Expenses

The Expenses module enables you to manage and track your organization's business related expenses, whether they are goods, or services. Expense records also support billing them to your clients, so you can pass along the costs directly through your invoices. Effective use of the expense module can help you track and monitor your organization's cash flow, and keep up with your taxes.

Expenses Module View

When you select the Expenses module from the navigation menu on the left hand side of the screen, by default you will be taken to the table view listing and sorting all available expense records.

From the table view you can sort expense records by the various columns at the top of the table. With the Columns button in the bottom right of the table view, you can add/remove columns from the table. You can use the filter and status buttons in the bottom left to change visible records listed. A kebab menu to the left of each entry in the table shows a list of available management actions you can take against an expense record, such as editing, cloning to a new expense record, invoicing the expense, or cloning to a new recurring expense record.

Viewing an Expense

Simply click on an entry from the table to view the preview panel for that expense record.

You can use the "Edit" button at the top of the preview panel to edit the expense record. You can use the kebab menu in the top right corner of the panel to see a list of management actions that can be taken against the expense record, such as invoicing the expense, cloning the expense record, or deleting it. At the bottom of the expense preview panel, you will find two buttons to "Invoice Expense" and "Clone". Invoice Expense will create a new invoice record with the expense details automatically entered as a line item on the invoice. Clone will create a new expense record with the same details as the existing expense record, for today's date.

The preview panel for an expense record has all the details about the record broken into two tabbed sections, as follows:

Overview

Here you can see the total cost of the expense, and the state of the expense at the top. Multifunctional interactive buttons in a list will connect you to the vendor, client, project, user, and invoice that are linked to the expense record. Public and private notes appear highlighted, prefixed by a lock icon to indicate a private note, or a small "i" in a circle to indicate a public note. The bottom of the overview tab displays the date of the expense, tax rate, and payment information for when and how your organization paid the vendor.

Documents

The Documents tab supports uploading files such as documents, pictures, and more to allow you to share them with the client when attached to an invoice (if enabled) or with other users of the admin portal.

Creating and Editing an Expense

In the desktop layout, editing or creating an expense record will take you to a new screen with all available fields displayed at once. In the mobile layout, editing or creating an expense record will open another screen with tabs, organized similar to how they appear in the desktop layout, as described below:

Details

• Expense Number - The expense number is best left alone, so it can be automatically generated by Invoice Ninja. The policies governing generated numbers can be found in Settings > Generated Numbers.
• Vendor - Link the expense to a vendor by selecting an available vendor record from the list here.
• Client - Link the expense to a client by selecting an available client record. When creating an invoice from an expense, the new invoice will also be automatically be assigned to this client.
• Project - Assign an expense to a project from the list. The projects list is filtered by projects assigned to the client, if one is chosen, and the appropriate client is automatically assigned when you select a project.
• Category - Categories are optional, to help add another level of sorting to your expenses. There are no default expense categories, so if you wish to make proper use of this field, you will have to create a list of expense categories in Settings > Expense Settings > Configure Categories.
• Amount - The total cost of the expense billed to your organization.
• Tax - Select an applicable tax rate. Tax rates are configured by you in Settings > Tax Settings > Configure Rates.
• Currency - Currency you paid your expense in, automatically populated with the default currency of the vendor assigned to the expense.
• Date - Date of the expense. Note that this is the date that the vendor invoices you for the expense, not the date of your payment to the vendor.

Notes

• Public Notes - Use this field to describe the expense. When creating an invoice for a client from an expense record, the public notes are included in the line item description for the expense.
• Private Notes - The value of this field is only viewable by users of the admin portal, so you can use it to make notes to yourself and other coworkers about the expense record.

Settings

• Should be Invoiced - Enable this to mark an expense as billable to a client. Expenses with invoicing enabled can be included on client invoices, and when you create an invoice from a project that the invoicable expense is linked to. When an expense record has invoicing enabled, it's lifecycle status will change to Pending until it is invoiced, and paid for, after which it will be changed automatically again to Paid.
• Mark Paid - Enable this to indicate that your organization has paid the vendor for this expense. This is not to indicate a payment from a client.
  • Payment Type - Select the payment type your organization used to pay the vendor with.
  • Date - Enter the date your organization paid the vendor.
  • Transaction Reference - Enter a transaction reference code or number if applicable.
• Convert Currency - If the expense is billed in a currency other than your own default currency, enabling this allows you to set the currency you prefer to pay with, and an exchange rate, to calculate how much the expense cost in your preferred currency.

• Add Documents to Invoice - Enable this feature to include any documents attached to an expense, with the documents attached to the invoice when you create an invoice out of the expense record.
• Enter Taxes - Configure how the expense is taxed to you in more detail.
  • By Rate or By Amount - Change between rate or amount to change the Tax field (under the details tab) from a percent based tax, to a custom flat tax.
  • Inclusive Taxes - Enable this option if the taxes are inclusive to the cost of the expense, rather than exclusive. For example: Exclusive tax is applied on top of the expense cost, like so: 100 + 10% = $110 total (100 + 10). Inclusive tax is when taxes are deducted from the amount the vendor bills you, and included in your expense amount, rather than tacked on top of what you pay the vendor, like so: 100 + 10% = $100 total (90.91 +9.09).

Lifecycle of an Expense

The following describe the lifecycle of an expense record

Logged

An expense's default state is Logged, when an expense is created. An expense is marked logged whether or not you have reported that you have paid the vendor for the expense yet.

Pending

An expense that has Should be Invoiced enabled, making it billable to a client, is automatically changed to a Pending state.

Invoiced

An expense record is automatically changed to Invoiced after the expense has been added to a client invoice. Note that an expense is marked Invoiced simply by being on an invoice, and its state doesn't change whether or not that invoice has been paid for by the client. The overview tab of the expense record's preview panel will link you to the invoice that expense is attached to.

Archived

An expense record can manually be archived, which simply hides it from view in the table or list of active expenses. The details of archived expenses are still included in reports. You can view archived expenses by changing filters in the table view, and you can use the "Restore" function to return an archived expense to its former state.

Deleted

An expense record can manually be deleted, which will remove it from view, and remove it from any reports as well. Deleted expense records can be seen by changing your filters when viewing the table or list of expenses, and using the "Restore" function can return the deleted expense record to its former state.