Clients & Profits X :: Daily Expense Reports

The My Daily Expense Reports page records all of your reimbursable out-of-pocket expenses, like tolls, client lunches, cab fares, or tips.

Specific information is entered for each expense, including category, the job number and task, a description, and cost. The category is completely user-defined, and the description for each expense can be as long as needed to explain how the money was spent. Daily Expense Reports are approved for reimbursement in the Expense Reports window.

You can add all of your daily expenses at once or as they are incurred so you can easily keep track of the reimbursable expenses you’ve paid for out of your own pocket.

The My Daily Expense Reports web page is the electronic equivalent of a paper expense report. Instead of filling out a paper form for the accounting department, each staff member will enter his or her own expenses for travel, office supplies, postage, and more into this page. The expenses are then saved directly into the accounting system where they wait for management approval.

Approving an expense report posts the expenses to jobs and tasks and prepares the optional reimbursement. You can only enter your own expense reports. (It’s not possible, for example, for a receptionist to enter several employees’ expense reports). This helps ensure that you are accountable for expense reports entered in your name. Expense reports can only be approved by authorized manager-level users. To approve expense reports, choose Accounting > Expense Reports.

All of the expenses entered onto a Daily Expense Report will be dated today, regardless of when the expense was actually incurred. If you need to track an expense’s actual date, enter the date into the description field. There is no way to import expense reports from your Palm-based or CE-based PDA or other program.

The X column indicates that an expense has been approved by management. An approved expense entry can’t be changed or removed.

Expense entries are grouped together by category. There is no predefined set of categories, so any kind of category can be used here. Categories have no affect on job costing or accounting. Instead, the category is simply used to sub-total similar kinds of expenses together on expense summaries. The category name appears on job cost reports in the Vendor column.

The job and task are optional, although they are needed for tracking job costs. If the expense was incurred for a client job, be sure to enter a job and task. If the expense was incurred for the agency, enter the word "NONE" instead of a job number and leave the task blank.

The description field is optional, but is useful for documenting expenses for management as well as for clients. It appears on costs reports.

The cost is what you paid for the expense. It should include sales tax and any delivery or extra charges, and should match the total on your receipt for better accountability and easier auditing. It is not the billable amount that will be eventually billed to the client, which will be calculated automatically when the expense report is saved.