Setting up Expenses

• The people who'll help you set up the system, and their roles (administrator, finance or auditor)

• A list of your users, if you plan to import them

• Your company, financial and accounting details

• How you want expenses to be approved, for example by line manager or by value

• The expense categories, VAT codes and tags (such as departments or cost centres) your finance system uses

• Details of your vehicles and credit cards, and how you'll import card transactions

You can add users directly in the Expenses module, but their records won't be synced with Payroll.

Unless you want standalone Expenses users, create each person's record in the HR module first. It's then synced to the Payroll module, and automatically to Expenses.

Once your employees have been added, assign them the appropriate user type, for example administrator, finance or auditor.

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Add new members

• Creating and editing Expenses users

• Importing and exporting Expenses users

• User types

Record your organisation's details in company settings. Fill in all the information you know in each of these areas:

• Company details

• Financial settings

• Mileage and distance information

• Export and accounting details, which depend on the finance system you use

• System behaviour: other options you can turn on or off, depending on your requirements

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Company settings

Approval workflows control how expenses are approved in your organisation. Each workflow can have multiple stages, approvers and rules, and you might need several to meet your organisation's requirements.

Before you create them, think about questions such as:

• Should the line manager always approve expenses?

• Should approval depend on the value of the expense?

• Do you need a multi-stage approval process?

Once you've created your workflows, assign them to your users, either one at a time or in bulk using a template.

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Create your approval workflows

• Assign a workflow to a single user

• Assign workflows to multiple users in bulk

Categories classify expenses, mileage and timesheets, so your organisation can track and report on spending by type. Capture Expense includes a set of default categories to get you started, which you can add to or customise.

• To add a few categories, create them manually.

• To add lots of categories, import them using a template.

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Creating and editing expense categories

• Importing and exporting categories

Create VAT records and map VAT codes to your accounting system.

• To add a few VAT records, create them manually.

• To add lots of VAT records, import them using the template.

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Creating and editing VAT records

• Importing and exporting VAT record data

Tags are a flexible way to classify users and expense categories, for example by department, location or cost centre. They're used for accounting and reporting, and to restrict access to expense categories.

• First create the tag type, then add values to it to represent the groups or codes your business uses.

• If you have a lot of tags, it's quicker to import them.

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Creating and editing tags

• Adding values to a tag

• Importing tag data

Vehicle records let you assign fuel rates to employees and keep track of mileage logs. Expenses supports company cars, car allowances and private vehicles, as well as carbon tracking.

• Expenses includes a list of preset vehicles with their HMRC approved rates (for private and company vehicles), which you can add to or edit.

• You can use the HMRC approved rates, which are kept up to date automatically every quarter, or set your own.

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Creating and editing vehicles

• Adding a rate to a vehicle

• Vehicle and rates fields

There are four ways to import credit card transactions into Expenses. Choose the one that suits your organisation:

• Import bank statements as a CSV file

• Use the Open Banking integration

• Set up an SFTP feed directly from your bank

• Use Pliant cards

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Importing bank statements

• Open Banking integration

• SFTP feed

• Pliant cards

Once your users, credit cards and vehicles are set up, allocate the cards and vehicles to the right people. You can do this one at a time, or in bulk using the user or vehicle import.

Find out more (links open in a new tab):

• Assigning credit cards to users

• Assigning vehicles to users

• Importing and exporting users

• Importing and exporting vehicles

You may also want to set up these areas before you go live.

Integrations

Expenses integrates with a wide range of third-party banking and accounting applications, Cintra People Payroll and more. See Introduction to integrations.

Subsistence rates

Subsistence rates define the amounts users can claim for meals, accommodation and other allowances, based on how long they're away. See Set up subsistence rates and categories.

Advances

Advances work like petty cash. To create one, select Advances in the left-hand menu, then click +Advance.