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, Spending in the Expense categories card. Each has a Name, a Billable default, and an optional Unit with a Rate per unit. The same categories are used for purchases, the bills and other money the business pays out, which is where the Materials and Subcontractors flags come in.
A new account starts with fifteen. Materials, Subcontractors, Equipment, and Travel are billable by default; Meals, Vehicle, Software, Rent, Utilities, Insurance, Office supplies, Advertising, Professional fees, Bank fees, and Taxes and licenses aren’t. Materials carries the Materials flag and Subcontractors the Subcontractors flag. Remove any you won’t use, and add your own beside them.
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.
To retire a category, press its trash icon. If expenses already use it, it’s archived: it stays on those expenses but drops out of the form. Otherwise it’s deleted. 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, which follows the category’s default when you choose one. Change it for an expense that’s the exception.
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 approved expense to fix it without reopening the week; that shows under Settings, Activity. A submitted expense has no Unlock, so the reviewer sends the week back instead.
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. On a draft, remove the line or delete the draft. On a sent invoice, an owner or admin writes it off and then chooses Release billed work.
With approvals off, expenses stay editable until invoiced, unless their project is archived.
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. Expenses next to the Group lines dropdown is ticked by default, so pressing Add to invoice brings them in. Untick it to bill only the time. 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. On a written-off invoice, an owner or admin does the same with Release billed work.
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.