Expenses
Record a project expense when you incur it, with a receipt if you have one. Billable expenses can be added to the client’s invoice later, and all recorded expenses help you understand the project’s costs. If your team uses weekly approvals, expenses are reviewed with the same week’s hours.
Categories first
Expenses need a category, and categories live under Settings, Time in the Expense categories card. Each has a Name, a Billable default, and an optional Unit with a Rate per unit.
For mileage, create a category with mile as the unit and the rate your business uses. The person logging the expense enters the distance, and PayPolka calculates the amount. Categories without a unit use a dollar amount you enter yourself.
Categories can be archived. An archived one stays on old expenses but drops out of the form. Until an account has at least one category, the Expenses page says so and links an admin to Settings.
Logging an expense
On a project, press View / Log expense on the Expenses card, or open the Expenses tab; the form is right there with the project fixed. From the Expenses page, press New expense and pick the project yourself. Anyone with a seat can log on any active project. Accountants log nothing, and their Expenses page shows everyone’s expenses for the week with a Person column. Owners and admins see their own week by default and can switch to Everyone’s from the line under the heading.
The form asks for:
- Date
- Project
- Category
- Quantity if the category has a unit, otherwise Amount
- Notes
- Receipt, a PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF up to 10 MB
- Billable to the client, prefilled from the category
Log expense saves it. On a project that doesn’t bill, the billable box is forced off whatever you tick.
The Expenses page
The page shows one week at a time for one person, with arrows to move weeks and the week’s total at the right. Each row shows the date, project and client, category and quantity, notes, a Receipt link if one is attached, a “non-billable” tag where it applies, and a lock icon with the reason once it’s locked. Rows have Edit and Remove while they’re open.
Owners and admins can open anyone’s expenses; managers can open the people they review. Members see only their own, and see no amounts anywhere else in the app.
Locking with the week
With approvals on, an expense is part of the week it falls in. Submitting the week locks it alongside the time entries. Approval keeps it locked. Sending the week back frees it. An owner or admin can also press Unlock on one locked expense to fix it without reopening the week; that shows under Settings, Activity.
An expense that’s already on an invoice is different. It stays locked no matter what happens to the week, and only its invoice can free it, by removing the line or deleting the draft.
With approvals off, expenses stay editable until invoiced.
Reaching an invoice
Expenses that are billable and not yet invoiced count as uninvoiced work, on any project, including fixed-fee ones. The Uninvoiced report totals them per project with a Create invoice button.
On the invoice form, once a project is chosen, the Line items card ends with an Unbilled work panel. Tick Expenses next to the Group lines dropdown and press Add to invoice. The expense lines land on the form carrying the expenses they bill; when the invoice saves, those expenses link to it and lock. On a fixed-fee project, the panel brings in only expenses, since the fee itself is invoiced from the project page. See Invoices.
Removing the line or deleting the draft releases the expenses, and they show as uninvoiced again.
Where expenses show up
The project’s Expenses card totals them, the Profitability report counts them as cost, and Accounting’s exports include them for QuickBooks and Xero.