How to manage payments, honoraria, and reimbursement on your events

Payments and reimbursement makes the event record the financial source of truth for the most audited part of an HCP event. Honoraria, reimbursed expenses, and hospitality are captured per attendee on the event itself, while the money moves on your organization's payment rails. This guide covers the prerequisites, capturing payment-relevant data, routing reimbursement claims, and how fee data reaches the transfer of value record. For what the capability covers and where its boundaries sit, see the Payments and reimbursement release notes. For the allocation the captured data feeds, see How to manage transfer of value on your events.

Overview

Every financial fact of a meeting lives on its event record: honoraria and speaker fees as agreed, expenses as claimed, and hospitality such as meals, accommodation, and transfers as spent. Each is attributed to the individual participant where the cost belongs to one person. The recorded attendance state, with its show and no-show values, sits on the record beside every attributed amount. It is shown on the claim and on the Review tab, so a payment can be read against the attendance evidence behind it. The record captures natively. Payment execution stays on your rails. Onomi 360 never processes a payment, and your ERP remains the system of record for accounting.

Two roles do the work. Costs are captured while planning and running the event, on the event's Budget module in Onomi 360. The planners of the event's workspace do that capture, as do holders of the finance role whose scope covers the event. On a meeting with no workspace, the finance role does it alone. The event's finance owner is the holder of the finance role assigned on the event record. That owner reconciles the budget, routes reimbursement claims to your expense and finance systems, and tracks the statuses those systems report back. Your transparency team works further downstream. Fee and spend data reaches them through the transfer of value allocation, described in How to manage transfer of value on your events.

The capture surface is the event's Budget module in Onomi 360. Each cost is a cost line under a budget category, tracked through the Budgeted, Committed, and Actual columns. The cost line and its fields are documented once, in How to use the Budget module. This guide uses that same dialog. Payments and reimbursement has been available since the 2025.11 release, one release after the budget suite it captures onto. The claim marker and the routing control therefore appear on the same cost lines your organization may already have been working with.

Before you start

• Roles and permissions. You need access to Onomi 360 with this event in view. That access comes from either a strategic meetings management role whose scope covers the event, or planner membership of the event's workspace. See Role-based access and visibility for internal and external stakeholders. Either grant is enough to read the event's cost lines, claims, and the attendance states behind them.

  Changing an attendance state is work in the event workspace's Users module, and it needs planner membership of that workspace. A meeting with no workspace is the exception. There, a holder of the finance role whose scope covers the event sets the state on the attendee on the event record.

  Capturing and editing cost lines is narrower than reading them. The planners of the event's workspace hold that write, as do holders of the finance role whose scope covers the event. Where the event has no workspace, the finance role holds it alone. An Approver, a Compliance reviewer, a Sourcing grant holder, or a Program lead assignment covering the event reads the Budget module. None of them writes to it.

  The event's finance owner reconciles, routes, and confirms (see How to use the Budget module for how the finance owner is assigned and when the field is set).

• Payments and reimbursement enabled for your organization. Payments and reimbursement is enabled per organization. If a cost line shows no Reimbursement claim marker and no Route for reimbursement control, it is not yet enabled for your organization. Please contact your SpotMe Account Manager.
• Budget in place. The event uses the Budget module in Onomi 360, built on your organization's budget category hierarchy (see How to use the Budget module). Everything this guide captures lands on those cost lines.
• Transfer of value mapping, if fee data feeds allocation. If your events pay honoraria, check that your fee categories map to fees for service in the organization's cost category mapping. Allocated fees then land in the right transparency category. The mapping is documented in Setting up transfer of value and cost category mapping.
• Connected finance systems. The expense or finance system your reimbursement claims route to is connected with our implementation team. So is a payment gateway, if you run paid registrations. Please contact your SpotMe Account Manager if these are not yet set up for your program.

Capturing payment-relevant data

Capture happens in Onomi 360, on the event, as budget cost lines. A cost line carries its amount, the category it sits under, and the attendee, where the cost belongs to one person. The same entry then serves the budget, the reimbursement trail, and the transfer of value allocation without re-keying.

1. In Onomi 360, open the event and select the Budget module. The event's cost lines appear, grouped by category, with the Budgeted, Committed, and Actual columns.
2. Select the category or sub category the cost belongs to, then select Add cost line and complete the fields described below. The line appears under that category, and each amount lands in the column its field writes to, following the budget column rule. A planned estimate lands in Budgeted amount. An agreed, contracted, or claimed amount lands in Committed amount. The reconciled final amount lands in the Actual column at reconciliation (see How to use the Budget module).

