Expenses and receipts

Expenses record money spent on a project rather than time worked on it — a flight, a stock photo, a client lunch, mileage. They live alongside tracked time so an invoice can carry both, and they feed the profitability report so a project's margin reflects what it actually cost.

Recording an expense

Go to Expenses and add one:

• Project — optional. An expense with no project is an internal cost: it still counts against profitability for the workspace, but there is nobody to bill it to.
• Category — optional, and the choice that decides how the amount is worked out (see below).
• Date — when the cost was incurred, not when it was entered.
• Amount, or units for a unit-based category.
• Notes — what it was for. Worth filling in; a line reading "£84.00" on a client's invoice invites a question you will have to answer months later.

Categories, and the two ways an amount is set

A category is a reusable label — "Travel", "Software", "Mileage" — and it can work in one of two ways.

Plain amount. You type what it cost. Most expenses are this.

Unit-based. The category carries a unit price and a unit name, so you enter a quantity instead and the amount is calculated as units × unit price. Mileage is the obvious case: set the unit name to mi and the unit price to your rate, then record 120 rather than working out the total yourself. The rate lives in one place, so changing it does not require anybody to recalculate anything.

Each category also carries a billable by default setting, which pre-fills the billable flag when you pick it. It is only a default — you can change it on any individual expense.

Billable and reimbursable

These two flags answer different questions, and it is worth being clear which is which:

• Billable — should the client pay for this? A billable expense becomes available to add to an invoice. A non-billable one is a cost your workspace absorbs.
• Reimbursable — should you be paid back for this? Use it when somebody spent their own money rather than the company's.

They are independent. A taxi you paid for personally on a client's behalf is both. A subscription paid by the company for internal use is neither.

Reimbursement can be switched off for the whole workspace under organization settings. When it is off, the flag is forced to off on every expense rather than being quietly ignored — so the setting means what it says.

Receipts

Attach a receipt file to an expense. Receipts need object storage to be configured for your workspace; without it the upload is refused with an explanation rather than failing silently.

Getting expenses onto an invoice

Billable expenses that have not yet been invoiced appear when you build an invoice, in the same place as uninvoiced time. Adding one marks it invoiced so it cannot be billed twice — the same protection tracked time gets.

The Uninvoiced report lists everything billable and not yet billed, expenses included, which is the quickest way to check nothing has been forgotten before you send.

Reporting

• The Expenses report breaks spending down by project, category and person.
• Profitability subtracts expenses from revenue, so a project that looked healthy on labour alone shows its real margin.

Asking the assistant

The assistant can answer questions about expenses through the same reporting tools it uses for time — what a project has cost, what is still uninvoiced. It does not create expenses for you: an expense is a claim about money spent, and that belongs to a person rather than to a conversation.