Expense Reports Features and Preferences
An administrator can enable the Expense Reports feature at Setup > Company > Enable Features, on the Employees subtab. When enabled, NetSuite automatically creates an Other Current Asset type account for advances paid and a non-posting account for unapproved expense reports.
The Approval Routing feature provides the setup of an approval hierarchy required to process expense reports, time transactions, and purchase requests. After an employee enters an expense report or purchase request, additional processing of the transaction depends on the employee's expense limit or purchase limit. It also depends on the employee's designated supervisor or approver, and the approval limit of the supervisor or approver.
When changes are made in the approval hierarchy, any expense reports not already approved are reset and must start the approval process over. For example, if an employee is assigned a new supervisor, any existing approvals of open expense reports are removed. The report is rerouted through the approval process based on the employee’s new approval hierarchy.
If this feature is not enabled, each expense report or purchase request is automatically routed to the employee's immediate supervisor and then to accounting. For more information, see Approval Routing.
To set preferences for entering expenses, go to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences, and click the Time & Expenses subtab. For more information, see Time & Expenses Accounting Preferences.
The fields that display on an expense report include the date the expense report was entered into the system, and the expense report number. Other fields include the employee filing the expense report, date range of the expenses included in the expense report, and the purpose of the expense. Expense category, date of the expense, expense of each item, any advance toward expenses, and the sum of all the expenses are also included. Expense reports include a summary box in the upper corner of the entry form to display totals for the transaction. The expense report also includes both the employee and approver signature and date. Expense reports can be customized to display additional fields. For more information, see Report Customization.
If you use NetSuite OneWorld, note the following about the Intercompany Time and Expense feature and the related Intercompany Expenses accounting preference. The feature and preference affect users' ability to enter expenses worked for customers with subsidiaries other than their own. If the feature is not enabled, or if the preference is set to Disallow, users cannot enter intercompany expenses transactions. They can only select customers with the same subsidiary to which they are assigned. If the preference is set to Allow, intercompany expenses are permitted and all subsidiaries are available to expense lines. If the preference is set to Allow and Adjust, you can generate automatic adjustments for intercompany expenses. For more information, see Enabling Intercompany Time and Expenses.
You can select a default payable account for expense reports at Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences. For OneWorld accounts, you must set a default payable account on your subsidiary records. For more information, see Set Subsidiary Preferences.