Expense Items

Expense Items are receipts, tickets, statements or other items that contain costs incurred by an employee and are entered into NetSuite OpenAir expense reports per your company's policies and procedures. The expense items are classifications or categories of these costs. Some examples are: Airfare, Lodging, Mileage, and Business Meals. OpenAir has pre-defined a number of common expense items, but you can modify these and create new items to meet your company's needs.

Expenses entered on expense reports may be rebilled to customers through billing rules and recognized as revenue according to your company's policies. Therefore, expense items also appear under the Invoices application.

To create an Expense Item:

1. Go to Administration > Application Settings > Expenses > Expense Items.

2. Select New Expense item from the Create Button.

3. Enter the Expense item name and select the Type of expense item, either regular or mileage. A regular receipt is the default receipt form when a new expense report is created. A mileage receipt is a slightly modified form allowing for mileage rates.

   Note: The following provides further explanation.

   • Mileage expense items may also be set as a regular receipt type since the form provides the ability to enter a price per unit, or in this case, $$ per Mile. If you are not using the Vehicle feature that requires the mileage receipt type, you may opt to set up all expense items to the regular receipt type and avoid end-employee confusion.

   • Each expense item may have a standard price or the field may be left blank for the employee to enter the price on the receipt form itself. Any time a price, rate, or other financial information is stated in OpenAir, you also have the ability to set the currency value if multi-currency is enabled.

   • A Unit Measure indicates the unit for the price and can be any unit you desire.

   • A Per Diem check box is available to classify this type of expense and it must follow a particular per diem policy.

4. The next section in the form relates to Receipt policy, which controls actions based on the individual receipt and expense item entered into an expense report. You are able to enter parameters for the receipt and select whether to require notes or approval based on the settings. For per diem expense items, you are able to choose how to limit their use within your OpenAir account.

5. Under the Other section, you may enter text to be used on proposals in the Opportunities application.

6. Check the Taxable expense item check box if tax may be charged to the customer for this expense item. A tax location may optionally be entered by the employee per receipt if this setting is activated. See Tax Locations and Tax Options.

7. If you would like the expense item price to be required on the receipt, select the check box. If your cost center rules for receipts include expense item cost center values, then you need to optionally set the cost center on expense items as well. The cost center field only displays if you have configured the cost center Receipt rules to involve expense items. See Cost Centers.

8. There is an option to control viewing of expense items using Filter Sets. Expense items are one of the data access control objects within a filter set definition. See Filter Sets Overview.