Create Expenses

Zoho Spend offers multiple methods to create expenses. In this help document, you’ll learn these methods.

Ways to Record Expenses

In Zoho Spend, you can record expenses using the following methods:

• Upload or Drag and Drop Receipts
• Create expenses manually
• Create mileage expenses
• Create Per Diem expenses
• Buld add expenses
• Create expenses for card transactions manually
• Clone expenses
• Merge expenses
• Split expenses
• Itemize expense
• Import expenses

Upload or Drag and Drop Receipts

You can upload or drag and drop receipts to convert them into expenses. Here’s how:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• To drag and drop receipts:
  • Click anywhere in the Drag & Drop Receipts section.
  • Click Select file from desktop to upload recipts from your device.
  • You can attach the receipts individually, or if you have multiple receipts, you can select them at one go and upload them. To upload multiple receipts from the computer, press and hold the Shift key and the Up or Down Arrow key together to select the receipts.
• To upload receipts from cloud:
  • Click cloud in the Drag & Drop Receipts section.
  • Select a cloud account from which you want to upload receipts.
  • Click Authenticate to provide access to the files in your cloud account.
  • Select the receipts and click Attach.

If Autoscan is enabled for your organization, the receipts will be autoscanned and expenses will be created for them automatically. Learn more about Autoscan. If Autoscan is disabled for your organization, you need to convert the receipts into expenses manually. Here’s how:

• Once the receipts have been uploaded, click View at the top of the page.
• In the pane that appears, click Add Manually next to the receipt you want to convert to an expense.
• Click the Delete icon next to a receipt if you want to delete it.
• Enter the required details.
• Click Save and Close to save the expense. Click Save and New to save and create a new expense.

Create an Expense Manually

You can create expenses manually in Zoho Spend. Here’s how:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click + New Expense in the top right corner.
• Enter the Expense Date and Amount.
• Select the Merchant and Category.
• Select a Report to add the expense to. Click + New Report to create a new report and add the expense to it.
• Upload receipts if required. You can upload up to five receipts, each up to 10MB, per expense.
• Check the Personal option if the expense is a personal expense.
• Check the Claim Reimbursement option if the expense involves spending from your pocket.
• Check the Billable option if you want to bill your expenses to your customers. Select the Customer you want to bill.
• You can include employees or contact persons in your expense by clicking + Add next to Attendees. You can add attendees only for specific expenses categories.
• Click Save and Close to save the expense. Click Save and New to save and create a new expense.

Create a Mileage Expense

If you use your vehicle or your company’s vehicle for business purposes, you can create mileage expenses to report fuel costs and get reimbursed. There are multiple ways to calculate mileage expenses. Zoho Spend will automatically calculate the mileage expense based on the method you choose and the vehicle’s mileage rate set by your admin.

To create a mileage expense:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click the dropdown next to + New Expense in the top right corner and select Add Mileage.
• Enter the Expense Date.
• Select the Category.
• Select a Report to add the expense to. Click + New Report to create a new report and add the expense to it.
• Select a Vehicle if your organization uses different mileage rates for different vehicles.
• Select the method through which you want to calculate your mileage expense in the Calculate Mileage Using field. You can choose from Distance traveled, Odometer, and Maps.
• If you selected Distance selected, enter the Distance traveled.
• If you selected Odometer, enter the Odometer reading (Start reading and End reading).
• If you selected Maps, the mileage will be calculated from your travelled route. All available routes will be displayed on the map, allowing you to choose your route either from the map or the Travelled Route dropdown.
• The Amount is calculated automatically based on the distance travelled or the odometer reading and the prescribed mileage rate.
• Check the Claim reimbursement option if you’ve spent your money for the expense.
• Check the Billable option if you want to bill the expense to your customer. Select the Customer you want to bill.
• Click Save and Close to save the expense. Click Save and New to save and create a new expense.

Create a Per Diem Expense

Per diem is a daily allowance that an organization provides to an employee while they travel for work. Employees can create per diem expenses for individual days or for an entire trip.

To record per diem expenses:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click the dropdown next to + New Expense in the top right corner and select Add Per Diem.
• Select a Policy.
• Choose a Per Diem Type. There are two types of per diem:
  • Trips: If you want to calculate per diem for the entire trip, select the per diem type as Trip. For instance, if you record per diem for a duration from 09:00 to 17:00 hours from 14 January to 17 January, then per diem expense for 14 January will be calculated from the start time (09:00 hours) to the end of the day (23:59 hours). Similarly for 17 January, the duration will be calculated from the beginning of the day (00:00) to the end time (17:00). For all other days, the duration will be considered as 24 hours.
  • Individual Days: If you want to calculate per diem for each day, select the per diem type as Individual Days. For instance, if you record per diem for a duration from 09:00 to 17:00 hours from 14 January to 17 January, then per diem will be calculated for eight hours each day.

Per Diem Based on Trips

If you choose to create per diem expenses based on trips, enter the following details:

• Enter your Departure Location, Date, and Time.
• Similarly, enter the Arrival Location, Date, and Time.
• Click Calculate Per Diem. Per diem will be calculated based on the rules configured by your admin by including all the hours from the start time on the first travel day to the end time on the last travel day. For the days in between, per diem is calculated for 24 hours.
• On the page that opens, mark the checkboxes of the per diem rates that you want to record, and click Save and Close.

Per Diem Based on Individual Days

If you choose to create per diem expenses based on individual days, enter the following details:

• Select the Travel Location.
• Choose the first and last dates of visit.
• Enter the daily start and end time.
• Click Calculate Per Diem.
• On the page that opens, the per diem rates calculated for each day of your trip will be displayed. These rates are calculated by applying the same time duration for all the days based on the per diem rates configured.
• Mark the checkboxes of the per diem rates that you want to record, and click Save and Close.

