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Understanding your allowance

Your Dashboard & Allowance 16 min readUpdated a week ago

What your remaining balance means and how CLVR works it out, how to read the allowance bar and its category legend, what the bar shows when you have spent more than your allowance, which spending counts, when the period resets and how you are reminded, and what happens once you use it all.

When you open your dashboard, the greeting at the top says Welcome back, {name}. {amount} left to use this year. The amount is your remaining benefit allowance for the current period, the money you still have to spend on benefits and reimbursable expenses before the period resets. This article explains where that figure comes from, how to read the allowance bar beneath it, what counts against your allowance, when the period resets, and what happens once you have used it all.

What the amount means

The figure in your greeting is your remaining balance: your total allowance for the period minus everything you have spent that draws from it. On the right of the greeting, a pill reads Resets {date}, so you know how long you have to use it. Amounts are shown in whole kronor.

In short:

  • Total balance is the pot you start the period with.
  • Remaining balance is what is left after your spending so far.

How the remaining balance is calculated

CLVR works out one number for you:

  • Total balance = your base benefit allowance plus any adjustments your company has made (for example, a top-up your HR team applied).
  • Remaining balance = total balance minus everything you have spent this period that draws from the allowance.

Spending that counts toward this includes approved and pending expense reports, manual entries, and benefit purchases paid from your allowance. Only spending dated within the current benefit period is counted.

What does not reduce your balance

Some things never come out of your remaining balance:

  • Declined expenses. If an expense report is declined, it does not draw from your allowance.
  • Purchases paid through salary. When a benefit is paid from your salary rather than your allowance, it does not lower the figure in your greeting.
Note.

A pending expense report still counts against your remaining balance while it waits for review, so the amount you see already reflects what you have claimed, not only what has been approved.

Reading the allowance bar by category

The white pill under the greeting is a quick picture of your benefit allowance for the current period. Each benefit category you have spent in fills the bar from the left with its own colour and icon, the categories you have spent most in first, and the legend underneath lists the same categories with the amount each one used. Together they let you see, without opening anything, how your allowance has been spent and how much is still available.

The bar is split into segments, one for every category you have spent in this period:

  • Each category segment uses that category's own colour and icon, and its width reflects how much of your allowance the category has used. A small slice is kept wide enough to hold its icon, so the bar is a legend with proportions rather than an exact chart.
  • The empty part of the bar is what you still have. At the dashboard size it carries a lightning bolt and {amount} left to spend.
  • An expense report that is still waiting for review shows as a lighter tail on its own category, right after that category's solid part, and the legend adds a small {amount} pending chip after the category's amount. It already counts against your balance, so the figure in the greeting matches what you can still spend. A category with nothing approved yet still gets its segment, drawn entirely in the lighter shade.
  • Hover over (or move keyboard focus to) any segment and a tooltip shows the category name and its amount, so you can tell two similar colours apart.

Below the bar, the legend repeats each category as a tinted badge next to its name and the amount spent, in the category's own colour:

  • The amount beside each category is what that category drew from your allowance this period, shown in whole kronor.
  • Left to spend, marked with the lightning bolt, shows how much is still available.
  • Categories you have not spent in this period do not appear, so the legend only lists where money has actually gone.
Tip.

The same bar, in a smaller form, is the balance on your Profile in the account panel, and the card the CLVR Assistant shows when you ask how much you have left. There the legend is a coloured dot per category, and a small split may be grouped as Other; the tooltip on the bar still names every category.

Note.

The bar reflects your current period only. If you are looking for a single past report, select See all spending under the bar to open your Me page, where each report is listed with its status.

Which spending counts toward the bar

Not every receipt you submit lands on the bar: only spending that actually draws from your allowance in the current period counts.

These reduce your remaining allowance, so they show up as coloured segments and in the legend below the bar:

  • Approved expense reports you uploaded, once they clear review.
  • Benefit purchases you chose to pay with your Benefit Allowance rather than salary.
  • Any items your HR team adds to your account on your behalf.

Each amount is grouped by benefit category, so all your wellness (friskvĂĄrd) spending sits in one segment, and so on.

Some spending never touches the bar:

  • Declined expense reports. A report that was turned down does not reduce your allowance, so it leaves no segment behind.
  • Anything you paid with Salary Deduction instead of your allowance. When you pick "Deduct from your next paycheck" on a purchase, it comes off your pay, not your allowance, so the bar ignores it.
  • Categories where you have spent nothing. A category with zero spend has no segment and does not appear in the legend.
Note.

A declined report still shows up in your list of expenses with a Declined status. It just has no effect on your allowance. Open it to read why, then fix and resubmit if you want to.

