Capture Expense Glossary

Capture Expense

A comprehensive desktop and mobile application that allows staff to raise, submit, and approve expense claims anytime and anywhere. It includes receipt capture, mileage calculation, policy controls, and integrates with accounting, payroll, and HR systems.

Receipt Management

Uploading and managing digital receipts using the mobile app, email, Teams, or WhatsApp, with OCR to pre-populate form data, auto-matching credit card transactions, and splitting receipts into multiple categories.

Journey Calculator

Automatically calculates journey distances based on waypoints using Google's Distance API, applies HMRC advisory or custom mileage rates, and allows overrides with percentage difference display.

Policy Control

Enables spending limits, out-of-policy warnings, multi-stage approval workflows, duplicate claim protection, and vehicle mileage verification to ensure compliance with company expense policies.

Compliance (VAT)

Built-in VAT records supporting UK and EU VAT rates to help organizations reclaim the correct VAT amounts and improve VAT reclaim success by up to 34%.

Expense Categories

Classifications for types of expenses users can claim, each with settings for VAT treatment, GL codes, spend limits, and approval workflows, applied automatically when a category is selected in a claim.

AI Matching and Smart Categories

An AI feature that automatically assigns expense categories to uploaded receipts or card transactions using merchant mapping or AI predictions, indicated by a sparkle icon on claims.

Approvals and Approval Workflow

The configured process for reviewing and approving expense claims, which may include multiple stages, approvers, and rules tailored to organisational needs, such as requiring line manager approval or value-based approvals.

Submitting Expense Claims

The process employees follow to submit expense claims for approval, including uploading receipts, entering journey details, and tracking claim progress through approvers.

Advances

A feature functioning like petty cash, allowing users to request and manage advance payments against future expenses.

Subsistence Rates

Defined allowance amounts for meals, accommodation, and other expenses based on the duration of business travel, configurable in the system.

Banking and Credit Card Integration

Multiple methods to import credit card transactions into Capture Expense, including CSV bank statements, Open Banking, SFTP feeds, and Pliant cards, enabling real-time exchange rates and reconciliation with cash expenses.

Carbon and Environmental Tracking

A combined feature that automatically calculates and reports the carbon emissions linked to expenses such as fuel, flights, hotel stays, and travel by public transport or vehicles. It uses DEFRA methodology, aligns with UK and international standards, and supports sustainability reporting and compliance.