User guides > Expert

Start your claim

If you are entitled to claim reimbursements, AGM has send you a notification like shown below (look for the AGM notification with the subject Reimbursement of expenses permitted in your mailbox).

Click Enter your bank details.

This link takes you to your claim in the AGM front office after you authenticate with your EU-Login account. 

If you already activated your profile for this meeting or claim before, it is also possible to navigate through the Expenses claim menu of the front office to the claim. After you navigated to your claim, click the Bank Details tab.  

Scroll down in the Bank Details tab to find bank details that you have used in previous claims. 

• If you don't find appropriate bank details in the list or there is no Select button underneath (meaning that they are not valid anymore), click the button Add new bank details to add bank details to the list from the EC-financial system (or add them there). Continue reading the section Your business partner.
• If you find appropriate bank details in the list click Select underneath. 

The forms you will have to fill depend on the type of entity you represent, with the following exception: 

If you click the button Add new bank details (see above) as representative of an organisation, you will be asked whether you want to use a personal bank account instead of the account of the organisation with the derogation (permission) of your organisation (see Upload permission for personal bank account). 

The bank details are entered in two parts: 

1. Business partner (with information on you or your organisation) 
2. Bank account (with your personal or organisational bank account details)

YOUR BUSINESS PARTNER

It is possible that the business partner is already in the system because you entered it before, or, in the case of an organisation, your colleagues added it in the EC system in the past. This is why you may be able to simply select the business partner from the system. 

The steps to find or create a business partner differ per type. Please go to you the type that are representing (after clicking Add new bank details):

• Private individual
• Private organisation
• Public law body
• Ministry

_{Private individual} 

After you clicked Add new Bank details (see above), your are now in the Verify Business partner section. On the right hand side, there is a text describing the type of business partner (representation type) the organiser assigned to you (screenshot below). If you think that you are not participating in your individual capacity, please contact the meeting organisers (see invitation for their contact details).

Fill in the details in all fields of the Personal identification form. 

Click Verify. 

You must run this search/verification check even if you know that you don’t yet have a business partner entry in the system. Only after the verification fails you will be able to create a business partner.

If you’ve already defined a business partner in the EU accounting system, please search with the same information you used at the time. Click Verify to start the search.

Results are displayed with the last four digits of the ID that you provided. If you identified your entry, please select the option button before the family name and click Confirm selection.

After you found your business partner entry, continue reading in the bank account section.

If there are no matches for your business partner, you can 

• perform the search again by entering other data in the personal identification fields and clicking Verify again
• click +Create a new business partner. You can do this not only to create a new business partner in the EC-system, but also if you think that you already have a business partner entry, but can’t find it in the verification step. When creating the business partner, the system will still try to match your information to existing business partner.

The Add new business partner form opens.

Personal data

Fill in all fields in this section

National identification

Not all countries have a national identification number. 

• If entering a national identification number is mandatory for your country (e.g. Portugal, Sweden, Netherlands), you must enter it together with one other piece of ID, for example your passport number. 
• For Italy, enter your fiscal code as national identifiction number. 
• For Portugal, enter your Portuguese ID card number (8 digits) without the document number (4 characters) in the National identification number field.

If your country doesn’t have a national identification number (e.g. USA, Germany), you can enter one type of ID plus country. If you are not sure about the national identification number, enter all other details in this form and click Create. If you need to enter a national identification number you will get an error:

Click into the Identity document type field and select the type of ID you wish to enter (one is sufficient).

Click Add.

Enter the ID card number and country.

Scan ID document (if possible both sides). Click Upload file(s):

Select the scanned file from your harddisk.

Address

All fields are obligatory.

Business data

Select whether you are self-employed.

If you indicate that you’re self-employed, an additional menu appears. Fill in the registration number and upload the registration document. The VAT number is not mandatory, but if you enter it, you also have to upload a VAT statement document. 

Click Create. 

After clicking Create, the system checks the numbers. If a number is not possible for the selected country, an error message is displayed at the bottom and top of the form. 

Once you’re satisfied, continue to the section Bank account.

 

_{Private organisation}

Navigate to the bank details section of your claim. Either select bank details from previous meetings or click Add new bank details. In the pop-up regarding your personal bank account 

• click No to use the bank account of your organisation.
• click Yes if you wish to use a personal bank account. Follow the steps for private individuals and then upload the permission.

...you’ll see the menu below if you’re representing a private company. The meeting organisers registered you for the company specified in the banner text (highlighted text in screenshot below).

