How to create an expense?

To create an expense go to Purchases ➝ Expenses ➝ Add Expense

Expense creation page includes:
– The Author name or the Expense creator. By default, this is the member who has created the expense. This field is visible only for the Account Owner and Administrators, so, for instance, they can change the Author of an expense, which then will be visible also to the chosen member (author). There is also a ‘Paid by claimant’ box next to it, means this expense will be paid by the author if checked:

– ‘Make Recurring’ box. You can make the expense recurring, read more here
– Expense name
– Notes
– Vendor/supplier. There are two ways to add the vendor on the expense page:
1. Just type the name in the field
2. Add the vendor in Contacts -> Vendor, then choose the name from the dropdown

– Currency – more about it here
– Date
– Category. You can choose one category from the dropdown or create a new one in the tab ‘Expense Categories’ and then select it, more here
– Amount
– Add item – one expense can have more than one item, more here
– Tax. Select the tax from the drop-down or simply add a new tax by using the ‘Add New Tax’ link. Defalut Tax? Read more here.

– ‘Attach to project’ – assign the expense to a client or project, more here.
– ‘Attach file’ – attach a receipt or other billing document
– Admin fee. To add the admin fee, checkmark  ‘Attach to project’ -> ‘Admin fee’. You can add the admin fee as a fixed amount or as a percentage (more here).

How do I update/delete an expense?

To edit an expense go to, Purchases ➝ Expenses ➝ click on the expense name on the grid or click ‘edit’ in the row end menu.
To delete an expense go to Purchases ➝ Expenses ➝ mark checkboxes of needed expense and click ‘Delete’.

… Or choose the same option (‘Delete’) on the row end menu.
Deleted expenses will be moved to the tab ‘Deleted’, however, you are always able to restore deleted items by moving them to the ‘Active’ tab.

You can also mark the expense as paid, or unpaid (when the expense is or isn’t paid by the claimant yet).

More about expenses:

Find out how to create expenses by sending an email from here.
 

Billable expenses by default

If some of your business expenses are related to a particular client or project, you can invoice the client with these expenses.
To attach an expense to the invoice, firstly you need to assign the expense to the project/client on the expense page. Be sure, that the “Expense is billable” box is checked.

Note: To be 100% sure that the ‘Expense is billable’ box is checked, you need to set it by default in the Settings -> Preferences -> Expenses -> box (‘Expenses are billable by default’)

Create Transaction out of expenses

once you click it, you’ll get to this page:

Select a bank account, and add a note, but even if you save it just like this, you’ll be able to edit it later in Banking (click on the account name you chose and you’ll get to your transactions), you can edit them from here:

How do I search for a specific expense?

You can quickly find and filter expenses on the Expense list by using the Search option:

Here you can filter information by:
– Vendor – choose the vendor linked to your expense
– Category – choose the expense category
– Client name – enter your client’s full name or just a part of it
– Expense name – enter the expense’s name or a part of the name
– Owner name – choose the author of expense
– Project name – enter a project name (or part of the name) which is assigned to expense
– Date range – choose a time frame that includes the expense creation date
– Amount range – choose an interval for the expense amount
– Status – choose one or several expenses statuses
– Currency – choose the expense currency.

Sort Expenses

You can also filter your expenses by clicking the needed heading. This rule also works when assigning an unexplained transaction to an expense:

Change Vendor

If you enter something’s different names for the same vendor, as for example: Hotel on the Beach; Hotel on the Beach – Miami; Hotel Miami; Hotel Miami on the Beach.

With this option you can clean up this mess. You choose the expenses you want to change and press “change vendor”:´

Choose your preferred Vendor:

Press “save” and your vendor will change:

You can also search for a specific status via the search field. Just choose your “status” which you want to search for and hit “search”.

There are 9 expense statuses, which belongs to 3 groups:

If expense is assigned to a client:

Non-billable (The expense will not be included to an invoice)
If the expense is not attached to a client/project or if the expense is attached, but the checkbox ‘Expense is billable’ is unchecked.

