How do I use the Expenses module?

To use Expense Management you should ensure you should first ensure you have turned on Expense Management in Display Settings. You can find this through:

Administration>Company >Settings >Display settings 

Here, there is a section entitled 'Modules Display' you should make sure you have ticked the 'Expense Management' module. Once you have done so, you then need to configure expense management prior to allowing employees to enter expenses.

Within expenses management there are a number of settings which you can configure and you also need to define expense categories which your employees will use when entering expenses.

How to set up expense categories

To set up Expense categories you need to go to:

Administration>Company>Settings>Expenses>Expense Categories

Alternatively, select the 'Categories' button at the bottom of the Expenses settings page, as shown above. 

Expense categories are simply a way to enable reporting whereby you can run a report which shows how much your expenses are for Fuel, Hotels, Travel, Meals and so on.

How to add an Expense

Once you have configured your expense settings and set up expenses categories your employees can now begin to enter their expenses via Self Service.

When adding expenses the employee can choose to add multiple expenses in a single report - by default the interface will allow you to add one asset but you can add multiple expense lines using the Quantity buttons. You can either use 'Add line' which adds one line at a time or you can use the quantity box to enter the number of additional items you need to add and then click 'Add multiple'.

Please note: you cannot add expense types of mixed currency to an individual report - if you need to enter a report consisting of two currencies then these should be submitted as two separate reports.

Please note: if you use the Remove last and Remove all buttons, these will remove the relevant lines from the form even if they have data in them - both generate a popup which you need to confirm prior to actually removing any lines but this cannot be reversed.

When adding expenses, most of the fields are required with the exception of description, vendor and comments.

The workflow above is shown when the company has set 'Enable online receipts' to 'Yes' - if this were set to 'No' then there would not be an option to upload receipts and there would simply be a button to submit for approval.

If online receipts are enabled, when you click confirm and upload receipts you are taken to a screen where you can upload the receipt images.

It is important to understand the workflow on this screen to ensure receipts are properly uploaded:

To add each file, click on 'Add files' and choose the file from your computer.

What is the maximum file size for a receipt upload?

The maximum size of any one file is 2MB and only files of type jpg, gif, png, jpeg, bmp, tif, tiff and pdf are allowed.

Once you have chosen all the files you then need to click 'Start upload' - this additional step then uploads the images to our servers as a batch. Once this is successfully completed, the screen should look similar to the screen below. Note the status is now set to 100%, each file now has a green tick next to it and, to the right of the Start upload button, there is now a message telling you Uploaded 2/2 files.

Once you see a green check next to each file you can then click 'Submit claim' - if you do so before you uploaded the images you will get an error message.

The final screen in the workflow is a summary screen which shows you a snapshot of the claim you are submitting along with the receipt images and, if required, the expense declaration.

At the bottom of the screen you will see thumbnails of the receipts uploaded - if you hover over these a magnifying glass will appear and if you click then the receipt will open full size.

How to approve expenses

Once expenses have been submitted the first approver will get an email notification and can then login and approve.

The approval screen looks similar to the screen shown above where the employee submits the final claim again with the ability to view the individual receipts - the main difference is there is a space for the first and second approver to be able to enter comments if needed.

In this instance, the expense has already been approver by the first approver - the second approver can now either approve or decline and enter comments in Approver 2 comments should they wish.