If you think that you this is not the correct company/organisation, please contact the meeting organisers (see invitation for their contact details).

1. Select the Registration country and enter the Registration number or VAT number.
2. Click Verify to start the search.
    

 If you don’t have one of these numbers, select Search by Official name instead. Fill in the Official address country and Official name:

Do one of the following:

• Select your company from the list and click Confirm selection. Continue to the bank account section.
• To perform another search, change the values in the fields of the Business partner identification (screenshot above) and click Verify.
• Click +Create a new business partner if your company is not yet listed (click this button also if you think that there is already a business partner entry for this company, but you can't find it. The system will continue checking for matches with existing business partners).

 

Fill in the registration number and upload the registration document. The VAT number is not mandatory in this case, but if you fill it in you also need to upload a VAT statement document. 

The system performs a structural check on the numbers you entered. An error message is displayed if the structure/length of the number is not possible for the selected country . 

Fill in the details and click Create. The following screen appears:

Click Edit  if you still need to change something in the business partner form. 

Once you’re satisfied, click +Create new bank account. 

Continue to the section Bank account.

_{Public law body}     

This section describes the business partner search for experts representing public bodies such as:

• international organisations (e.g. United Nations)
• other public bodies (e.g. universities)
• region or province of an EU country
• region or province of a non-EU country.

Navigate to the bank details section of your claim. Either select bank details from previous meetings or click Add new bank details. In the pop-up regarding your personal bank account 

• click No to use the bank account of your organisation or administration.
• click Yes if you wish to use a personal bank account. Follow the steps for private individuals and then upload the permission.

... you’ll see the menu below, where you can search for an entry of your public body in the EU accounting system. 

For example, you can fill in just the registration country and registration number and click Verify. If you know a unique identifier like the registration number and VAT number, enter only one of these numbers. 

The system searches for matches and returns the results.

If you don’t know one of the numbers, you can also search for names or parts of names.

If your search fails, click +Create a new business partner . You can click this button even if you think that this entry is already in the system, but you fail to find it. You’ll have to enter more data, but the system still tries to find matches with existing business partners.

 

Select the type of public body. 

Fill in the registration number and upload the registration document. If you fill in a VAT number you also need to upload a VAT statement document.

The system checks the registration number and VAT number you entered (If a number is not possible for the selected country, an error message is displayed at the top of the page after you click Create. This error provides information on what the correct format of the registration number is). 

After you’ve filled in the details correctly and clicked Create, the following screen appears:

Click Edit to change information in the form. Once you’re satisfied, click +Create new bank account.

Continue to the bank account section.

_Ministry

Navigate to the bank details section of your claim. Either select bank details from previous meetings or click Add new bank details. In the pop-up regarding your personal bank account 

• click No to use the bank account of your ministry.
• click Yes if you wish to use a personal bank account. Follow the steps for private individuals and then upload the permission.

You are now in the Verify business partner section.

On the right hand side, there is a text describing the type of business partner (representation type) the organiser assigned to you. If you think that you are not representing a ministry, please contact the meeting organisers (see invitation for their contact details).

To verify the business partner entry of your ministry search with the legal name of the ministry in the country of origin (full name or part of the name). For non – EU member states, try searching also with the English version of the name. 

Enter the name of the ministry and click Verify. 

Select your ministry from the list and click Confirm selection. 

In case you don't find your ministry after searching as described above, contact the AGM support. 

You now identified the business partner entry of your ministry. 

Continue to verify the ministries' bank account. Please read the bank account section for the next steps. 

_Country

Navigate to the bank details section of your claim. Either select bank details from previous meetings or click Add new bank details. In the pop-up regarding your personal bank account 

• click No to use the bank account of your country.
• click Yes if you wish to use a personal bank account. Follow the steps for private individuals and then upload the permission.

If you want to use a personal bank account with the permission of your administration, click Yes and continue reading the section Upload permission for personal bank account.

If you want to use the Country bank account, click No. 

After clicking No, the business partner is already filled in, but you still need to verify (search) the bank account. 

Continue in the Bank account section. 

BANK ACCOUNT

You already verified your business partner, and you now want to specify your bank account. 

First, check whether you already registered the bank account in the EC accounting system. 

If you use a bank account for the first time with a business partner, you must create a new bank account entry in the system (even if this bank account is already in the system related to other business partners). 

_{Verify bank account}

Select your country in the Verify bank account section.

Fill in the name of the account holder and the account number/IBAN, then click Verify. 