Unbilled (The expense was assigned to a client but hasn’t been invoiced yet)
The expense is attached to a client/project and the checkbox “Expense is billable” is checked.

Billed (The expense was included in an invoice)
If an unbilled expense is attached to an invoice, it becomes ‘billed’. You can attach expenses to the invoice on the “Create Invoice” page (more here).

Partial (The invoice with the attached expense is partially paid.)
If the invoice with the attached expense is partially paid.

Paid  by a client (The invoice with the attached expense is fully paid)
If the invoice with the attached expense is fully paid.

When claimed by internal staff, expenses status can be

Reimbursed (The expense was reimbursed)

When the expense was paid by the claimant and the company has already reimbursed it. The owner of the company uses the button ‘Mark as reimbursed’ in this case:

Read more here

Not Reimbursed  (The expense hasn’t been reimbursed yet)
When the expense was paid by the claimant but the company hasn’t reimbursed it yet.

When paid by the company/claimant, expenses status can be

Activated (The expense is activated)

Unpaid  (The expense hasn’t be paid yet)

overdue  (The due date of the expense has been exceeded

You can easily filter the expense grid by the different statuses and also if they have a receipt or not. Just click on the right hand side on Show all expenses and then you can select your needed filter out of the dropdown:

To integrate zistemo expenses with Expensify or Shoeboxed, first, you have to set it up in “User menu” -> “Integration”.

Expensify

Click the “Expensify” button. Here, you need to fill “Client ID” and “Client Secret”. To get it, click the green link in the header – “Integration settings”:

Then click “Click here to regenerate your partnerUserSecret”.

Copy the data:

and insert it in the “Expensify” integration settings screen, as shown below:

Note: if you want to export expenses from Expensify to zistemo – first you should create the expense report and attach expenses to this report in Expensify.
The expense currency should be the same as in your zistemo account.

Shoeboxed

To integrate zistemo with Shoeboxed, you need the “Client ID” and the “Client Secret”.

To get it, go to your Shoeboxed account –> open “Settings” -> choose “My API apps” tab -> and click “Create a new API app”.

Now add your “Company name” (or any other relevant info/name) to the “Company/app name” field, then copy the URL from your zistemo Shoeboxed integration window and insert to the “Redirect URL” field. Next, click “Save”.

After saving, you will see “ID” and “Secret”:

Copy it to your “Shoeboxed” integration screen and click “Save”.

Note: if you wish to export expenses from Shoeboxed to zistemo, it’s recommended to have them registered in Shoeboxed with category and amount. Also, you should use the same currency as in your zistemo account.
Shoeboxed lets you add more than one category to an expense, while zistemo only allows one. In this case, remember that zistemo will take the first category.

NOTE: If you change your mind, you should know that you can change/disconnect Xero, Shoeboxed, Expensify or Quickbooks at any time. Just go to the user menu ->  Integration and click “Disconnect”:

The subject of this email should consist of: expense name, amount, date, your company name (business link/subdomain). All this info should be divided by a semicolon. For example: “My expense name; 1 234,56; 11.01.17; acme;” where:

– “My expense name” is the name of your expense;
– “1 234,56” is the amount. Note: use the number format from your settings (Settings -> Company Profile -> “Number Format” field);

– “11.01.17” is the expense date. Note: use the date format from your settings (Settings -> Company Profile -> “Date Format” field);

– “acme” is the business link/subdomain;

– “email body text” is everything you write in the email body and it will be saved as expense notes;
– “email attachment” is the attachment required. An expense will only be created if you upload an attachment to the email (invoice, check etc.). Note: maximum one file is allowed as an attachment, the acceptable file formats being PDF, JPG or PNG. File size should not exceed 5 MB.
After you send this email, within a few minutes the expense will appear in your Expenses List.

By default, this expense will not have “expense category” and its vendor will be “unknown”, so make sure to add this info in order to complete your expense later.

