Expenses

Use the Expenses screens in Brightpearl to manage personal expense claims, i.e. 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 appropriate 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.

Learn how to enter expense claims

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:

1. Create the expense code at Accounting > Chart of Accounts. We suggest 2000 to 2050.
2. Go to Setup > Staff/Users > List Staff.
3. Click the employee name to edit.
4. Select the expenses account.
5. Click Save.

Expense Codes

You choose a subset of your nominal accounts to be available as "expense codes". Set these up at Accounting > 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 > Permissions.

Approving Claims

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

To approve claims from other users:

1. Go to Accounting > Expense claims.
2. Select the claims to approve.
3. Use the actions drop-down menu to specify you want to approve the claims.
4. Click Submit.

Cancelling & 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. Note that you will need to cancel any journal entries manually.

1. Go to Accounting > Expense Claims.
2. Tick the checkbox next to the claim.
3. Use the actions drop-down menu above to select "Cancel".
4. Click Submit.

This will update the claim status to "cancelled". You need permission to approve claims and to cancel claims. Once you have cancelled the claim you will need to cancel the accounting entries:

Cancel the Journal Entries

1. Search for, and open the journal in Accounting.
2. Click Cancel to zero the accounting entries and move them to the suspense nominal codes.

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".

1. Go to Accounting > Expense claims.
2. Use the filters to view the claims for a single employee (you can click their name on the listing to filter by them).
3. Tick the checkboxes next to the claims to pay.
4. Use the actions drop-down menu above to select "Pay".
5. Select the bank account which the payment will come from, enter a reference and the payment date.
6. Click Submit.

The bank account will be credited and the expense account setup on the staff members details will be debited.

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. Then click the Submit + charge button rather than the submit button. The claim will be allocated to the client and a draft invoice created ready for processing in Sales.