We show here the example of a bank account of a private individual, but the steps are the same for other Business partner types. Only experts from Italy, France and Ireland will have an additional option to select a treasury account. 

If the bank account is not in the system, either click Refine your search or +Create a new bank account and create an new entry for the bank account in the EC system. 

If the system found the bank account, click Confirm under Confirm bank details.

Back in your bank account list press Select in order to select the bank account for this meeting. 

A blue banner is displayed to inform you that you’ve submitted your bank account for validation.

You can’t modify the bank account while it’s being validated.

You can continue with adding the Travel details, but you can only submit the claim after the bank account details have been validated.This is a manual process and can take some time, depending on the work load of our financial staff. During validation your submission time counter is halted. If the validators ask you for changes of your bank account details, the counter will start running again until you applied the changes and clicked Select again.

When the validation is successfully completed, AGM will notify you that you can continue to submit your claim by clicking the Submit button in the Summary tab of your claim.

If you cannot find a bank account in the system continue to add one as described below. 

_{Create bank account}

If you don't find an appropriate bank account, click +Create new bank account: 

If the account holder name and account name are different, this needs to be reflected by the supporting documents (bank statement and/or financial information form).

• If you are the account holder, upload a recent bank statement (max. 6 months old). It should confirm the information that you've entered under Account name, Account number/IBAN and Bank name and click Confirm.
• If you are not the account holder, fill in all details and click Confirm. Then provide the financial form signed by the account holder (and the bank unless you can also provide a recent bank statement) by downloading the form and uploading it signed. But first read how to fill in the other details.  

The system uses your input in the fields in the section Bank branch to find bank agencies that you can then select in the Bank agency field. A selection in the Bank agency field is mandatory. Because your input acts as a filter, it is better not fill in too much into the free text fields City and Address. 

• Only fill in the SWIFT code and then immediately select an entry in the Bank agency field.
• Try appending XXX or XXXX to you SWIFT code. If you get a list of Swift codes for your bank, select an entry from the list. 

• If your SWIFT code doesn't work, leave the SWIFT field empty. 
• In all text fields, remove trailing spaces before or after your text (often spaces are added when you copy and paste text). 
• With an empty SWIFT field, fill in all other fields, enter the bank name, select the country and enter the city name (without postal code). In the Address field, fill only in the street name  or parts of it (without additions like house number). Select an entry from the Bank agency field.  

Click Create.

Click Confirm. The new financial data will be added to your list of bank details, but there are a few more steps.

The list of bank accounts is displayed. Scroll down to the bank account that you want to use for this claim. 

If you are the account holder, click Select below your bank account:

Download/upload form if you are not the account holder

If you are not the account holder, you need to first obtain/upload the signed financial form before you should click Select:

Click Edit in the bank account section (see below) 

In Edit bank account form, click Download form for signature:

Upload the completed financial information form in the Upload signed form section, then click Modify:

• Click Select below the bank account that you want to use for the meeting.

The next prompt can be simply a confirmation: 

You will only see the pop-up below if you were invited as representative of an organisation. If the account is in the name of your organisation select Yes.

If it's a personal account, select No in the pop-up menu (see Uploading a permission to use a personal bank). 

A blue banner is displayed to inform you that you’ve submitted your bank account for validation.

You will receive a notification once our financial staff has validated your bank details. Only then you can submit your claim, but you can continue immediately with entering the Travel details (and expenses details).

The validators can also request Changes of your bank account details.

When the validation is finished, AGM will notify you that you can continue to submit your claim (by clicking the Submit button in the Summary tab).

_{Upload permission for personal bank account}

European Commission rules state that representatives of an organisation or administration (country, ministry, public body, international organisation, company...) should

• either use a organisation account or
• upload a permission (derogation note), in which the organisation allows the expert to use a private bank account.

Read the section Start your claim and, if necessary, follow the steps for private individuals to add your personal bank details to the EC system. Afterwards, when these bank details are available in the bank details tab, click Select underneath and upload the permission as described below. 

Scroll down to the bank details with your personal business partner and bank account.

Click Select.

If you are representing an organisation (or administration), but want to use a personal bank account, click Yes.

The below window window pops up and you can upload the approval/derogation of your organisation by clicking the button Upload file(s).

After uploading click Confirm.

You should see a blue information bar telling you that you submitted your bank details for validation.

You will receive a notification once our financial staff has validated your bank details. Only then you can submit your claim, but you can continue adding the Travel details (and expenses details) even before the validation has been completed.

The validators can also request Changes of your bank account details.