Reviewing expenses

How to approve, reject, or request changes to expenses

Updated over a week ago

Expense reviewal gives you control over when expenses are synced to your accounting system. Users with the appropriate role can review expenses submitted by cardholders and other users in the organisation. This in turn helps you to ensure that expenses comply with your organisation’s requirements, to manage the reimbursement process, and to reclaim costs for invalid or incorrectly submitted expenses.

Before you start

If you are a user of Xero and Expend’s Xero integration, check your configuration to ensure that you are ready to start reviewing expenses:

  1. In dashboard menu, click Integrations and select your accounting platform.

  2. Under Set Control Accounts, check that the Rejected Expenses account mapping is not empty. If it is empty, set up this account and then click Save.
    Tip for Xero users: To create the account without going to Xero, click the + Xero Asset Account button.

  3. Check your sync settings:
    Xero: Under Expense Sync Settings, select an appropriate option to sync Expend card expenses when you’ve approved or rejected them. Read the guidance on the page for more information.
    QuickBooks: Under Advanced Settings, turn the ”Require expense reports to be reviewed before syncing them” setting on or off. Read the guidance on the page for details.

  4. Click Save.

The “Require Review Before Syncing Expenses” setting

When users save expense details on the Expend dashboard or in the Expend app, your sync settings determine when expense details (including attachments) are synced to your accounting platform.

  • QuickBooks: If “Require expense reports to be reviewed before syncing them”  is turned ON (under Advanced Settings), no receipts, expense categories, or other expense details will be sent to QuickBooks until the expense is approved; only transaction data will be synced.

  • Xero: You can choose from four options under Expense Sync Settings: 1) when the transaction is final and you’ve approved/rejected the expense; 2) when you’ve approved/rejected the expense while the transaction may not yet be final; 3) when the transaction is final but without having approved/rejected the expense; or 4) immediately when the card is used. Please read the guidance on the Integrations page for Xero for details.

Note that all Expend card transactions are synced to your accounting platform no matter whether this setting is turned on or off. The setting pertains to expense details added by the user – category (and whether the transaction is allocated to the mapped account), tax type and description, as well as attachments.

Reviewing expenses

You need the Administrator or Financial Reviewer role, or be a Team Reviewer, to review and approve expenses.

  1. In the dashboard menu, click Review. A list of submitted expenses opens.

  2. Select Awaiting Review (or another filter such as Changes Requested, Approved or Rejected) at the top of the page.

  3. Click an expense in the list. Details and attachments are displayed on the right.

  4. (Optional) To make any changes required to the expense, click Edit. You can change details, add and/or edit expense lines, and add attachments.

  5. To approve the expense: Click Approve in the upper-right corner.
    If the expense can’t be approved: Click Review, select an outcome and optionally enter a comment, and then click Submit.

Beta users

Please see the following article: Reviewing expenses in the Inbox

What happens next?

If you approve or reject an expense,  the expense details and attachments submitted by the user are synced to your accounting platform. (For Xero users, syncing may be delayed until the transaction is final, if this is specified under Expense Sync Settings.)

Depending on your settings, the review outcome selected also effects the following:

Approved

  • In your accounting platform, the transaction is allocated to the account in the Chart of Accounts that is mapped to the selected Expend category.

  • “Approved by” and the name of the reviewer is added to the transaction.

Rejected

  • The transaction is allocated to the Rejected Expenses account in your accounting platform’s Chart of Accounts.

  • The cardholder is notified by email that the expense hasn’t been approved.

  • “Rejected by” and the name of the reviewer is added to the transaction. 

Changes requested

  • If your sync settings specify that an expense needs to be approved or rejected before syncing it, expense details are not synced to your accounting platform at this point.

  • The cardholder is notified by email that changes are required.

Comment

  • The comment is simply recorded against the expense.

  • If your sync settings specify that an expense needs to be approved or rejected before syncing it, expense details are not synced to your accounting platform at this point.

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