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:

If you want to, that “Attach to project” is checked by default, please enable it in the Preference Settings -> Expense:

You will not see this information (attached expenses) on the project page. But you will be able to attach these expenses to the invoice generated from this project.

Your client will pay these additional expenses through the invoice.

Expenses for an internal client project

Are you selling projects to clients? (e.g. in real estate)
Track your expenses on internal projects and add them automatically to the final project invoice.

To do that, follow the simple steps: ‘Expense’ tab ➝ ‘Add Expense’ ➝ mark the checkbox ‘Attach to project’. Select the customer ‘-internal-‘ in order to add the expense to your in-house projects instead of an existing external client.
Then simply choose the exact project that you would like to sell (as in the screenshot below) and finish by pressing ‘Add Expense’. Now, the expense will be added to your project, which then can be invoiced to your client as a whole.

Add several expenses in bulk action

You also can add several expenses to one project with a bulk action. Just go to the expense grid and select several expenses you want to add to a project. Click on top on “Assign to Project”

After you clicked on it, you can choose the client + project and choose if the expenses are billable or not

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.

With zistemo your Expenses and Mileage could be assigned to a specific client or project.

– Expenses. Use the ‘Edit Expense’ page to assign each expense to a client and a project.

Mileages. Simply assign them to Clients/Projects in the same way as you do with the Expenses.

Note: only ‘business’ mileages can be added to the invoice, so choose this option from the ‘Purpose’ dropdown list.

If you want to, that “Attach to project” is checked by default, please enable it in the Preference Settings -> Expense/Mileage:

So from now on, whenever the Expenses or Mileages are assigned to a client, you can simply add them to an invoice.
On the ‘Create Invoice’ page pick the client:

And if this client has assigned expenses/mileages, you will see the related links below the invoice table:

Click on one of the links (with expenses or mileages) -> choose the needed entries and click ‘Attach’:

If you click the link with timesheets, you will be redirected to the Project Invoice wizard where you can select the ones you’re looking for (more here).

Attach expenses/mileages assigned to a specific project

If you want to attach expenses/mileages which are assigned to a specific project, you can just pick this project from  ‘More options’ tab available on the invoice, as shown below:

In this case, you will only see the links with the expenses/mileages related to this specific project.
Click on it and choose the entries you need.

Or mark the check-box ‘Make recurring’ on the ‘Create Expense’ page.

Here you will find the same fields as on the ‘Expense’ page. Just fill them and zistemo will use this info to create expenses.
The Recurring Expense Profile also has a settings block with fields such as ‘start date’, ‘frequency’ and ‘how many’.

Only the date in this block will be taken into consideration, today’s date will be ignored:

Frequency – choose how often an expense should be generated (see the screenshot above)
Start date – pick the date when the first expense should be created
How many – select how many expenses (how many times) should be generated automatically
Number – it’s an internal information, namely the number of your Recurring Expense Profile.

Very important: in the Recurring Expenses tab you can only see the Recurring Expense Profiles used by zistemo to automatically create expenses. Once expenses are actually created, you can find them in your ‘Expenses’ tab.

Rest of the fields are same as in the one-time expenses, you can also read about the expense statuses here

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.

On each Recurring Invoice Profile you will find a very helpful option – as soon your are choosing the client –  ‘Include unbilled time and expenses’:

This feature allows you to automatically include all new timesheets and expenses (related to your invoiced client) to the recurring invoices.

The ‘Include unbilled timesheets and expenses’ window has 4 simple parts, as you can see below:

1. Add time entries

Here you can choose the project/projects which time entries you want to add to the recurring invoices. In other words, each new invoice will automatically include new unbilled time spent working on the project you are billing.
You also can choose ‘Projects created in the future’ – in this case, the invoices will incorporate the time from all the projects that will be created in the future (according to the recurring invoice profile):

If a project is using a flat amount you’ll see a notice. Click to set the recurring amount. We recommend to create the recurring invoice from the project.

Check ‘Attach a detailed timesheet report’ to include the project time report for each invoice. This report shows all time logged – date of time, project, task, time notes, amount of hours and totals.

You can select if you want to add the detailed timesheet as separate PDF file to the mail (default) or if you want to include the detailed timesheet to the invoice PDF. Please note that the second option only works if you you using “create and send” option for the recurring profile. If you using “Create invoice as draft” the detailed timesheet will be added in any case as a separate PDF file.

Please note that when you attach unbilled timesheets and you attach a detailed timesheet report to the invoice but you have “create invoice as draft” active, the complete invoice with the timesheet report will be create not until you activate the invoice.

Exact or Infinite Period?

If you choose ‘Infinite period’ – the first recurring invoice will include all time entries older then the start day of the Recurring Invoice Profile.
If you choose the ‘Exact period’ – the first invoice will include time entries older than the start day but not older than one frequency period:

Reminder: You can choose here the start day (‘First period’) and the frequency:

Always remember to choose ‘Delay issues in days’ – if you need to approve time entries before including them in the invoices:

2. Add expenses

Here you can choose ‘All unbilled expenses for this client’ and your invoices will include all the expenses related to this client and not invoiced yet.
‘Only expenses for selected projects’ – invoices will include unbilled expenses assigned to projects that you have chosen in the section ‘Add time entries’.
‘No expenses’ – invoices will not include expenses related to the client.

3. Add mileages

Here you can also choose “All unbilled mileages for this client” which then includes all the mileages related to the chosen client, which are not invoiced yet.
“Only Mileages for selected projects” – invoices will include mileages assigned to projects that you have chosen in the section “Add time entries”.
“No mileages” – invoices will not include mileages related to the chosen client.

4. Add subtotals

Choose this option if you want to calculate separate subtotals for expenses, timesheets and mileages. More about subtotals here.

5. Invoice format

Here you can group the timesheet information featured on the invoices. Read more here.

6. Manual invoices for projects with recurring invoice

If you want to create a manual invoice for a project that is added to a recurring invoice you can either disconnect this project from the recurring invoice or you enable “Allow generate manual invoice for project included to recurring profile” on the preferences: Learn more

When you want to export your expenses than you will receive the data only in the selected currency and not in your base currency.