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Introduction to the Expense Register

Your company's employees should use the Expense register to submit their expense claims. Typically, an employee will submit expense claims by creating new records once a month.

If you want to support an expense claim for mileage with details of the journeys you have made, you should first record the journey details in a new record in the Mileage register. You can then quote the Mileage record on flip D of the Expense record. The Total Cost from the Mileage record will be brought in to the Expense record automatically, and Account, VAT Code and Description details will be taken from the Mileage Settings setting.

Similarly, if you need to submit a claim for daily allowances for nights spent away from home, you should first list the nights spent away from home in a new record in the Daily Allowance register. You can then quote the Daily Allowance record on flip E of the Expense record. The TOTAL and Project (if any) from the Daily Allowance record will be brought in to the Expense, and the Account, VAT Code, Qty and Item will be brought in from the Daily Allowance Settings setting. Finally, the Description will be brought in from the Daily Allowance record or from the Account.

If an employee pays and claims an expense that should be assigned to a Supplier, you may need to enter that expense as a Purchase Invoice, especially if the expense includes a VAT element. This will ensure the expense will be included in Purchase Ledger VAT reports and in the Periodic Supplier Statement. When entering the Purchase Invoice, use a Payment Term in which the Type is "Employee". The resulting Nominal Ledger Transaction will credit the Account from the relevant Person record ('Accounts' card), and the Person's Tag/Object will be assigned to the credit posting(s). In other respects, the Purchase Invoice will be similar to a Cash Note, so it will immediately be treated as paid. Please refer to the Registering Expenses Using Purchase Invoices page for more details.

To open the Expense register, first ensure you are in the Expenses module. Then, if you are using Windows or Mac OS X, click the [Registers] button in the Navigation Centre and then double-click 'Expenses' in the resulting list. If you are using iOS or Android, tap the [Registers] button in the Navigation Centre and then tap 'Expenses' in the 'Registers' list.

The 'Expenses: Browse' window will be opened, showing any Expenses that have already been entered. Expenses that have been marked as OK and posted to the Nominal Ledger are shown with a tick in the OK column.

By default, Expenses will be shown sorted by Expense Number. If you are using Windows or Mac OS X, you can change the sort order by clicking on one of the other column headings. To reverse any sort, simply click once again on the column heading. The current sort order is marked by the column heading being coloured blue. If you are using iOS or Android, tap on the column heading and choose the sort order you need. Repeat the procedure to reverse the sort.

Searching for a particular Expense record depends on whether you are using the Browse Filtering option in the Optional Features setting in the System module, as follows:

  • If you are not using the Browse Filtering option, first sort the list by the column that you want to use for the search. Then, enter the text that you want to find in the Search field in the top of the window (in the top right-hand corner if you are using Windows/Mac OS X) and press the Return key (Mac OS X) or Search (iOS/Android). The first record containing a match for your search string will be highlighted (if you are using Windows, a match will be highlighted as you type each character). For example, to search for a particular Person, sort by Person or Name before entering a Signature or a Name (or the first few characters) in the Search field.

  • If you are using the Browse Filtering option, all you need to do is to start typing a letter, word, number, or date in the Search field (there is no need to click in the field before typing). As you type each character, non-matching records will be removed from the list. There is no need to sort the list first.
If you need Expense records to pass through an approval process before you can mark them as OK and you have configured such a process using the Approval Rules register in the Business Alerts module, an extra column that displays the Approval Status of each Expense record will be added to the 'Expenses: Browse' window. Please refer to the description of the Approval Status field on the 'Misc' card for brief details about the approval process and here for full details.

If you are using Windows or Mac OS X, there will be three buttons in the top left-hand corner of the 'Expenses: Browse' window. These are part of the Limited Access feature. You can use them as follows (Windows versions of the buttons illustrated on the left, Mac OS X on the right):


Lists all Expense records.


Lists Expense records submitted by members of the same Sales Group as the current user.


Lists Expense records submitted by the current user (i.e. Expense records where the Person field contains the Signature of the current user).
You can also prevent a user from seeing all Expense records in the list by restricting their view to their own Expense records or to those of their Sales Group.

Please refer to the page describing the 'Access' card of the Person register for full details about the Limited Access feature.

The Expense register in Standard ERP:

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