In this article, you'll learn how to track monetary expenses and tie them to a specific project to calculate profitability
🌟 This feature is included in the STARTER Plan and up
On the Expenses page, you can put non-time costs to later include them into a client invoice or reimburse your employees who paid out of their pocket.
Permissions: who can see expenses and totals?
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Admins and Owners can create, monitor, and edit everyone's expenses and expense categories;
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Project Managers (PM) can monitor the expenses of the project that they manage, but they cannot edit them;
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Simple Members can only add and see their own expenses.
Abilitate the Expense feature
If you're the Admin or Owner of the workspace you can activate the expense tracking feature from Settings>Workspace Settings>Features.
Turning on the feature will activate:
- A new Expenses section in the Main Menu of the workspace;
- A new Expense Categories in the Management section.
Expense categories
To make the most of this feature, we recommend starting by creating your Expense Categories. This will allow you to categorize your expenses more accurately.
To get started, simply navigate to the Data Management section and click on the Expense Categories page. From there, click on the New Expense Category button located in the top right corner to create a new category.
You have the option to count expenses as a sum of money or by unit price. Selecting the unit price option is particularly convenient for cases where expenses are charged per individual unit of a product or service (such as miles or printed copies).
Expenses VS labor costs: when to use what
You shouldn't use the expenses feature if you have to track labor costs (e.g. your employee's wages). Use expenses for travel costs, training costs, materials and purchases related to projects, and so on.
For labor costs, there's a dedicated feature that lets you set the hourly cost of an employee's work. To learn more, read the article about How to manage costs.
How to add and manage your expenses
If you have correctly enabled this feature, you should see a new menu item in the blue sidebar called “Expenses”. In this section, you will be able to create and manage your expenses.
To create a new expense:
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Click on the green button on the top right, in the Expenses section.
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You'll be asked to add information such as a description, a date for the expense, the category (previously created), the amount, the project related to it, and the person who is associated with the expense.
If this expense should be billed to the client, set the status as billable.
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Save the expense
Once you have saved the new Expense, it will appear in the table with all the right information you just entered.
Bulk edit expenses
By selecting the checkbox near each expense, you can perform certain bulk actions such as setting a billing status (billable, billed, or not billable), setting the expense category, locking the expense (so nobody can modify it anymore), and also deleting an expense.
Please note that once an expense is deleted, it cannot be recovered.
Monitoring project expenses
Once you log an expense and associate it with a project, it will automatically be displayed in the corresponding project overview. This feature enables you to conveniently monitor all expenses and earnings on the project's page, providing you with a comprehensive overview of your project costs and profitability.
To display the expenses in the overview widget, simply click on the gear icon and select the corresponding checkbox.
