How bills and expenses fit together

Money leaves a firm in two ways. A supplier sends a bill and the firm pays it: a vendor bill. An employee pays for the firm, a taxi, a hotel, a court fee, and the firm pays the employee back or settles the company card: an expense. This app holds both, and both end the same way: a document in a purchase journal, closed by a payment.

The documents

All three documents are entries of a purchase journal, numbered in it; the payment is an entry of a bank or cash journal. Journals and accounts belong to the accounting setup: see Accounting: start here.

The life of a bill

A bill has two statuses. The first says whether it is in the books: Draft while it is being typed, Posted once confirmed, Cancelled for a draft dropped. The second, shown as a ribbon and in the list, says whether it is paid:

• Partial: a payment or a refund covers part of it.
• Paid: settled by payments, whether or not they are matched with the bank statement yet (Banks, cash and currencies).
• Reversed: settled by a refund rather than money.
• Blocked: set by hand with (Un)Block Payment in Actions, for a bill in dispute; it cannot be blocked once paid.

What a vendor owes back, an open refund or a payment not tied to a bill, waits on the vendor's next bills under Outstanding debits, where Add deducts it. A draft bill with Auto-post set, in its Other Info tab, is posted by a daily job on its date; that job is described with the fixed assets, in Fixed assets automations. Bills imported from electronic invoice files can be posted by themselves for a vendor whose Auto-post bills is Always; the company-wide switch is Auto-validate bills, in the Vendor Bills section of the accounting settings.

The life of an expense

The expense the company paid skips a step: posting it creates and posts its payment at once, and its status goes straight to Paid.

Who approves an expense

On Submit, the Manager of the expense is the first one found of:

1. the Expense approver of the employee, set on the employee form under Approvers;
2. the manager of the employee's department, when that user has an approver right on Expenses;
3. the user of the employee's own Manager.

When none is found, or when it is the employee themselves, Submit approves the expense at once. Anyone with Team Approver can then approve the expenses of the people they manage, All Approver those of everyone, and Administrator their own as well. A weekly e-mail reminds approvers of what waits for them: see Vendor bills and expenses automations.

Expense categories

A category is a product that can be expensed, kept in Expenses/Configuration/Expense Categories. It carries the Expense Account and the Purchase Taxes the expense takes, a Reference used in e-mailed receipts, a Guideline shown on the expense, and a Cost when the price per unit is fixed, as for Mileage. Re-Invoice Costs decides whether the expense can be charged to a client: No, At cost or Sales price; when it can, the expense shows Customer to Reinvoice, to choose the sales order it is added to.

Checks along the way

• An expense with the same employee, category, date and amount as another one asks for a confirmation on Submit, and its approval opens a duplicate check.
• An expense whose receipt is already attached to another expense shows a warning.
• Split Expense divides one draft into several, each with its own category and amount.

What this app does not do

• There is no expense report gathering several expenses: each one is submitted, approved and posted alone. The Expenses Report in Actions prints one expense with its receipts.
• It does not match payments with the bank statement: Banks, cash and currencies does.
• It does not reimburse through payslips, read receipts by OCR or issue expense cards: see Expenses settings.
• The distributors' own expenses follow their own flow, in Distributors.

Who may do what