Expenses Module
Recording Expenses
Expenses (labeled “Expenses” in navigation) isn’t a separate ledger either — it’s a filtered view of your bank transactions showing only money that went out. An entry made here or directly in Banking → Transactions is the same record, visible in both places. This is not the employee reimbursement workflow — see Expense Reimbursements for that.
Start here
1Before you start
This module doesn’t keep its own records. Every entry you see or create here is read and written straight through to Banking‘s own transaction storage, with direction fixed to outflow — the same bank account list, the same Chart of Accounts categories, the same contacts. There’s no separate copy of anything to get out of sync.
If Banking is unavailable, this module has nothing to read or write — the page shows no entries and saving a new one fails outright. Banking needs to be enabled for this to work at all.
This module is a simple “money went out, here’s which account it hit” entry — the outflow mirror of Income. It has no submit/approve/reimburse workflow. If you’re tracking an employee’s out-of-pocket claim that needs approval before it’s paid back, use Expense Reimbursements instead.
Record expenses
2Record an expense entry
Click + Record Expense. This is the same form Banking’s own “New Transaction” uses, with the direction already fixed to outflow — so it asks for exactly the same fields:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Expense Item | Optional. Picking one auto-fills Account and Payee below — see Speed up entry with Expense Items. |
| Payee | Optional link to a real contact — who you paid. |
| Bank Account | Required — which account paid this. |
| Amount | Required, must be greater than zero. Hidden if you switch to itemized (see Splitting one payment across categories) — the total is computed from the lines instead. |
| Date | Required — the transaction date. |
| Status | Posted, Pending, or Reconciled — see Reference. Defaults to Posted. |
| Account | The Chart of Accounts category this expense posts against. Leave as “Auto” and it resolves to Uncategorized Expense. Hidden if itemized — each line picks its own account instead. |
| Reference | Optional — invoice number, receipt ID, or similar. |
| Category | Optional free-text tags, comma-separated. |
| Memo | Optional notes. |
Click Record Expense. If your company uses double-entry accounting and the entry’s status counts as real money movement (Posted or Reconciled — see Entry statuses), it posts a balanced GL journal immediately: debit whichever category account you picked (or Uncategorized Expense, by default), credit the bank account’s cash account. A Pending entry skips the journal and the bank balance entirely until its status changes.
The entry now appears in both this module’s own list and Banking → Transactions — there’s nothing further to sync. Editing or deleting it from either page changes the same underlying record.
Common tasks
Splitting one payment across categories
One outflow — say, a single card charge — sometimes covers more than one real category. Expense entries (unlike Income) support itemizing a single payment into several category lines.
On the Record Expense form, click + Itemize this expense (multiple categories). The single Amount and Account fields are replaced with a line list — each row picks an optional Expense Item, a description, a category account, and its own amount. Click + Add Line for each split. The total shown updates as you go and becomes the transaction’s real amount; the GL journal then posts one offsetting line per distinct account instead of one lump sum, grouped and summed if two lines share the same account. Click Use single category instead to switch back to the single Amount/Account fields.
Speed up entry with Expense Items
If you regularly pay the same vendor for the same kind of expense — fuel from a particular gas station, a recurring software subscription — set it up once as an Expense Item in the Items module instead of re-picking the account and vendor every time.
Use the Expense Item dropdown (on the form itself, or on each itemized line). Selecting one fills in the category Account automatically, and fills Payee too if it isn’t already set. Don’t have the item yet? Choose + Create New Expense Item… right there, or manage the full list from Items → Expense Items.
Recording an expense you already paid
Got a payment that already happened and just needs to be on the books? Use the same Record Expense form — just set the real date.
Set Date to the day the money actually left, not today, and set Status to Posted (or Reconciled if you’ve already matched it against a bank statement). Both post real money and a real GL journal dated to that day — there’s no separate “backdated entry” mode, the date field alone controls it.
Reference
Entry statuses
Posted and Reconciled both count as real money movement. Pending is the only status that doesn’t — it’s excluded from the GL, the bank account’s balance, and cash-based reports until you move it to Posted or Reconciled.
What this module doesn’t do
There’s no draft/review/approve cycle here — anyone who can open the form can record a Posted entry that immediately hits the GL. If you need a review step before an expense is recognized, use the Pending status and change it once confirmed. For an actual approval-before-payment workflow, use Expense Reimbursements instead.
Because this module has no storage of its own, there’s no “Expenses-only” audit trail distinct from Banking’s. Anything visible or editable in Banking → Transactions for an outflow is visible and editable here too, and deleting it in either place removes it from both.