User guides > Expert

This is an overview of the process. Find a step-by-step guide in the subsections, for example the Add or change bank details page. 

If you’re an expert attending meetings, you may be entitled to claim expenses. If you are, you’ll receive different notifications from AGM informing you about the reimbursement claim process. This process has two stages:

1. Enter bank details
2. Submit the claim

First, you need to provide your financial details as business partner (with information on you or your organisation) and a bank account. You can enter these details in AGM as soon as you receive the notification below. The European Commission will register these details after validating the data. Validation is a manual process. How long it takes depends on the workload of our financial staff. 

Second, submit the expenses claim after 

• your bank details have been validated.  
• the meeting organiser has marked you as having been present at the meeting (notification below).
• you specified and documented the expenses for the activated expense types.

With the below notification, your 30 days-submission time starts. The system counts the submission time only when it's waiting for your action. For example, the submission time doesn’t change during validation, but the system starts counting again if our financial staff asks you to correct something.

AGM gives you the option to search for your financial data in the verification step. This is because we take into account experts who may have provided financial data for other purposes. You can search for a business partner. Once you found an entry, you can also search for a bank account in the EC system. 

If your search doesn’t return results, you’ll be asked to create a new entry by providing supporting documentation.

The search for a business partner is restricted to your level of representation in the meeting. This level of representation has been determinded by the meeting organisers before sending out invitations.

• Experts invited as individuals can only search for individuals.
• Experts representing private organisations can only search for private organisations (unless they indicate that they want to use a personal bank account).
• Experts representing public organisations can only search for public organisations (unless they indicate that they want to use a personal bank account).
• Experts marked as government representatives (country) are not asked to search or select the business partner – the country in which they’re listed is set (unless they indicate that they want to use a personal bank account).