Expenses in Productive allow you to track and manage additional costs related to your budgets and sales deals.
You can categorize them by client, track their details such as amount, date, and description in the reports or in the Financials tab under Company Expenses, and even bill them to clients if necessary.
Discover how to set up expense-related account settings in the article below.
Accessing Expense Settings
If you are an admin or the account owner (or if you have custom expense permissions enabled), you can access the expense settings through Settings > Expenses.
Expense Approval
Enable the Expenses Approval functionality to set up an approval process for added expenses on a budget.
Leaving this unchecked (toggle off) still allows expense logging, with all expenses approved by default.
If you wish to verify expenses before adding them to the budget, switch the toggle on and check out this article on expense approvals.
Expense Fields in Admin Settings
Payment Field
Enable this option to add a Payment section to the expense input screen. Once activated, users will see two new fields:
Due Date: When the expense is expected to be paid.
Payment Date: When the expense was actually paid.
This is especially useful when:
A user logs an expense that hasn’t been paid yet but has a known due date.
You want to track when expenses were settled.
Reimbursement Field
Turn this on to enable reimbursement tracking for expenses. Users will be able to fill out:
Reimbursement: A Yes/No toggle indicating whether they need to be reimbursed.
Reimbursement Date: The date the reimbursement was completed.
This allows users to clearly communicate which expenses should be reimbursed. The budget owner or approver can then:
Review the reimbursement request.
Mark the expense as reimbursed once payment has been made.
This creates a clear workflow between the person logging the expense and the one responsible for managing reimbursements.
Default Expense Markup
Define a global expense markup, if needed, to apply to all your expenses uniformly.
Setting Up an Expense Line Item
Once an admin has adjusted your account-level expense settings, the next step is to set up an expense line item. This enables your team to start logging and categorizing expenses accurately.
Good to Know: Tracking Expenses and Billing Types
You can track expenses on services with Fixed, Time and Materials, or Non-billable billing types, as long as the tracking unit is set to piece.
Fixed: The entire budget can be invoiced regardless of hours or expenses logged.
Time and Materials: Only logged hours and expenses are billed, so ongoing tracking is essential.
Non-billable: These expenses won't be invoiced to clients but will still appear as internal costs.
Autofilling Expense Details with AI
Save time with the "Upload to Autofill" option, where Productive AI scans your uploaded file and fills in key expense details for you!
Overview of Logged Expenses
Navigate to Financials > Expenses to access your company's complete expense list.
📌 Use filters and views to easily identify expenses that require reimbursement or further attention.
📌 In the Reports section, choose the Expenses data source for a comprehensive view of submitted expenses. Alternatively, integrate this data into Financial items data source reports for broader financial insights.
Tip: For daily expense monitoring, customize and save your preferred report (using either the Expense or Financial items data source), then add it to your home dashboard as a widget for quick access and oversight.
Additionally, when adding a widget from the Widget library, you'll see one entitled "Company expenses", allowing you to oversee expenses on currently open projects.
