Expenses

Use the Expenses screens in Brightpearl to manage personal expense claims, ie money that you've paid from your own pocket on behalf of the company. Note that Expenses are different from payments made from a company bank account or credit card, which should be handled differently.

How it works

Expenses are entered by an individual, one by one, to make up an Expense claim.

Once the claim is ready, the claim is submitted. All expenses ticked will be submitted.

If the user entering expenses has permission to approve expense claims, then the claim will be automatically approved at the same time.

Approving an Expense claim will create journal entries in the accounts, using the approriate codes, dates and amounts from each Expense.

A user can add any number of expenses into the system, and will later select a few to submit as a Claim.

Setting up

Expense Accounts

Each staff member that is allowed to submit expenses should be given an expense code. This is typically a liability account, such as 2000, since the usual balance on this account will be owed to the staff member.

To set the expense account for an employee:

Create the expense code at Accounts : Setup : Chart of Accounts. We suggest 2000 to 2050
Visit Setup : Staff licences and permissions
Edit the employee and choose an expense code from the Financials tab.
This employee will now see the "expenses" menu item in the accounting area. You may wish to turn off permission to access more accounting features such as reports.

Expense Codes

You choose a subset of your nominal accounts to be available as "expense codes". Set these up at Accounts:Setup:Chart of Accounts. Create new codes, or edit the existing codes. Typically your expense codes will be in the 6000 range. For example:

6020  Telephone            T1
6030  Telephone - mobile   T1
6040  Postage              T0
6050  Stationery           T0

It's important to set the correct tax codes in your Chart of Accounts, since they will be used to calculate the tax component of the Gross expense amount entered. If you add an account description, then this will be displayed to the user when they choose the code.

Permissions

To prevent a user from Approving claims, set up their permissions at Setup:Staff, Licences and Permissions.

Adding expenses

Ensure you're working with the correct employee from the menu at the top of the screen.

Click Expenses : Add Expense from the accounts menu.
Choose the date.
Choose a category, enter a description, and the gross (total) amount.
Upload a file (image of a receipt for example) if you need to.
Click "Add"

If the expense code is taxable, then the tax component of the expense will be added. If you're on the Flat rate VAT scheme, then have a look at the separate documentation for Flat rate.

The expenses will be added to the open claim, but will not be added into the accounts.

Submitting the claim

Just select the relevant expenses, and click the "Submit" button.

Approving claims

If you have permission to approve claims, then they will be approved automatically when you submit them.

To submit claims from other users:

Visit Expenses : View expense claims from the accounts menu.
Select the claims to approve
Choose Approve from the drop down menu
Click Submit

Cancelling and deleting claims

If a claim has not yet been approved, you can delete the claim from the Expense claims list using the trash can icon on the right hand side. If the claim has already been approved, then accounting transactions exist, but you can still cancel a claim if it was entered in error. Select the claim from the expense claims report and choose to "cancel". This will zero all the transactions (expenses) and update the claim status to "cancelled". You need permission to approve claims to cancel claims.

Paying claims

Paying a claim will enter a bank payment from your bank account into the employee expense account, and mark the claims as "Paid".

Visit Accounts : Expenses : View expense claims.
Select an employee from the advanced options.
Select the relevant expense claims, the total will be shown.
Choose "pay" from the drop down menu.
Select the bank account, enter a reference and the payment date.
Click "Mark as paid".

Recharging expenses to clients

If you are incurring these expenses on behalf of a client, then you can create an invoice quickly off the back of the claim. When submitting the claim, ensure that you select the client name, and if relevant, a project too.

The claim will be allocated to the client. An invoice (draft) will only be created if you use the "invoice" button.

The following screen shots show the expenses, the choice of client and the invoice (draft) created when the invoice button is clicked.