How employee benefit plans and enrollment work, and how expense claims move from draft to reimbursement.
Benefits
Benefits live under Benefits. What you see depends on your permissions: view_benefits shows the company's benefit plans, manage_benefits adds creating/editing plans and viewing all enrollments, and enroll_benefits lets you enroll in or waive plans for yourself. The personal-only dashboard is shown when neither view_benefits nor manage_benefits is present. With view_benefits, the Benefit Plans tab is available; with enroll_benefits, My Benefits is available.
Benefit plans
A benefit plan has a category: health, dental, vision, life insurance, retirement/pension, wellness, or other, a provider name, a monthly employer contribution and employee contribution, a currency (default KES), and an optional eligibility waiting period in days measured from the employee's hire date. A plan is active, inactive, or pending; only active plans are open for enrollment.
Enrolling and waiving
From My Benefits, an eligible employee can Enroll in a plan or Waive an enrollment they're currently in, optionally with a reason. Enrolling checks the waiting period first: if it hasn't elapsed, you're told the exact date you become eligible.
If the plan's employee contribution is greater than zero, enrolling creates a recurring post-tax payroll deduction automatically; waiving or terminating an enrollment switches that deduction off. Arche only clears its internal pointer to the deduction once payroll confirms it was switched off: if that confirmation fails, the enrollment is left in a state an operator can find and fix by hand, rather than silently leaving someone deducted for a benefit they no longer have.
Deleting a benefit plan is blocked if its linked payroll deductions cannot be confirmed switched off. Contact your payroll administrator if this check fails.
Enrollments (admin view)
Anyone with manage_benefits sees the Enrollments tab: recorded enrollments, including status, enrollment date, and effective date. My Benefits also shows active plans for which you are not enrolled.
Expenses
Expenses covers submitting and approving expense claims. submit_expense lets an employee create, submit, and withdraw their own claims. manage_expenses lets a manager review claims from their direct reports and any department they head, the same scope the leave and salary-advance approval flows use. A separate approve_all_expenses permission grants company-wide approval authority regardless of reporting line (held by roles like Admin, HR Manager, or Finance Manager); a line manager with only manage_expenses can act only within their own team.
Submitting a claim
An expense claim has a title, category (travel, accommodation, meals & entertainment, fuel, office supplies, equipment, training, entertainment, communication, or other), amount, currency, expense date, an optional description, and an optional receipt (image or PDF, up to 10MB). A claim starts as a draft, which you can edit or delete freely, then Submit moves it to Pending Approval.
Duplicate flag: when you create or submit a claim, Arche checks for another non-rejected claim from you with the same amount within one day of the same date. If one exists, the claim is flagged "Possible duplicate" for the approver to see. This is advisory only and never blocks submission.
The approval flow
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Editable, not yet submitted |
| Pending Approval | Submitted, awaiting a decision |
| Approved | Signed off, awaiting reimbursement |
| Rejected | Declined, with a reason |
| Reimbursed | Payment has been made |
An approver Approves or Rejects a pending claim (rejection requires a reason). Once approved, a manager marks it Reimbursed once payment has gone out. An employee can Withdraw their own claim while it's still pending, sending it back to draft for edits.
Exporting
Managers can export expense claims as CSV, Excel, or PDF, filtered by all time, a specific month, or a custom date range.
Permissions summary
| Permission | Grants |
|---|---|
view_benefits | Read benefit plans |
manage_benefits | Create/edit/delete plans; view all enrollments |
enroll_benefits | Enroll/waive your own benefits |
submit_expense | Create, edit, submit, withdraw and delete your own expense claims |
manage_expenses | Approve, reject and reimburse expenses within your team scope; export |
approve_all_expenses | Adds company-wide approval scope to actions that still require manage_expenses |
FAQ
Why can't I enroll in a benefit yet? The plan has an eligibility waiting period and you haven't reached it. The error message tells you the exact date you become eligible.
Does waiving a benefit stop the payroll deduction immediately? The action attempts to switch off its linked deduction. If payroll cannot confirm this, the enrollment keeps the deduction reference for manual recovery. A waived status alone is not proof that payroll stopped charging; ask your payroll administrator to check an unexpected deduction.
Why does my expense show "Possible duplicate"? Another claim from you with the same amount was submitted within a day of the same date. It's a flag for the approver, not a block. You can still submit.
Can my manager approve an expense from someone outside their department?
Only if they hold approve_all_expenses. Otherwise approval is limited to their direct reports and any department they head.