Module Description

This module allows to manage expense reporting in Business Central.

The entry of expense can be done either by a single employee or by the administration for multiple employees.

An approval flow is foreseen with the identification of a responsible person. Once the expense is approved, the administration can generate the invoice to the employee.

Setup

User Setup

In the user setup, the following fields must first be defined for each BC user:

• Expenses Note Vendor Number: to be specified with a generic or user-specific vendor, it will be automatically proposed on the expenses note header
• Expenses Administrator: Regulates whether the user can approve expenses notes. Users with this flag enabled will be able to approve all EN, while users with the flag disabled will not be able to approve any EN.
• Addebitable modify: to be flagged for all users for whom you want the “Chargeable” flag to be editable on the expense notes lines.

Setup Origins

On the Origins Setup you need to fill in the following fields:

• Expenses Serial No.: expenses numerator.
• Expenses Invoice Serial No.: numerator that will be used for posting the invoice to the employee vendor. It is recommended to associate a dedicated “out of scope” VAT register.
• Create G/L Reserv. for Invoice

Travel expenses

All types of expected expenses must be managed in the above table:

Each expense must be associated with:

• Code: Expense code
• Description: which will be reported in the Expenses line
• Def. Unit of Measure Code: to have the automatic proposal on the expense notes lines
• Def. Unit Price: is reported in the Expense line (e.g. cost per Km)
• Expense Category: used to identify the cost G/L account. (See 2.4 )
• Expense Type: identifies the type of expense. It is important to define – for automatic management of advances – that only one line of the Advance type is entered.
• Calc. on L.U.L.

Expense category

The Expense Category table will list the various types of detectable expenses, with the link to the cost G/L account.

In the Account No. column, enter the G/L account to be recorded in General Ledger in the case of a Company Credit Card, and in Account No. Inf. Limit or Sup. Limit, enter the G/L account to be used to generate the passive invoice. Also include the “Advances” Category. If the “Account No. Inf. Limit” and “Account No. Sup. Limit” fields are not filled in, it will not be possible to post expenses above the established approval limit.

Fill in the VAT Product Posting Group to automatically propose it on the invoice lines, if empty in the G/L account.

Task Job

If you want to post expenses  on a job, it's necessary to mark the job tasks that can be recalled on the expense notes lines.

On these, you need to activate the “Task Job Travel Expenses” flag:

Functionality

Inserting Expense Note

From the “Expenses Lists” page, click on new to insert a new expense notes into BC.

In the header, fill in the following fields:

• Vendor No.: if present in the “User Setup” it is filled in automatically (it is the vendor to which the purchase invoice generated by EN is posted to)
• Resource: if the EN is entered by the employee to account for his/her personal expenses, fill in the field so that it is reported on all lines, otherwise it must be defined on the single line
• From date – to date: enter the reference period (in the example we have a monthly reporting)
• Advance Amount: If the employee is granted an advance for the travel, the amount of the advance used for the period entered must be reported ( do not enter an amount higher than the expenses incurred ). When the amount relating to the advance is entered, a line is automatically inserted so that it is considered in the total calculation of expenses.
• Advance Currency Code: If the advance is paid in currency, specify the currency code here

When entering the advance amount, a line is automatically inserted with an amount equal to the advance amount, but negative, so that it is considered in the total expense calculation.

The lines must then be filled in by the user with the expenses incurred by the employee in the specified period.

Expenses can be charged to specific orders using the fields highlighted in yellow.

The user will be able to change both the currency of the expense (based on the payment currency) and the exchange rate of the expense itself (thanks to assist-edit highlighted in the image above).

In case some expenses were paid by the employee with a (company) credit card, the field must be flagged on the lines:

In case the expense paid by credit card is justified with an invoice, activate the “invoice” field and indicate the vendor in the “Cost vendor” field.

In the side factbox there is an “Attachments” section so that the employee can attach supporting documents.

The print function is available in the ribbon:

Sample Report:

Once the insertion is completed, the EN must be released:

It will then be moved to the Released Expense Notes list.

Expense Note Approval

From the Expense Notes Released page, the employee's manager can proceed with checking and approving it.

Otherwise, it can be reopened by inserting the reason for the refusal in the “Notes” in the factbox.

Credit Card Expense Posting

When the employee uses the company credit card, the “Credit Card” flag will be shown on the corresponding expense lines.

To account for these lines, the administration must use the “ Create credit card G/L transactions ” report (this function must be launched before generating the purchase invoices from the EN):

Specifying a dedicated accounting batch ( if expense reporting also includes posting on projects then use the 'Project' journals ) and the credit card G/L account.

A filter can be set for each expense note. Only those in the “Approved” status will be considered:

The procedure will detect the cost of all the EN lines having the Company Credit Card flag active with a Bal. Account No one of the accounts indicated in the report depending on whether the expense paid with company credit card has the “invoice” flag active or not, in the EN. The lines will be in the batch to be recorded. In the event that the expense note is recorded on a project, the “Job G/L Journal” batch will be filled in to simultaneously value the cost in General Ledger and the use on the project.

You can then proceed – for the same EN – to create the invoice for the expenses for which a credit card was not used.

Once the postings for the Credit Cards have been created, it is possible to regenerate them for the same EN, only if the “Recreate registration lines” flag is active in the report.

Invoice creation and posting

From the List of Approved Expense Notes you can proceed to create the purchase invoice:

The expense report is moved to the Travel Expense Archived List

From here it's possible to open the invoice generated, and the posted one after posting.

In the lines of the purchase invoice, the expenses entered by the employee are totaled, also deducting the advance paid, obviously the expenses paid with the company credit card are not detected:

Generating a G/L entry of this type:

Where the advance given, the cost of expenses and the debt to the employee are detected.

In case the expense notes is posted on projects, the projects code and task number are reported on the generated invoice lines.

During the posting phase, Job ledger entries with usage type are also generated.

Report

Expense notes

This report allows to have a printout of the approved but not archived expense notes.

In the options it's possible to decide whether you want to see all rows or only the rows belonging to a specific category (Prepaid, credit card and chargeable).

Employee expense reports

This report summarizes, for a period set on the request page, for each individual employee the total of the individual expense items present in the expense notes.

Employee expense reports

This report summarizes, for a period set in the request page, for each individual job and job task the total expenses reported on each individual expense item.