Configure Expenses
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Use the Configure Expenses page to select basic information about how the application works, including the following:
- Required accounting information, such as the journals and accounts to be used for expense liabilities, adjustments, and reimbursements.
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Options for entering expense reports:
- Required fields: For example, do users need to enter a reason for the expense?
- Dimensions available (such as the customer and project).
- Whether expenses can be entered in other currencies.
- Default payment method and bank account for reimbursing expenses.
- Approval process for expense reports and expense reimbursements.
- Automate employee expenses (Electronic receipts in-bounding).
| Subscription |
Time and Expenses Administration |
|---|---|
| Regional availability |
All regions |
| User type |
Business user with admin privileges |
| Permissions |
Administration Application subscriptions: List, View, Configure |
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Do one of the following:
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Go to Expenses > Setup > Configuration.
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Go to Company > Admin > Subscriptions > Expenses > Configure.
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Complete the fields in each section.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
|
Expenses |
The journal to which Intacct posts employee expenses. |
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Expense adjustments |
The journal to which Intacct posts expense adjustments. |
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Reimbursements |
The journal to which Intacct posts reimbursements for employee expenses. |
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
|
Employee liabilities |
The General Ledger account to which Intacct posts liabilities to employees. This should be a liability account, not a bank account. |
|
Multi-currency gain or loss |
The General Ledger account to which Intacct posts gains and losses due to currency conversion for multi-currency companies. Do not select a General Ledger account that's associated with a bank account. Rather, specify an account you can use as a transfer account so you can take any appropriate action later. |
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Employee advances |
The General Ledger account to which Intacct posts advance payments to employees. This offset account is optional; it’s only required if you intend to use the advances feature. Do not select a General Ledger account that's associated with a bank account. Rather, specify an account you can use as a transfer account so you can take any appropriate action later. |
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Expense types |
Enables you to set up expense types for use in coding employee expenses. With expense types, you can:
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Allow reclassification |
For Staff expense reports only. If you select this option, users with permission to edit expense reports can reclassify expenses and expense adjustments that have been selected, partially paid, paid, or reversed. For example, users can change the date of an expense report that has already been paid. To prevent anyone from modifying expense reports, leave this checkbox cleared. |
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Prevents you from deleting unpaid expenses. Instead, you must reverse unpaid expenses. Selecting Enable reversal of unpaid expenses changes these pages:
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GL posting date |
Choosing Yes to enables employees to change the GL posting date of their expense report in My expenses reports. |
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
|
Enable 1099 form and box override |
By default, all transaction line items for an employee are associated with a specific 1099 form and box. These defaults are defined on the employee record. Enable this option to override the default form or box for an individual line item within a transaction. |
Expense reports, expense adjustments, and reimbursements are automatically grouped into auto-summaries. The summary posting date is the date the General Ledger uses to post transactions within that summary. For this reason, it's common to select Daily as the summary frequency for each type of transaction.
Auto-summaries can be found by going to Expenses > All > Expense subledger > Summaries.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
|
Expense reports |
How often Intacct creates auto-summaries for expense reports: Daily, Monthly, or One per expense. Select One per expense only if you want Intacct to create a summary for every employee expense entered. |
|
Adjustments |
How often Intacct creates auto-summaries for expense adjustments: Daily, Monthly, or One per expenseadjustment. Select One per expense adjustment only if you want Intacct to create a summary for every expense adjustment entered. |
|
Reimbursements |
How often Intacct creates auto-summaries for expense reimbursements: Daily or Monthly, |
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
|
Enable tracking and reporting against each selected dimension |
This section displays the list of standard dimensions that are enabled in your General Ledger. User-defined dimensions (dimensions that you create for your unique business needs) do not appear in this list because they’re automatically propagated across your applications at time of creation. Select the standard dimensions you want to use in this application for tracking and reporting.
Sage Intacct propagates dimensions across your application pages where you can select dimension values to apply to specific transactions. For example, if you create a sales order, use the customer dimension to tag the transaction so that you can track and report on revenue per customer. Or, if you create a purchase order, use the supplier dimension to tag the transaction so that you can track and report on costs per supplier. |
You can enter IDs for certain transaction and record types manually as you create them. You can also have Intacct add the IDs for you based on a preset plan.
With a preset ID plan, your company automatically generates new IDs or numbers for the related transactions and records. For example, create a document sequence plan for employees. The document sequence automatically creates a new employee ID, such as "EMP-0100", and increments the number each time a new employee is created.
This Document sequencing section enables you to do the following:
- Select a preset ID plan on specific transactions and records.
- Set a warning on duplicate IDs if manual entry is used.
- Require IDs on certain types of transactions and documents (AP and AR only).
Go to Company > Setup > Settings > Document sequences to create a new numbering sequence, and then select it as an option in this section.
If you do not select a document numbering sequence for a transaction or record, users must manually enter an ID or number when they create new transactions or records.
