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Expense Entry and Approval
Expense Entry and Approval
How to add expenses, ask for reimbursement and check the status
Stjepan Šandor avatar
Written by Stjepan Šandor
Updated this week

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Project expenses can be added in two ways:

  1. Directly on the project - the budget owner can add the expenses directly to the project's budget.

  2. Via the Entry and Approval workflow - all employees can submit expenses for approval. Once approved, expenses will appear as a line item on the project's budget.

Expense Entry and Approval workflow

First off, the approval workflow is optional for your organization. You can toggle it on or off under Settings > Expenses:

NOTE: Expense Approval must be turned on on a budget basis, meaning that the person responsible for the budget must turn on the approval for the budget in question:

How to submit an expense for approval?

Click on the Expenses module in the main navigation.

This will take you to My Expenses, where you can submit the expense.

To create a new expense, click the + Expense button in the top right corner:

In the window that pops up, enter the expense details.

Mandatory fields:

  1. Add a date specifying when the expense occurred, as well as the total cost of the expense.

  2. Select the Service to which the budget will be attributed.

  3. Select the Quantity and Cost of your expense.

  4. Enter the billable amount.

Optional fields:

  1. Put in a brief description of the expense to help you monitor it later.

  2. Add an attachment, such as invoices from third parties related to this specific expense.

  3. Request reimbursement for the expense. If the expense needs to be reimbursed, be sure to check the box Request reimbursement.

  4. Set up the payment for the expense, or let the budget owner handle this later.

  5. Define the custom fields for the expense. More info on custom fields can be found here.

Hit Save and the person who needs to approve the expense will be notified. In Productive, this is the budget owner. More precisely - the person responsible for the budget you're selecting in the first dropdown.

You can check the status of the expense at any time in My Expenses:

How is the expense approved?

The budget owner will see the request in their Approvals screen:

At that point they can approve the expense, flagging it as Approved, or reject the expense with a note, flagging it as Rejected.

Now you can edit it...

... and set a date for the payment:

To see the complete list of the Expenses, go to Company expenses:

Using Filters and views, you can also check if there is an expense that needs reimbursement.

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