Bulk Add Expenses

To add expenses in bulk:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click the dropdown next to + New Expense in the top right corner and select Bulk Add Expenses.
• Enter the Expense Date and Amount.
• Select the Merchant and Category.
• Select a Report to add the expenses to. Click + New Report to create a new report and add the expenses to it.
• Click + to attach receipts if required.
• Check the Reimbursable option for the expenses that are reimbursable.
• If you want to add more expenses, click + Add More Expenses and enter the expense details.
• Click Save.

Create an Expense for a Card Transaction Manually

If your admin has enabled auto-matching or creation of corporate card expenses under Expense Preferences, expenses will be automatically created for corporate card transactions. Otherwise, employees need to create expenses from their card transactions manually.

To create expense for a card transaction manually:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click the dropdown next to + New Expense in the top right corner and select From Cards.
• Click Convert to Expense next to the card transaction you want to convert to an expense.
• If you’ve already created expenses for the card transaction, you can match them with the card transaction by clicking Match Expense next to the expenses in the Unmatched Expenses tab. Learn more about matching unexpensed card feeds.
• If there are no expenses matching the card transaction, go to the Add Manually tab and fill in the following:
  • Enter the Expense Date and Amount.
  • Select the Merchant and Category.
  • Select a Report to add the expenses to. Click + New Report to create a new report and add the expenses to it.
  • Upload receipts if required. You can upload up to five receipts, each up to 10MB, per expense.
• Click Save and Close to save the expense. Click Save and New to save and create a new expense.

Clone an Expense

You can clone an expense to duplicate all the essential details of the expense. Here’s how:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Go to the All Expenses tab and click the expense you want to clone.
• Click the More icon in the top right corner and select Clone.
• Make changes if necessary.
• Click Save and Close to create a new expense.

Merge Expenses

If you find that an expense has been duplicated, you can merge it with its parent expense. Upon merging, both the expenses will be automatically deleted and a new expense will be created. You cannot undo this action.

To merge two expenses:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Go to the All Expenses tab.
• Click the checkbox towards the left of the two expenses you want to merge.
• Click the More icon in the top right corner of the page and select Merge.
• In the pop-up that follows, hover over the expense you want to select as the master expense and click Select.
• All the missing information (description, location, reference number, report information) from the master expense will be fetched from the child expense.
• Click Continue. Both the expenses will be deleted and a new expense will be created.

Split an Expense

You can split a single expense into multiple expenses based on amount, days or the fields in the expense. You can create equal splits or edit the amount of the split expenses.

For example, while recording the expenses incurred on a business trip, the lodging bill might include the restaurant charges as well. However, your expense policy mandates that you record these two expenses separately since the expense limits for them are different. In that case, you can split the expense based on the category.

Here’s how you can split an expense:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Select the expense you want to split.
• Click the More icon in the top right and click Split.
• On the Split Expense page, select the type of split. You can split the expense by amount, days, or field.
• On splitting the expense by amount and choosing the number of splits, the total expense amount will be split equally into that many expenses.
• To split the expense amount by days, configure the starting and ending date. The total expense amount will be split into the number of days configured.
• You can also split an expense by field. Select the field and the number of expenses. Let’s say, you’ve selected the field as Customer and the number of expenses as 3. Now, the expense will be split into three, and you can select a customer for each expense.
• Edit the expense amount of each split and change the category.
• Click Save.

If your parent expense is already added to a report, the split expenses will be automatically added to the same report.

Itemize an Expenses

Let’s take an instance where you meet a client for lunch and want to record the expense in Zoho Spend. While doing so, you want to apply tax only on the food and not on the tip you paid. You can record this easily by itemizing the expense. Here’s how:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click + New Expense in the top right corner.
• Click Itemize next to Amount. The page expands to include expenses as items.
• Select the Category and enter the Amount for each item.
• Click + Add Another Line to add more items.
• Fill in the other required details.
• Click Save and Close to save the expense. Click Save and New to save and create a new expense.

Import Expenses

If you’ve created expenses from external sources, you can import them into your Zoho Spend organization. You can import expenses in the TSV or CSV file formats.

To import expenses into Zoho Spend:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click the More icon in the top right corner and select Import Expenses.
• Drag and drop the file you want to upload, or click Choose File to select a file from your desktop or a cloud account. If you want to upload another file instead of the selected file, click Replace File and choose another file.
• Click Next.
• The best match to each field in Zoho Spend will be auto-mapped with the fields in the imported file. If there are unmapped fields, map them manually. Also, if you leave some fields unmapped, they will not be imported into Zoho Spend.
• If you want to save the existing mapping for future imports, check the Save these selections for use during future imports checkbox.
• Click Next.
• The data in the unmapped fields will not be imported into Zoho Expense. If you want to map those fields, click Previous and map the unmapped fields.
• Once you’ve mapped all the relevant fields, click Import to import expenses into Zoho Spend. All your imported expenses will be listed under Unreported Expenses in the Expenses module.

Resolve Policy Violations

If an expense you created violates any of the policies assigned to you by your admin, the violations will be highlighted in the expense. You can resolve the violations and add the expense to a report. There are two types of policy violations:

• Warning Violations: This type of violation warns you regarding the policies your expense violates. You can either resolve each violation, or add the expense to the report and leave it to the approver to approve or reject the report.
• Blocking Violations: This violation blocks you from submitting a report containing expenses with violations. You have to resolve the blocking violations to submit the report.

To resolve policy violations:

• Go to Expenses on the left sidebar.
• Click the expense with policy violations. A warning icon will be displayed next to such expenses.
• Edit the expense and update the fields causing the violations as per your policies assigned to you.
• After you’ve resolved the violations, save the expense by clicking Save and Close.