Expense Items

Expense Items are receipts, tickets, statements or other items that contain costs incurred by the employee and are entered as expense reports according to your company's policies and procedures.

The expense items are classifications or categories of these costs. Some examples are: Airfare, Lodging, Mileage, Business Meals, etc. Several common expense items are predefined in OpenAir, but you can modify these and create new items per your company's needs.

Expenses incurred and related to customer projects are often billable to the customer. These expenses are available as charges in the Invoices application if expense receipts are processed by an expense billing rule on the project. Then they can be selected for inclusion on an invoice.

Expense charges are only created by the expense billing rule on the project if the Billable receipt box is checked on the individual receipts. However, you may override the billable receipt control on the Expense Billing rule directly by clearing the Exclude non-billable receipts box. This box is checked by default when you create a billing rule.

To create a Expense item:

1. Go to Administration > Application Settings > Invoices > Expense items.

2. Select New Expense item from the Create Button.

3. Enter the Expense item name and select the Type of expense item (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 receipt form allowing for mileage rates.

   Note:

   Mileage expense items may also be set as a regular receipt type since the form provides the ability to enter a price per unit (in this case $$ per Mile, for example). 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 during expense entry.

4. Enter a Price for the item (this is generally left blank except for the cases of mileage or per diem), Currency if multi-currency is enabled and the default is not the desired value, a Unit measure (generally for mileage), and indicate whether this is a Per diem item.

5. 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.

6. You can also set limits for allowing per diem expense item in expense reports.

7. Check the Taxable service box if tax may be charged to the customer for this expense item. The tax rate to be used is controlled through the Invoices application by using tax location values. If you would like the expense item price to be required on the receipt, check the box.