The figure shown for each category is the allowance cost, which is what the spend actually took out of your allowance, not always the same as the receipt total. For taxed benefit categories (BIK), your employer pays a social fee on the portion covered by your allowance, and that fee is part of the allowance cost. So a taxed category can show a little more than the receipt amount, because the segment includes that employer social fee on the allowance-paid part. Tax-free categories like most wellness (friskvĂĄrd) spend within the threshold do not carry this, so their amount matches the receipt.

When you have spent more than your allowance

While you have allowance left, the whole bar represents your total allowance and the empty part shows what is still available. Once your spending goes past your allowance there is nothing left to show, so the bar fills completely and stretches to fit your total spending instead. Your category segments are resized against that larger total, which keeps every segment visible and in proportion.

The legend then ends with Over by {amount} in place of Left to spend, so you can see by how much. Nothing turns red: spending your whole allowance is what it is there for, and the difference is settled with HR as described below.

In short:

  • Within your allowance: the bar shows your allowance, with the empty part on the right and Left to spend in the legend.
  • Overdrawn: the bar shows your total spending, there is no empty part, and the legend reads Over by {amount}.

Why amounts show in Swedish kronor

Every amount you see in CLVR Benefits, your remaining balance in the greeting, the price of each benefit, and the cost breakdown when you submit an expense, is shown in your company's currency. For companies in Sweden that currency is Swedish kronor (kr), and CLVR formats the figures the Swedish way, so a thousand kronor reads as 1 000 kr. This is a company setting, not a personal one, so everyone at your workplace sees the same currency.

Your company belongs to a country, and that country sets the default currency. The currency is stored once for the whole company, so you see the same currency as your colleagues and you cannot switch it yourself: there is no per-person setting for it.

The country your company is set to does more than choose the currency. It also decides which tax and benefit rules apply to your account:

  • Wellness (friskvĂĄrd) tax-free threshold. In Sweden, wellness benefits are tax-free up to 5 000 kr per year, and CLVR uses that figure when it works out how much of an expense your allowance covers.
  • Benefit tax treatment. How a benefit affects your pay (whether part of it is taxable and counts as a benefit value) follows the Swedish rules.
  • Country-specific features. Some tools, like generating a mock payslip from your dashboard, are offered because of the country your company is set to.

You do not need to manage any of this. CLVR applies the right rules for your company automatically, and the amounts you see already reflect them. Because formatting keeps two decimals, you may sometimes see small öre values (for example, 0,50 kr) rather than a perfectly round number. That is normal and just reflects the exact figures behind your allowance.

When the allowance resets

Your Benefit Allowance runs in a one-year cycle. Each cycle ends on your company's reset date, and when it ends your spending starts fresh with a new full allowance for the year ahead. The Resets date in the pill beside your greeting is the last day of your current benefit period.

  • The period always lasts one year and ends on your company's reset date.
  • Spending counts only within the current period, so the Used and Remaining figures reset to a fresh full allowance when the period rolls over.
  • If your company's reset date has already passed, CLVR rolls it forward to the next future occurrence, so your dashboard always points at an upcoming date rather than one in the past.
Heads up.

What happens to allowance you have not spent depends on your company. Usually it does not carry over: anything you have not spent by the reset date is gone when the new period starts, so it is worth planning to use what is left before the deadline. Your dashboard tells you which applies: the allowance unused row under Your deadlines says whether what is left goes back to the company or carries over, and until when.

When unused allowance carries over

Some companies let what you have not spent carry into the next period, sometimes up to a limit, until a date your HR team picks or for good. When yours does:

  • On the reset day, your new balance is the full allowance for the year plus what you had left, up to the limit if there is one.
  • Carried money is spent first. What you buy after the reset comes out of the carried amount before your new allowance.
  • Until it expires, a row under Your deadlines shows how much of it is still unspent and the last day you can use it.
  • On the expiry day, whatever is left of the carried amount goes back to the company. Your new allowance is not affected. If it never expires, you keep it until you spend it.
  • You get a reminder 30 days before it expires, if some of it is still unspent.

The 60-day reminder email

So the deadline does not creep up on you, CLVR emails you 60 days before your company's reset date if you still have allowance left. The email tells you how much remains, the exact date it resets, and links straight to your dashboard. If your company carries unused allowance over, it says until when instead.

  • You get it once per benefit period, not repeatedly.
  • It only goes out if you actually have something left to lose. If you have already spent your full allowance, there is nothing to remind you about and no email is sent.
  • It goes to the same address you sign in with, in the language you have chosen in CLVR.

When the period rolls over, your spending for the year resets to zero, a new full allowance applies, and the date in the pill beside your greeting moves to the next year's reset date. If you submitted an expense report in the previous period but it had not been approved before the reset, CLVR carries it into the current period so it still counts against your allowance. You do not need to resubmit it. For more on this, see how pending expense reports carry into the current period.