Assigne expenses to a client or/and a project

With zistemo, you can easily bill your expenses if they are assigned to a client or/and a project.
First, choose the client/project for the expense:

Note: Don’t forget to mark the checkbox ‘Expense is billable’ because if it’s unchecked you will not see it on your invoice.

Now whenever you start creating an invoice and choose this client, you will be able to attach all expenses assigned to him.

Click the green link to proceed to a popup window where you can pick the expenses. Choose the ones you want to include in the invoice and click ‘Attach Expenses’.

Now you can see them in the ‘Invoice Items’ table:

Attach Multiple Expenses

If you attach several expenses to one invoice, then you can have them displayed separately or all in one line (summary). To show the summary  just mark the checkbox ‘All expenses as a summary in one line’ on ‘Attach Expenses’ pop-up:

Very important: if you select expenses with different tax rates, then the highest rate will be applied. Therefore, we recommend choosing expenses with the same tax rate.
After clicking ‘Attach Expenses’ you will see the expenses summary on your invoice:

You are also able to change the name “Expenses” into your preferred name/description.

Depreciations

For some types of expenses, you can apply a depreciation. These expenses categories could be any of the following:

Office Equipment, Small Equipment, Software, Hardware, Other Office Equipment, Cars, and other Vehicles, Car Purchase, Other Vehicle Purchase, Properties, Plants and Equipment, Land, Buildings, Equipment, Machinery, Deposits, Intangibles, Investments, Patents and Rights, Inventory Purchase, Raw Materials.

Therefore, on the Expense page, choose one of these categories and switch on the ‘Treat this item as an asset’ button as it’s shown below:

Then enter the amount, tax, the asset’s useful life, and its residual value:

Click on the ‘Show the depreciation table’ link to see the depreciation calculation based on the entered data:

Once you save this expense, you will see its depreciation entries in the depreciation table (Purchases -> Depreciations).

This is where you can track the value of this asset.
Each month, the depreciation value will increase according to the Depreciation table so, at the end of the asset’s life, its value will be equal to the residual value.

Depreciations Report

In zistemo reports you can also view your depreciations report and have the total overview.
You can set you date range, the start or end date also. Also you can filter after the current “status”

You also also export as PDF, CSV, EXCEL or jsut print it directly.

Please note that on the date filter, you select the date of the purchase itself, not the depreciation.

Now you can control whether your expenses are reimbursed or not.
For example, if staff members covered some business expenses from their own pocket and now are waiting to get a reimbursement from the company.

1. How to make expenses ‘not reimbursed’?

When a staff member creates an expense, he should mark the checkbox ‘Paid by author’ (or you can do it by yourself on the Update Expense page):

After saving this expense, it becomes ‘Not reimbursed’ and you will see it in the Expenses table:

2. How to make expenses ‘Reimbursed’?

When the staff member gets the money back, you can mark it as ‘Reimbursed’ (only if you are an admin or an account owner) by simply clicking on ‘Mark as reimbursed’ in the end menu:

In this way, you will always see which expenses were paid by its authors (creators) and which have been reimbursed or not haven’t been reimbursed yet.

3. Mark several expenses as reimbursed

The fastest way to reimburse a couple of expenses in one step, is to mark several expesens and select “mark as reimbursed”:

On the expenses list, each item will be displayed in a separate line:

If you mark an expense as billable and attach it to the client/project, all its’ items will be automatically linked to this specific client/project.

In case you apply an admin fee, it will be applied to all the items, but if you use a fixed admin fee it will only be applied to the first item. The same goes with an Expense Attachment – if you attach an expense to the invoice (bill expense), its’ receipt will be added to the invoice which has the first item of that expense.

By default, you should fill it manually but if in general, your expenses tax is the same like your default items tax (more here), then just mark the “Use the default tax on expenses” box in Settings -> Preferences:

Now the tax field will be automatically filled with the default tax percentage (note: you can find or change your default tax in Settings -> Taxes):