In addition to saving users time, auto-numbering ensures that users cannot use an ID twice or skip a number altogether.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
|
Expense report |
Auto-numbering sequence to be used when users create new expense reports. |
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Credit adjustment |
Auto-numbering sequence to be used when users create new credit adjustments. |
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Debit adjustment |
Auto-numbering sequence to be used when users create new debit adjustments. |
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Employee |
Auto-numbering sequence to be used when users add new employee records. |
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Duplicate numbers |
Specify whether users should be warned or prevented from entering duplicate numbers for transactions. This option does not apply to expense reports and adjustments after duplicate numbers is not allowed for these types of transactions. |
This section appears only for companies that have enabled multi-currency management.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
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Enable foreign currency expense reports |
Select if users can enter expense reports in currencies other than the company's base currency. |
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Exchange rate |
Select the exchange rate type. By default, the Intacct Daily Rate is obtained from an exchange rate provider, and applies the rate that's effective at the time the occurrence of the expense report is generated. |
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Exclude conversion when base and expensed currencies match |
Select to exclude converting matching base and expensed currencies. |
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
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Default payment method |
When users reimburse employees, this payment method is selected by default. However, users can always select a different payment method on a case-by-case basis. The payment method that you select here applies to all users of Expenses. |
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Default bank account |
Select the default bank account used to reimburse expenses. |
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Contact for notifications |
If you've set up employees to be notified when they’re reimbursed for expenses (Expenses > All > Employees), employees automatically receive emails when they’re paid for expenses. Use this option to specify whose contact information is included in payment notification emails, in case of employee questions. You can choose to use the contact information of the user who selected the expenses for reimbursement (Expenses > All > Reimbursements > Select expenses to reimburse), or you can specify another contact. |
Use this section to select information that you want to require on all expense reports. If you subscribe to the Projects application, you can also select whether fields that are autofilled for users (such as the location) are derived from the employee's record or from the project.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
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Enable allocation to distribute expense entry |
Enables Sage Intacct transactions to distribute employee expenses or time entries. For more information, go to Enable allocation to distribute expense entry configuration. |
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Report number |
Require a Report number for each expense report. If you select an auto-numbering sequence for expense reports, this number will be automatically generated for users. |
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Reason for expense |
Require that users enter the reason for the expense. |
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Paid to and paid for |
Require the "Paid to " and "Paid for" fields. |
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Date |
Require the "Date filed." |
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If you also subscribe to Projects, you can choose where your company retrieves the values for department, location, and class on expense reports. For example, if an employee enters an expense for a specific project, you might want the expense to be assigned to the location and department of the project, even if the employee works for a different location or department.
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If you turn on expense approvals, submitted expense reports must be approved before continuing to the reimbursement process. In practice, many companies set up expense approvals based on the employee's manager, so that the manager must approve the expense report first before it’s available to be paid (on the Select to reimburse page). For more information, go to Set up approvals for expense reports.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
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Enable expense report approval |
Turns on expense approvals. When an expense report is submitted, it’s subject to approval based on the options you select in the Approvers section. The exact approval process is configurable and can include one or more approval levels by department manager, employee manager, project manager, or even a specific user. You can also implement approvals based on value. |
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Email notification |
Notifies the appropriate approvers by email when expense reports are submitted and notifies employees when expense reports are approved or declined. |
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Limit approval |
When this option is selected, approvers can view and approve only those line items for which they’re qualified to be an approver. For example, suppose that you implement a level of approval based on project manager. In this case, project managers can view and approve only line items associated with a project that they manage. |
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Level |
Applies only if you select Value Approval as one of your approval levels in the Approvers section (below). Use the value approval table to define approval for expense reports that exceed certain amounts. When you’re specifying the amounts for each approval level, keep these tips in mind:
Example: Suppose that you enter the following for your approval levels:
In this case:
If an expense report exceeds a given value threshold, it can be approved by any user with permission to that approval level. For example, you might specify that Level 1 requires 1 approver. If you give 5 users permission to approve at this level, any of the 5 users can approve a given expense report. To give someone permission to approve expense reports based on value, edit the user's permissions in Expenses ( |
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Unrestricted |
This user can override the established approval process and approve any expense report that has been submitted. It's good practice to assign an unrestricted approver who is not already part of any established approval process. If you do assign an approver who is already part of an established approval process, that approver's decisions will always override those made by other approvers in that process. |
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First |
Select the First dropdown arrow and then choose who should be the first to approve a submitted expense. Repeat this process for any additional levels of approval that you want to add (up to 5). For example, you might set up the First approval to go to the Employee's manager and the Second approval to go to the Department manager. As soon as an expense is approved by one approver, Intacct notifies the next approver in line that the expense is ready for their review. If you select Value Approval for one of the levels, you must define the value thresholds and minimum number of approvers in the "Submittal amount approvals" section. |
By default, reimbursement approvals are enabled. However, they will not be enforced until you define the approval levels and amounts in the value approval levels section.
Set at least one minimum approval level for expense report reimbursements.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
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Enable reimbursement approval |
Turns on reimbursement approvals. If you do not enable reimbursement approvals, all expense reports selected on the Select to Reimburse page will be paid without approval. |
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Level |
Use the minimum amount approval table to set the approval levels and amounts for expense reimbursements. Approvers at each level can approve expense reimbursements that fall within certain amounts, in the same way expense report approvals are set. Reimbursement approvals now behave as other approval processes, such as expense report approvals. This means the amount that you specify for each approval level is the minimum amount that the approver can approve, with the maximum amount being $0.01 under the next approval level. Example: Suppose you enter the following for your approval levels:
In this case:
If a reimbursement exceeds a given value threshold, it can be approved by any user with permission to that approval level. For example, you might specify that Level 1 requires 1 approver. If you give 5 users permission to approve at this level, any of the 5 users can approve a given expense report. To give someone permission to approve expense reimbursements, edit the user's permissions in Expenses (Company > Admin > Users > Subscriptions > Time and Expenses). Give the user permission to Approve Reimbursements and select the levels they can approve. |
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
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Default user restrictions |
By default, users can enter time and expenses for any project. You can use this option to restrict users so that they can only enter time and expenses for projects and/or tasks to which they’re assigned. If you subscribe to the Projects application, this option is read-only. To change the selection, configure the Projects application. (Go to Projects > Setup > Configuration.) |
