FAQ Mobility Budget for employers
Here you can read everything you need to know about MOBIKO.
Your tool for flexible mobility management
With MOBIKO, employers get an easy-to-use tool to manage employee mobility, account for it in a tax-compliant manner, and reward sustainable mobility behavior.
How MOBIKO works for you
Configure mobility budget, create employee accounts and invite them to use MOBIKO.
Check submitted mobility expenses or have them checked by MOBIKO.
After the end of the month upload reimbursement file to payroll system. The budget is automatically reimbursed with the next salary.
How to check mobility expenses
If you check your employees‘ expenses independently, you should consider these aspects
FAQ – Our answers to the most important questions
With MOBIKO – the digital mobility budget – employers offer their employees a benefit that enables them to decide flexibly at any time how they would like to get from A to B. In the future, companies will no longer have to deal with individual transport associations, mobility and leasing providers as well as associated intransparent conditions and unused contingents. Thanks to digital, tax-compliant processing, MOBIKO saves employers valuable time and money, addresses the individual needs of their talents and, at the same time, encourages them to travel more sustainably and responsibly.
Employees can use their monthly budget for daily commute or leisure travel. Whether for bus, train, car, bike or scooter sharing services – they simply submit their mobility expenses via the MOBIKO (web) app and get their mobility costs quickly and easily reimbursed with the next salary.
Once you have chosen MOBIKO and have successfully activated your administration account in the MOBIKO webapp (admin area), you can create your employees and invite them to use MOBIKO via e-mail.
Within the admin section, you can view the expenses of your employees and check them in terms of accuracy and completeness. If you notice an error or a lack of image quality, you can reject the expense with a corresponding comment. (MOBIKO recommends that you review all submitted expense from your employees on an ongoing basis or have them checked by MOBIKO.)
As an employer, you provide your employees with MOBIKO a monthly mobility budget as a benefit, which allows your employees to get their privately paid mobility reimbursed. And what is privately paid mobility? This includes direct trips to work and back (rides between the place of residence and the first place of work) and other private trips in the leisure time, such as: the weekend trip with the rental car.
The MOBIKO app does currently not allow the entry of business travel expenses. Mobility costs for business trips will continue to be reimbursed via your travel expense system and independent of MOBIKO.
Expenses arising from the use of mobility; for services related to mobility or purchases related to private mobility.
The following expenses can be submitted via MOBIKO:
Examples of the use of mobility (not an exhaustive list):
- Car rental services: e.g. Sixt, Europcar, Avis, Hertz, Enterprise, etc.
- Classic public transport: e.g. train, underground, suburban railway, tram, bus, taxi (also UBER), etc.
- Train (regional and long distance)
- Taxi services: e.g. myTaxi, Uber, etc.
- Airplane
- Car-, scooter- and bike-sharing services: e.g. Share Now, Car2Go, DriveNow, SIXT Share, Flinkster, Oply, Emmy, Nextbike, MVG-Rad, Tier, VOI, Circ, Lime, etc.
- Carpooling services: e.g. BlaBlaCar, flinc, CleverShuttle, MOIA, etc.
- Peer-2-peer-sharing services: e.g. drivy, Croove, etc.
- Mountain- & Water transportation: e.g. Cable Car, Ferry, etc.
Examples of services related to mobility (not an exhaustive list):
- Fuel for private vehicle (car, motorcycle, scooter, etc.)
- Car, motorcycle, scooter or bicycle inspection and repairs
- Tire change
- Procurement of spare parts (e.g. bicycle tubes, etc.)
- Parking tickets, tolls, etc.
- Costs for car wash, interior cleaning, etc.
- Costs for seat reservation (e.g. ICE, etc.)
Examples of purchases related to private mobility (not an exhaustive list):
- Purchase, e.g. of a bicycle
- Helmet, protective clothing, etc.
We do not accept costs for minor breach of the law, such as parking violation tickets, speeding tickets or a ticket for not having a valid public transportation ticket.
First of all: Don’t worry – We won’t leave you alone when implementing MOBIKO 🙂 We support you during the set up of the MOBIKO portal and are at your disposal for any open questions. We simply like to sketch the first few steps to make things easier:
- After you have been invited by MOBIKO as an administrator, you can register and log in to the MOBIKO portal (https://app.mobiko.de/auth/login)
- First of all, the tax configuration will be adjusted to your organization, so the cvs-file has the right formatting to match your payroll system. The tax configuration can be found within the „Settings“ tab. We will select your payroll system together and activate the wage type modules necessary for your company.
- Next the budget groups have to be created (also in the tab „Settings“). Here you can set up any number of budgets for your employees. Please set the budget level, the way of transfer and choose the mobility types for which your employees can submit expenses.
