Expense Entry

Key Concepts

Expenses are expense claims: out-of-pocket costs your staff pay and need to be reimbursed for. If your company relies on corporate credit cards you might have fewer personal expenses to submit, but when you do pay out of pocket, this is where the expense is filed. Technicians file most expenses; Managers and Administrators follow the same process when creating their own personal expenses. If you work in the field, Site Staff Expense Entry walks through the same form from a technician’s account. What expense tracking does for your job costs is on the Expenses product page; this page is how to file one.

• One expense per payment or receipt: the Date should be the day the purchase happened, not the day you file it, even if you are filing later in the week.
• The life of an expense: four stages, each one a checkbox on the record or a queue on the list:
  1. Draft: saved with the Submitted checkbox cleared. It waits in your own My Expenses view and does not post to approvals until you finalize it.
  2. Submitted: you check Submitted and save. Submitted Date is date-stamped for you and the expense joins the Expense Approval Backlog.
  3. Approved: a Manager or an Administrator approves the expense, usually the job’s project manager. This is covered in Expense Approval.
  4. Processed: the last step. What it means is your company’s call: for some of our customers it is the employee being paid back, for others the expense being put on the invoice that charges the client. A Manager or an Administrator ticks the checkbox on the expense, or it is ticked from the Expenses table on the invoice that bills the job, which is covered in Invoices.
• Saved views by role: a Technician or a Job Coordinator gets views of their own expenses only; an Administrator or a Manager also gets the queues the whole company works from. They are listed under Finding an expense.
• Locked once submitted: a Technician can edit an expense while it is a draft. Once it is submitted it opens read-only for them: a Manager or an Administrator either corrects it or clears Submitted to hand it back as a draft, which is how an expense that cannot be approved is returned for correction. Approving locks it further, ready to be reimbursed.
• Expense Items are your company’s list: the categories on the form are the expense types set up by your administrators, in Administration Settings.

Performing Common Tasks

Finding an expense

On the dashboard, in the Expenses card, click Explore.

The Expenses list opens with a strip of saved views along the top, and the views you get depend on your role.

As an Administrator or a Manager the views are Not Approved, Admin Queue, All, My Expenses and All My Expenses.

• Not Approved: every submitted expense that is still waiting for approval, for everyone, not just you. These are the same records as the Expense Approval Backlog on the Workflow card, shown as cards instead of a grid.
• Admin Queue: approved expenses waiting to be marked Processed.
• All: every expense you can see.
• My Expenses: the expenses you have created but not yet submitted for approval.
• All My Expenses: all of your expenses. A submitted expense opens read-only from here whether or not it has been approved: once you submit, only a Manager or an Administrator can change it. Drafts are edited from My Expenses.

As a Technician or a Job Coordinator the views are My Expenses and All My Expenses, which hold the same things they hold for everyone else. All My Expenses has no Create button whatever your role, so start an expense from another view or from the dashboard.

The rest of the screen is the same on every view:

• The search box reads “Type and press Enter to search”. Type into it and press Enter, or click Search, to narrow the view.
• Create opens a blank expense and Export to Excel downloads the view.
• Each card reads Date:, Employee:, Job #: and Item:. On My Expenses and All My Expenses the cards drop Employee:, because every record is yours. Click the card to open that expense.

Viewing an expense

Clicking a card opens the expense’s display view, which is read-only. The buttons at the top of the display screen, repeated below the record, are Edit, Export to PDF, Delete and Back. Export to PDF makes a file you can print or email. A Technician sees Edit and Delete on a draft only; once an expense is submitted, only a Manager or an Administrator can change or delete it.

• Date: and Expense #: sit at the top. The expense number is the system’s own and is not on the create form.
• Employee:, Job: and Expense Item: are links. The Job: link opens the job the expense was booked to.
• Total Expense Amount:, Description: and Attachments: repeat what was filed.
• Submitted: and Submitted Date: tell you whether the expense has left your drafts and when.
• Approved: is ticked once a Manager or an Administrator has approved it, and Processed: once the last step, whatever your company counts as processing, is done.

Creating an expense

There are two ways in:

• On the dashboard, in the Expenses card, click Create New.
• In the Expenses list, click Create.

Either way the expense form opens, titled Create. Any field with a red star is required.

• Date: required. It defaults to today’s date. Set it to the day the purchase happened.
• Employee: required. Defaults to you; pick someone else to file an expense on their behalf.
• Job: required. Click the field and pick the job that generated the expense.
• Expense Item: required. The dropdown shows the expense types set up by your administrators; see Administration Settings.
• Total Expense Amount: required. A $ spinner box. Enter the amount shown on the receipt.
• Description: required. A short note that explains the purchase, such as “Filled unit 204 after Boundary Survey”.
• Attachments: click Add to attach the receipt, and any supporting document such as a hotel folio. If you are on a computer you can click the Select File button to upload a photo or PDF; if you are on a cell phone you will have the option to take a picture. Job Book stores attachments with the record so approvers don’t have to chase you later.
• Submitted: checked by default. If you are still gathering receipts, clear it to save a draft instead.
• Submitted Date: filled in for you when you submit. You cannot type it.

Click Save. If a required field is empty, Job Book says “One or more values are invalid, please check your form.” and highlights the field in red; fill it in and click Save again. Saving takes you back to the dashboard.

Submitting a draft

To submit a draft: on the dashboard, in the Expenses card, click Explore, click the My Expenses view and click the expense, then click Edit.

• Change anything that needs changing, then check the Submitted box.
• Click Save, then click Back.

On the list your expense is gone from My Expenses, because that view holds drafts only. Click All My Expenses and you will see it waiting to be approved by the job’s project manager. Submitting sends the expense for approval in the Expense Approval Backlog.

After approval the record is locked. If something has to change, ask a Manager or an Administrator: they can fix it themselves, or clear both Approved and Submitted so the expense comes back to My Expenses as a draft for you to correct and submit again. Clearing Approved on its own leaves it submitted, and a submitted expense is still read-only for you.

Checking whether it was approved

Two ways to tell:

• Open the expense from All My Expenses and look at Approved: on the display view.
• On the dashboard, in the Personal Reports card, click My Expenses. The report lists each expense with its job, amount and Status, and is covered in Personal Reports.

Best practices

• Submit expenses daily, or at least weekly, so approvers have fresh details and you get reimbursed faster.
• Match the expense to the same job you used on your Daily Work Record (DWR). An expense filed against the wrong job distorts two budgets.
• Upload receipts right away. A faded or missing receipt slows the approval and may not be reimbursed at all.
• Use meaningful descriptions, so approvers understand how the purchase supported the job without calling you.
• Review your totals before submitting. Fixing small errors now saves the expense being handed back to you later.

Video

Coming soon