   

3. For costs spent on the group rather than one person (the dinner invoice, the group transfer), leave Attendee empty. The cost stays on the event as a shared line. The transfer of value allocation then distributes it across the attendees recorded as present and marked transfer of value relevant (see How to manage transfer of value on your events).
4. Check the attendance backing. Each attendee's state reads in Onomi 360, on the Review tab of the event's Transfer of value module. That tab lists every attendee whose registrant type is marked transfer of value relevant, whatever their state: Show, No-show, or No state recorded.

   Attendance is captured and reported per attendee, and it is the evidence behind every amount the event attributes to a person. The count of attendees with no state recorded is shown at the top of that tab. It should be zero before the money is reconciled.

   Recording or correcting a state is work on the user list of the event workspace's Users module. That work needs planner membership of that workspace. If your access comes from a strategic meetings management role alone, ask a planner of the workspace to make the change.

   A meeting with no workspace is a record-only meeting, one from a request category your organization mapped to record-only. On such a meeting there is no workspace user list and no check-in. The attendees are held on the event record in Onomi 360. A holder of the finance role whose scope covers the event sets the Show and No-show state on the attendee there, since no planner membership exists to hold. Those meetings also carry no consent captured at registration. The consent state on the row is the reference held on the HCP's master identity. The branch is documented in Meetings with no workspace, in Running and correcting an allocation.

5. Let execution feed the same record. What the event spends reaches its budget through three paths, all of them landing on the same cost lines.
   • From your ERP. Final costs and invoices land against the event record and settle the Actual column of the lines they belong to.
   • From the finance owner. Where a final cost has no ERP document behind it, the finance owner enters the amount in the line's Actual amount field.
   • From a sourcing award. Awarding a sourcing bid writes the awarded amount to the Committed column under the venue or accommodation category, attributed to the award.

   All three are documented in Budget capture at request and working the budget during planning.

6. After the event, the finance owner's reconciliation pass confirms each landed amount and marks the line reconciled. The Actual column then reads what was actually spent. Your ERP stays the system of record for accounting.

Description
What the cost is, in the terms your finance team reads: "Speaker honorarium, symposium", "Airport transfer", "Dinner, day 2".

Budgeted amount
The planned cost, where you are recording an estimate ahead of the spend. It lands in the Budgeted column. Leave it empty for a cost that is already agreed or claimed when you record it.

Committed amount
The amount as agreed (a contracted fee) or as claimed (an expense) at the moment the line is created. It lands directly in the Committed column. Reconciliation later settles the same line's Actual amount.

Attendee
The participant the cost belongs to: the speaker on a fee line, the traveler on an individual flight, the claimant on an expense.

The picker lists the event's attendees, whatever their registrant type and whether or not an attendance state has been recorded for them. A fee is agreed and a claim is handed in before anyone has attended.

This is the same stored value as the Recipient field in the event's Transfer of value module. One attribution has two entry points, and only the pickers differ. Recipient offers the narrower disclosable population: the attendees recorded present whose registrant type is marked transfer of value relevant.

The allocation reads the stored value. Where the value names someone outside that population, the amount stays in the event's unattributed remainder rather than being attributed. That is what happens to a cancellation fee booked against a person who did not attend.

Leave the field empty for shared costs.

Documents
The supporting evidence attached to the line: the receipt, the invoice, or the claim document. Each attachment shows its file size and the date it was uploaded. Every piece of evidence can then be identified and checked before the claim is routed. Attached evidence travels with the claim when it is routed, and stays on the record for audit. Up to 10 files per line, 25 MB each, in PDF, PNG, or JPG. A larger file is refused with "This file is larger than 25 MB. Attach a smaller file."

Reimbursement claim
Off by default. Turn it on when the line records an expense claim someone is to be reimbursed for. The marker is what makes the line a claim. It gives the line a claim status of its own and puts the Route for reimbursement control on it. A line that carries a committed amount and an attendee without the marker stays an ordinary cost line. It has no claim status and no routing control. An agreed speaker fee or an invoiced individual flight is such a line.

These are the capture-relevant fields of the standard cost-line dialog. The full field reference, including Vendor and GL code, is in How to use the Budget module. The budget category a line sits under is set by where you add it in the hierarchy, and it drives how the cost classifies for transfer of value.

To verify the capture is complete, review the cost-line list. Every cost you expect carries an amount, individual costs name their attendee, and the Actual column fills as reconciliation completes.

Routing reimbursement

An attendee's expense claim moves to your expense or finance system for verification and payout. Its status comes back to the event record, so the claim, its evidence, its approval, and its current state read in one place.

There is no attendee-facing claim portal in Onomi 360, and the boundary is deliberate. Attendees submit claims through the channels your organization already runs: your expense tool, your agency, or the meeting team directly. The meeting team records each claim on the event. The module records, routes, and tracks the claim, while the submission surface stays yours.

