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Creating expenses from existing documents

Learn how to create expense claims, company expenses, bills/invoices and cash reports from scanned documents and email attachments

Updated over a week ago

You can use Expend to extract document data from receipts and invoices. Simply upload these documents and let Expend do most of the work for you! As soon as a document is processed, you’ll be able to create an expense with a minimal amount of fuss.

Before you start

  • You can upload the following types of documents:

    • PDF document

    • JPEG image

    • PNG image

  • The size of the files should not exceed 5MB.

Processing documents

To create expenses and invoices from scanned documents and email attachments, do the following:

  1. In the menu on the left, click My Expenses.

  2. In the Document Scanner box at the top of the page, click Upload documents and select the files to upload. You can also drag and drop files to this area.

  3. Select a payment method and category for each document and click Submit.

When processing has finished, the item appears under Expenses.

Note: You can also email Expend documents to be processed – see this guide.

When you click the item created from a scanned document, the page that opens is similar to the standard page for expenses. The form on the left side of the page is filled in with the details that could be obtained through text recognition, and the scanned document is shown on the right side of the page for easy reference.

Inbox users

Documents you have uploaded or emailed to Expend, but not yet processed, are shown in your Inbox with the tag Financial Document (meaning that we'll try to extract transaction information from it).

In the web app, simply click one of these inbox items and use the form that opens to provide the necessary details.

In the mobile app, the process is similar: find an item tagged Receipt and tap it to start working on the expense. Tip: Tap the Documents button at the top of the inbox to show only financial documents.

Getting your documents into Expend

To get your documents into Expend, you have several options, so that you can choose the one most convenient for you.

In the web app:

At the top of the page, click Add Documents. From here, you can:

  • Click the upload area and select files from your computer.

  • Drag and drop files to the upload area.

If your admin has set up a Document Scanner email for you, the email address is shown under Send through email.

Send via email:

  • Simply send a document to the email address shown on the Upload Documents pop-up. Ensure there is only one attachment. This will be added to your documents.

  • There may also be other email addresses available that process documents in a predetermined way – your admin will provide you with details.

While editing an expense:

  • When you are editing an expense, go to the Documents section to upload new documents. Expend will look for transaction details to extract in the first document you upload. You can then also upload further relevant documents.

  • Alternatively, select an existing document from the list below the upload area. Notice the search box at the top – it can be handy if you have a lot of documents waiting to be processed.

Managing your documents

In the sidebar menu on the left, under WORKSPACE, click Documents. This shows a page listing all the documents you've uploaded. Notice the ⿲ button in the top right corner – click this if you want to show or hide additional columns.

You can also simply click a document in the list on this page to create or edit the associated expense.

Deleting a document

Note: you can only delete a document if the associated expense has not yet been approved or rejected.

To delete a document, follow the steps below.

In the web app:

  1. In the sidebar menu on the left, under WORKSPACE, click Documents.

  2. On the form that opens, click the Delete button.

In the mobile app:

  1. Find the document in your inbox. (You can tap the Documents button at the top of the inbox to show only financial documents.)

  2. Swipe from right to left and tap the trash icon.

Your data and privacy

Please review the Expend Privacy Policy to learn more about how information is used and stored, security, and other related topics.

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