Are you or your team running into issues when trying to add an expense to a budget or deal?
If a service isn't showing up in the expense input screen, one of the reasons below is likely the cause.
📌 You don't always need to select a service to save an expense. If you're not sure which budget or deal an expense belongs to yet, you can leave the Service field empty and save it as Unallocated.
This is only available when creating an expense from Financials > Expenses.
👉 Learn more in How to Submit an Expense Without Selecting a Service.
1) User Not Added to the Budget or Deal
Ensure the user trying to log expenses is included in the Sharing Options of the deal or budget. You can find this in the upper-right corner of the budget or deal page.
2) No Services Assigned to the Deal or Budget
Expenses are logged against services, either in budgets or sales deals. If services haven’t been added to a deal or budget, you won’t be able to log expenses. Make sure the deal or budget has all necessary services assigned.
👉 Find out more in How to Set Up an Expense Line Item in a Budget.
3) Service Tracking Unit Set to Hour or Day
Services with a tracking unit set to Hour or Day are unavailable for expense tracking.
Change the unit to Piece to log expenses.
📌 For Fixed billing services, bookings and time tracking remain available when Piece is selected — but it's best to reserve Piece for expense tracking only. Time entries and bookings don't drive revenue recognition on Piece services; only approved expenses do.
4) Expense Tracking Disabled for a Service
If expense tracking is disabled for the service directly within the budget, you’ll need to enable it.
You can do this by clicking the Edit deal/budget icon and enabling the expense tracking.
5) Deal Stage Restrictions
Some pipeline stages may have time tracking and expense logging disabled. Verify the deal stage settings.
📌 This applies to deals only.
👉 Learn more in How to Disable Tracking Time and Expenses on Deals.
6) Service or User Restrictions
Check if time and expense tracking is restricted to certain service types or specific people within the deal or budget.
These restrictions directly impact who can log expenses against the relevant services.
7) Budget Already Delivered
Once a budget has been delivered, no new expenses can be added. To enable logging expenses, you’ll need to reopen the budget.
📌 This applies to budgets only.
A Note on Billing Types and Expense Tracking
The billing type of a service affects how expenses are tracked and billed:
Fixed: log expenses freely; the service is billed at the predefined amount regardless of what's logged.
Time and Materials: expenses are billed as logged; make sure expenses are added as work progresses.
Non-billable: generates cost only; cannot be invoiced to a client.