1. Record the claim as a cost line (see Capturing payment-relevant data above). Turn on Reimbursement claim, enter the claimed amount in the Committed amount field, name the claimant in the Attendee field, and attach the supporting documents. The Reimbursement claim marker is documented with the rest of the cost-line dialog in How to use the Budget module. It gives the line a claim status of its own, separate from the budget columns and starting at Recorded, and it puts the routing control on the line.

   A committed amount with an attendee is not by itself a claim. The claimed amount sits in the Committed column until reconciliation.

2. Select Route for reimbursement on the line. The claim is delivered over integration to your connected expense or finance system, with its attached evidence, and the claim status changes to Routed.

   Routing requires an amount, a claimant, and at least one attached document. If one is missing, the module names it and nothing is routed: "This claim cannot be routed: no supporting document is attached. Attach the receipt or the claim document, then route the claim."

   The control belongs to the event's finance owner. Other roles read the claim with the control disabled, beside "Route for reimbursement is available to the event's finance owner."

   A claim that has already gone shows "This claim was routed on March 12, 2026 and is with your expense system. Corrections are made there." instead of the control, because a second delivery of the same claim would read as a second claim downstream.

   

3. Verification and payout run in your expense system, following your eligibility and compliance rules. Those rules decide, for example, which cost types an HCP may claim in a given country. As your system reports progress, the reported status lands back on the claim, for example Approved, then Paid. The claim status never changes which budget column the amount sits in. Reconciliation settles the Actual column when the final cost lands.
4. Follow the event's claims together rather than line by line. In the Budget module, open the Claims view. It lists the cost lines on this event that are marked Reimbursement claim. Each row carries the claimant, the claimant's recorded attendance state, the claimed amount, the routing date, and the current claim status. The attendance state sits next to the amount because it is the evidence behind it, so a claim from someone recorded as a no-show reads without opening another module. Filter the view by claim status to see one state at a time, for example everything still waiting on a status from your expense system.

   

Important: The platform routes and tracks. Your finance stack pays. Verification, eligibility policy, and payout live in your expense and finance systems, and no reimbursement is ever paid out of Onomi 360.

To verify a claim's state, open the cost line. The claim shows its current status with the date it was reported, the routed destination, and the attached evidence. A planner or a compliance reviewer reading the line sees what an auditor asks for: the attendee, the recorded attendance behind them, the approved amount, and the claim itself, side by side.

Honoraria and speaker fees

A contracted speaker's fee is captured on the event record. From there it flows to the transfer of value record, alongside the hospitality and travel spend the same event generated for the same person.

1. Capture the fee as a cost line under your speaker or consultancy fee category. Enter the agreed amount in the Committed amount field and the speaker in the Attendee field. Leave Reimbursement claim off. An agreed fee is a committed cost, not an expense claim, so the line carries no claim status and no routing control. The line appears as an individual cost with the fee in the Committed column.

   

2. After the event, reconciliation lands the invoiced amount in the Actual column. Payment execution runs through your ERP payment runs or your banking partners, never in Onomi 360.
3. When the transfer of value allocation runs, your organization's category mapping classifies the fee line, normally as fees for service. The fee is attributed to the speaker where the line's Attribution is Individual (see How to manage transfer of value on your events). The stored Attendee is read only while the attribution is Individual. A line left Shared distributes its amount across the event's disclosable attendees, whatever attendee is stored on it. Check the attribution on the fee line before the allocation runs.

The fee's governance sits in your own systems.

Fee agreements, the fair-market-value check behind a rate, and the authorization of the fee itself live in your contracting and compliance platforms. The event record never manages the agreement.

What the record ties together is the audit view of the engagement:

• the fee on its cost line, with the speaker named on it;
• the documents attached to that line;
• the attendance that evidences it, on the Review tab of the event's Transfer of value module;
• and the event's own approval trail.

The approval trail is the approval of the request the event came from, with the budget band that request carried. Where the event arrived already approved from your CRM, the trail is the upstream reference it carries in place of one.

That approval authorized the meeting and the budget band it was requested in, rather than the fee. It is not held per recipient, so the authorization of an individual fee is read in the systems that hold the agreement and the rate check.

To verify the fee will reach the transparency data, open the event's Transfer of value module. The Cost lines tab shows the fee line with its category, its Attribution reading Individual, and the speaker as Recipient. The honorarium on the event record links to the transfer-of-value line it produced for that speaker, so the two read from each other once the allocation has run.

Card payments at registration

Some events charge attendees a registration fee. This is rare for HCP events, which are typically free of charge. Where it applies, payment collection integrates with a payment gateway at the registration step in the event workspace, rather than running inside the platform. The gateway takes the card payment, and the registration record reflects the outcome. The gateway connection is configured with our implementation team. If you are planning a paid event, please contact your SpotMe Account Manager.

* Onomi 360 MeetingsEQ exclusive capabilities.