When you have used it all

Once your remaining balance reaches exactly zero, the greeting goes on You have used your whole allowance. It resets {date}. Anything more is deducted from your next paycheck. The Resets pill is not shown then. This is a normal, positive state: it simply means you have made full use of the benefit your employer funded for you. The bar is full, and the legend reads All of it used on the smaller cards.

There are three things to take from it:

  • You have used your full allowance. Nothing has gone wrong. You spent everything your employer set aside for this benefit period.
  • It resets on a set date. The date shown is the start of your next benefit period, when your allowance starts fresh.
  • Further spending is handled through payroll. Anything you choose to buy beyond your allowance is settled on your salary rather than from the allowance, so there is no surprise bill to pay separately.

You can still place orders or claim expenses after your allowance is used up. Because there is no allowance left to cover them, those amounts are settled through payroll. How a specific expense is handled depends on what kind of expense it is, so if you want the exact figures before you commit, your HR contact can confirm how a particular purchase or claim will be settled.

When your balance goes below zero

If your balance drops below zero, the greeting goes on You have used {amount} more than your allowance. HR will be in touch about settling it. A negative balance is not an error and not a penalty. It simply records that the value charged to your allowance is currently more than the allowance held. This is the same situation the full bar and the Over by legend entry show.

You do not need to take any action. Your company's HR team can see the balance and will reach out to settle the difference with you. There is no button to press and no payment to make from the dashboard.

How the difference is settled depends on how the spending happened:

  • Overspend on an uploaded receipt is generally your own out-of-pocket cost. When a receipt is larger than the allowance can cover, the part above your balance is simply not reimbursed. It is not taken from your salary.
  • Overspend from a Benefit Store purchase is recovered through payroll. When CLVR or the provider has already paid for an order, the part your allowance does not cover is deducted from your salary.

If you are also scheduled to leave, the pill beside the greeting reads Access until {date}. This pairing is expected when both apply at once.

Troubleshooting

The amount looks higher or lower than I expected. If it does not match a quick "allowance minus my receipts" sum in your head, it is almost always one of these, not a mistake:

  • Your total balance can already be adjusted. Your remaining balance starts from your base allowance plus any adjustments your company has made: a top-up that raises your total, or a deduction that lowers it. Each adjustment only affects your allowance for the current period.
  • Taxed (BIK) categories cost more than the receipt. Your employer pays a social fee of 31.42% on the allowance-covered portion, and it comes out of your allowance too. A 1 000 kr receipt in a taxed category therefore draws roughly 1 314 kr from your allowance, not 1 000 kr. Tax-free categories within their threshold carry no such fee.
  • A pending receipt from last period may already be counting. A report still Pending when a new period begins, dated before the current period started, is carried forward and counted against your current balance while it waits for review.
  • Some spending never appears in the math. Declined reports and anything paid with Salary Deduction never reduce your remaining balance, so leaving them out of your sum is correct.
  • Your allowance may be pro-rated. If you are scheduled to leave part way through the period and your company has turned on pro-rating, your total is scaled to the days you are employed, and your greeting adds Your allowance is pro-rated for the part of the year you are employed. See how your allowance is pro-rated when you leave mid year.
Note.

The social fee is paid by your employer to Skatteverket, not by you. It is never reimbursed to you and it is not deducted from your salary. It simply uses up part of your allowance.

My balance shows odd decimals. That is the öre on an exact amount, not an error. CLVR formats every amount in Swedish kronor, including öre where they apply.

I want amounts in a different currency. Currency is set for the whole company and cannot be changed per person. If this matters for your organisation, raise it with your HR team.

A category is missing from the bar. You have no counted spending in it this period, so it does not get a segment. The legend only lists categories with spending.

A segment has no icon. It is too small a slice to fit one. Read the category name and amount from the legend instead.

My expense is approved but not on the bar. Check its date. If it settled in a previous period, it belongs to that period, not this one.

I see the red marker but expected to have allowance left. Open the category breakdown under the bar to see what has been counted. Pending reports count toward your spending until they are reviewed. The marker disappears if a counted report is later declined and brings you back within your allowance.

My greeting shows a reset date I did not expect. The reset date is set for your whole company, not per person. If it looks wrong, ask your HR team.

I never got the 60-day reminder email. The most likely reason is that you had nothing left to spend when it went out, in which case no email is sent. Otherwise check the spam folder of the address you sign in with. The reminder is sent once per period, so if you have already had it this period it will not come again.

I reached zero but did not expect to. Select See all spending under the allowance bar to review the expenses counted against this period on your Me page, or check the allowance bar to see where your spending went.

The "HR will be in touch" message appeared but I expected money left. Select See all spending and check for a recent large expense, or a pending report that is still counting. There is nothing to do from your side; your HR team handles the rest. If you think the balance is wrong, contact them: they see the same figures you do.

I think my total allowance is wrong. Your base allowance and any adjustments are set by your employer, so ask your HR team to confirm them.

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