Expense reports

Employee expense reports — receipts → approval → reimbursement.

(See Approving expenses for the approval workflow side. This article covers the full lifecycle.)

The lifecycle

1. Employee submits a report with receipts.
2. Approval workflow runs — manager → Finance → (if large) CFO.
3. Finance pays the reimbursement.
4. The report is closed.

Setting up expense categories

Under Admin → Expense Categories:

Limits over which extra approvers join. Per-diems for daily allowances.

Receipt OCR

Employees upload a receipt photo. The OCR engine:

• Extracts the total.
• Extracts the date.
• Suggests a category.

The employee confirms or corrects.

Tracking against budget

Each department has a budget per category. The expense report dashboard shows:

• Spent this period vs budget.
• Pending approval that would consume more.
• Available to spend.

When a category is at 90%, an alert goes to the department head.

Reimbursement

After full approval:

1. Finance → Expenses → Approved.
2. Filter to show this period's reports.
3. Bulk export to a CSV your bank or accounting system understands.
4. Once paid, mark as Paid — the employee sees the status update.

Reimbursements can be:

• Added to next month's salary.
• Paid as a separate transfer.

The default is configured under Admin → Expense Settings.

Reports

• Expense by department — spending breakdown.
• Expense by employee — top spenders.
• Per-diem usage — for travel-heavy teams.
• Receipt compliance — reports without receipts (chase reminder).

Next step

Report an incident →