oikos International, such as a travel cost to and/or from one of our events. It was made in order to support them in the use of the reimbursement forms, for submitting a reimbursement request.

Am I eligible to get a reimbursement from oikos International?

oikos International being a non-profit organization, we can unfortunately only cover limited and specific expenses. Therefore, some expenses can not be covered. oikos International...

...DOES REIMBURSE

• … shared travel or second class travel

  • Any regular, second class ticket for the train or plane or bus is covered.

  • So is sharing a car travel! If there are at least two people in the car, it’s reimbursable. However, there are rules to follow:

    • When you leave the start point of the trip, LEAVE WITH A FULL TANK! We do not reimburse you for this tank filling, however, we reimburse you for all the tank fillings you do until you are back home.

    • When you arrive home back from the trip, FILL UP THE TANK RIGHT AWAY! We do reimburse that one.

    • Make sure to discuss with your travel companions who is paying and who is getting reimbursed. Preferably have only one person pay for all the gas and make sure to tell us that it was for multiple people! (Write it in the “NOTE” part of the form, give us the name of the other person).

    • If you each pay certain fill ups, still tell us in the “NOTE” part of the form that you traveled with someone else (tell us their name!).

• … If you pay for someone’s travel ticket, make sure to tell us in the “NOTE” part of the form.

• … If you pay something for oikos, such as some groceries for event food, that is eligible of course.

• … We STRONGLY encourage you to take the most sustainable option. The airplane should be a last resort

...DOES NOT REIMBURSE

• … first class travel

  • That includes single (one person) car travel, taxis, first class travel on an airplane or train or bus. Generally, we do not reimburse you for getting a more expensive ticket than necessary.

  • This means also that we cannot reimburse sleeping wagons in the train if it is more expensive than a seat. When you decide to pay extra for a sleeping wagon you can submit the invoice nevertheless, indicating the additional amount you paid for the sleeping wagon.

• … accommodation. If your travel is long and you decide to take a night in a ho(s)tel somewhere halfway to the event you are attending, it’s perfectly fine with us. However, we will not reimburse it. The reimbursement of your travel tickets is not impacted, as long as it is eligible for reimbursement within the other rules.

• … any travel insurance. If you want to insure your travel, that’s ok but we can not pay for it, so it would be subtracted from your ticket price.

• … any amount above the communicated limit for reimbursement. We can unfortunately not always reimburse the full price of an expense, as we have limited funding. In that case, we will simply reimburse the (previously communicated) maximum amount.

Reimbursement amount

There are multiple aspects that need to be taken into consideration regarding the amount you can expect to be reimbursed.

• Maximum reimbursement amount: Usually, the amount that can be reimbursed will be capped, at a different amount, depending on the program, the specific expense to reimburse and the funding that allows us to pay for such expenses. Therefore, if you go over the budget, you will only be reimbursed the maximum amount. Such amounts are usually communicated beforehand, however please note that it is ALWAYS best to strive for the lowest amount possible. For example: If you get your travel to an event reimbursed, with a cap placed at 200CHF, and your train or plane or bus ticket is 250CHF (or equivalent, depending on your currency), you will only get reimbursed 200CHF.

• Currency conversion rates: Most people in our community coming from countries other than Switzerland, and oikos being based in Switzerland, a transfer between oikos’ accounts and our participants’ usually means that a currency conversion needs to happen. We send you CHF (Swiss Francs) and you receive in your local currency. There is always a cost to conversion rates. The transfer intermediary we use, Wise (or previously called “Transferwise”) has a very low fee for those currency conversions. This fee is carried by you as the receiver of the reimbursement

The two reasons above explain you may notice that the reimbursement amount you’ll receive might be different from the expected amount.

How to reimburse my expenses

To submit a reimbursement request, you can always use this one link: oikos Reimbursement form.

The form will take you through a series of questions that will help you provide all the information we need to reimburse you.

Here is the step by step process through the different steps:

1. Provide us with your personal information and bank details (as is said in the form as well, your information will only be used for the sole purpose of the related reimbursement, nothing else).

2. Enter the information for each individual expense. The various requested information go as follows:

• Reimbursement 1 (name the reimbursement with a unique, understandable name as suggested in the form)

• Date of expense 1 (make sure it is the date of PURCHASE (the date you took out your bank card and put it in the reader for payment 😉)

• Price of expense 1 (how much was it in the currency you used? Usually your country’s main currency)

• Currency of expense 1 (which currency did you use?)

• Price in Swiss Francs (CHF) at the date of expense 1 (use this website to know how many Swiss Francs the cost of your expense was at the time you paid it: https://www1.oanda.com/currency/converter/)

• Ticket/Invoice/Receipt (Provide us with proof of the expense and of its payment)

  • Generally we need an invoice that indicates a date & the price as well as the currency.

  • For travel tickets it should also indicate the passengers name or at least the amount of travelers.

  • For flight tickets we need additionally a copy of the boarding pass.

  • If you lost your ticket/invoice/receipt please contact Gregory Vrient.

If you have more than one expense (i.e. a travel TO an event and a travel FROM an event that were paid separately), the following question is “do you have another reimbursement to submit?”, answer “yes”.

This will open a new set of the same questions for Reimbursement 2.

Repeat the operations for each separate expense you had.

3. Once you have completed all the questions for all the expenses you can get reimbursed, you can submit it after accepting the terms and conditions (one small box to tick).

4. An optional “Notes” box is also available, if there is something to tell us that cannot be communicated in the rest of the form.

5. And you’re set! Just click “Submit”

Pay attention!

• Submit your request as soon as possible after you have paid for the expense that we can reimburse you.

• It’s always best to keep the linked receipt/invoice/ticket (at least a digital version). That includes train tickets, airplane boarding passes… as those are sometimes requested by the funders (the people that make it possible for us to reimburse you!

• In this form, we ask you to do your own conversion of the payment into CHF. Please do the conversion cautiously. For example, if I pay 10EUR on April 22nd, 2021. I enter 04/22/2021 as the date of conversion, and the currencies are EUR→CHF, for 10EUR. (Always to CHF, no matter the initial currency). As in the example, 10EUR was worth exactly 11.0257CHF on April 22, 2021.

Contact to [e-mail] if any problem