- Great, almost done 😊 only your users are missing. Within the „User“ tab you can create your employees. To do this, either select the multi-user import to create several users at the same time or add individual users. Give your employees the role of „employee“ and the right budget. If you have the personnel number at hand, then complete this as well. Only with a personnel number the user is considered in the tax export. Last but not least: please tick the box „Should this user now receive an invitation to MOBIKO?“ So that the employee receives a registration email. You can do this later – just do not forget 😊.
In the „Users“ screen you can view the registration status of your employees. If an employee has not registered yet, you can send him/her a current registration link by clicking on the button „Invite again“.
In case an employee temporarily leaves your company (for example, maternity or sabbatical), you can deactivate the budget so that the user can no longer submit expenses, but can still see the most recently submitted mobility spend. Click on the profile of the employee and on the button „deactivate budget“. You can reactivate the user at any time.
Apart from that, you can of course deactivate the user account, so that the entire account is no longer accessible. You do this by also clicking on the user profile and „deactivating“ the top right button.
Employees can view all their submitted mobility receipts at any time via the MOBIKO app.
Persons authorized by the employer may also have password-protected access to the MOBIKO admin space, which allows checks of the submitted receipts.
In the event of an audit, the employer may request access to the MOBIKO admin space for the auditor. With password-protected access to the MOBIKO admin space, the auditor can view all images and corresponding information of the receipts.
Fortunately not 😊 .
Every payroll and taxation relevant information are stored digitally for the duration tax law requires and can be accessed in case of an audit. Your employees may also discard the original receipts as soon as the reimbursement has been made.
In the Employee Supplementary Agreement, the employee is informed in detail regarding legal requirements under „2. Conditions for the granting of the mobility budget“. By signing the Employee Supplementary Agreement, the employee commits to complying with legal requirements. Consequently, it is the responsibility of the employee to only submit mobility receipts that comply with legal requirements.
If any questions arise when using MOBIKO, the most frequently asked questions are answered in the section „FAQ“. In addition, the employee may contact the MOBIKO support team by e-mail (support@mobiko.de).
In principle, it is at your discretion and in your interest to sufficiently check the receipts.
However, we recommend that you randomly check at least 5% of the mobility expenses submitted. MOBIKO offers to check the receipts of your employees for a small extra fee per employee per month. Please let us know how we can support you.
With MOBIKO the employer can decide, whether to grant the employee to carry forward the unused budget into the next month.
Different options of budget expiry are available:
– By the end of the month (no carry forward of unused budget)
– By the end of the quarter
– By the end of the half-year
– By the end of the year
This is how easy and quick it is to check receipts with MOBIKO:
- In the tab „Expense management“ you will find an overview of all submitted receipts and invoices.
- Click on an expense you wish to check.
- Compare the information provided with the uploaded receipt, invoice or ticket.
- If the information matches, please confirm by clicking on the „Checked“ button or simply by pressing the enter button.
- If the information is incorrect or the receipt, invoice or ticket is missing, you may reject the entry with or without a reason. You can correct false entry of the amount or mobility type immediately.
In case of rejection or correction of a submitted expense the employee receives an E-mail notification regarding the adjustment or the request to correct his expense accordingly.
Permanently rejected expenses are not considered in the csv file and are therefore not reimbursed to the employee.
When the receipt check is complete, the system will display the current percentage of checked receipts.
MOBIKO is happy to take over the receipt check for you. Please come talk to us to learn how we can support you.
Basically: In most cases, the receipt date corresponds to your travel date and must match the current budget-month.
However, there are some exceptions:
1) With pre-booked and paid means of transport (e.g. air travel, train tickets, stripe cards or multiple-trip tickets for public transport) you can claim the costs immediately, although the journey takes place later. Please submit your receipt as soon as you receive it and always enter the invoice date, not your travel date.
Example: Your employee takes the train to Berlin in November and has already bought the train ticket on the 10th of July. He is currently in the budget-month of July, so please enter the 10th of July as invoice date in the receipt entry screen.
2) Some sharing-companies send out the receipt a couple of days later. In this case please enter your travel date, not your receipt date.
Example: Your employee used car-sharing on July 22nd but received the invoice on July 24th. He is currently in the budget-month of July, so please enter July 22nd as the correct date.
All current payroll systems have an electronic interface that enables you to quickly and easily upload the csv file into the payroll system.
Under „Expense management“ there will be a csv export at the end of each month which generates the csv file for the corresponding month. This file can be uploaded to your payroll system via the upload feature so that your employees are reimbursed for their individual mobility expenses along with their next salary.
