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Expenses

Overview

An expense is a cost with a description, an amount, a category, and optionally a receipt, notes, and a job. An expense with a job is a job expense; one without is a general expense (fuel, supplies, a team lunch). Crew leads and crew members submit their own; owners and managers review everyone’s and can log expenses themselves.

Plan availability: Expenses are part of the Pro and Business plans and Enterprise. On Starter the Expenses screens are hidden or locked (see Billing & Plans).

Recording an Expense

Crew leads and crew members

  • Mobile app: the Expenses tab, Add Expense on the Today screen, or Add Expense on a job.
  • Web: Add expense on the crew dashboard or on a job page. My expenses lists what you have submitted.

Owners and managers

  • Web: Expenses in the sidebar, then New expense, or Add in the Expenses section of a job page.
  • Mobile app: More, then Expenses, then the + button, or Add Expense on a job.

The form fields:

  • Description and Amount – required. The amount is in your company’s currency.
  • Category – Fuel, Materials, Tools, Meals, Lodging, or Other.
  • Job – optional. Crew choose from their crew’s jobs for today; owners and managers can search any job.
  • Receipt – a photo from the camera or photo library in the app; a JPEG, PNG, or PDF up to 10 MB on the web.
  • Notes – optional.
  • Billable and Reimbursable – owners and managers only. Crew cannot set these; you set them when you review the expense.

The date is set automatically when the expense is submitted. In the mobile app, crew can submit an expense with no signal; it is saved on the phone and syncs later (see Working offline).

Crew can edit or delete their own expenses until they are approved.

Billable and Reimbursable Expenses

  • Billable – the cost is passed on to the client. Only an expense with a job can be billable.
  • Reimbursable – the team member paid out of pocket. Once you have paid them back, mark the expense Reimbursed.

An expense can be both.

Reviewing and Approving

On the web, Expenses in the sidebar lists every expense in the company. The badge on the sidebar link counts expenses submitted by other people that nobody has opened yet; those are marked with a dot and sorted to the top of the list.

  • Filter by Period, status (Pending approval, Approved, Billable, Pending reimbursement), category, and Job-linked or General. Search matches the description.
  • The Owed to the team and Not yet billed to a client totals are clickable and filter the list to those expenses.
  • Click a description to open the expense with its receipt, details, and history.
  • From the row menu or the expense page: Approve, mark Billable (job expenses only), mark Reimbursable, mark Reimbursed, Edit, or Delete. Each toggle can be reversed.
  • To attach a general expense to a job later, edit it and pick a job.

Approving locks the expense for the person who submitted it: they can no longer edit or delete it. Owners and managers still can.

A job’s expenses can also be reviewed in the Expenses section of that job’s page.

In the mobile app, the Expenses screen under More lets you search, filter by Pending or Approved, approve, and mark reimbursed. The billable and reimbursable flags of an existing expense are changed from the job screen or on the web. See Mobile Management App.

Exporting Expenses for Your Accountant

On the web Expenses page, pick a Period – This month, Last month, This quarter, Year to date, Last 30 days, All time, or Custom dates. The page opens on This month. Both export buttons download exactly what the list is showing, filters included.

Export CSV

One row per expense: Date, Description, Category, Job, Client, Employee, Amount, Currency, Billable, Approved, Approved by, Reimbursable, Reimbursed on, Notes, and a Receipt URL. The file is named expenses-full-<date range>.csv.

Export for QuickBooks

A four-column file – Date, Description, Credit, Debit – for QuickBooks Online’s Transactions -> Upload from file. It always uses English headers and MM/DD/YYYY dates.

QuickBooks accepts at most 1,000 rows per upload. If the current view holds more, the page warns you; narrow the period and upload in batches.

Syncing Expenses to Invoices

When an invoice is created for a job, the job’s billable expenses are added as line items at their cost.

If more expenses are marked billable afterwards, a draft invoice shows a notice with an Add to invoice button that pulls them in. This works only while the invoice is a draft; for a sent invoice, create a separate invoice for the extra expenses. See Invoices & Payments.

Mileage

Mileage is not recorded as an expense. It is tracked separately and is never added to a client invoice. See Mileage.