Privilege Needed: Expense User
The Una$ense product provides functionality that supports the capture and processing of expense information. Users set up with the Expense User role will have access to this functionality. After incurring an expense, a user can create an Expense Report to detail the various expense items for the purposes of reimbursement, project billing, project management, etc. Additionally, a user can create an Expense Request that could be used to ask permission to later incur an expense.
This help page will cover the following topics:
Expense Report -- Wizards (including Mileage, Lodging, Per Diems, Entertainment, etc.)
You may also be interested in the following related topics:
Importing Expense Details from a Credit Card
VAT (capturing Value Added Tax information)
There are two main screens necessary to complete for a user to enter expenses (and possibly others if wizards or credit card imports are used). By clicking Add under the User -- Expense menu, you will see a screen similar to the one shown below. This is called the Project Purpose screen.
On this screen you will notice the Voucher # (expense report number) in the upper right hand corner, assigned to this expense report. You can supply a Purpose for the expense as well as the Location it occurred. Additionally, you can define (down to the task level - if wanted) all the projects that expenses on this expense report may be allocated to. All expenses must be charged to at least one project.
Una$ense has the capability of allocating an expense across any number of projects and/or tasks by defining a list of projects and assigning an allocation percentage to each. This default percentage can be overridden on a line item by line item basis on the Expense Report Detail page.
By
entering a number into the text box to the left of the insert new row icon (
) and clicking on the insert new row icon (), you can add that number of projects/tasks and
assign an allocation to them. Then, when entering the detail of an expense item, you
can apply that split allocation. Each line on the Detail Page will allow you to
either apply the expense to exactly one project or to be allocated by the percentage you
specified.
An example of using the Project Allocation feature: Perhaps you are taking a flight to a city where you will meet with two different customers and they have agreed to split the cost of your air travel. You could set up two projects with a 50% allocation for each.
There is a property setting that will prevent project allocations, see unasense.single.project.expense.limit for more information.
The purpose and location fields on this screen can be configured by the Unanet Administrator to make each one required or not required. See unasense.location.required and unasense.purpose.required for more information.
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Saves the data for the current Expense Report Purpose page. |
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Saves the data for the current Expense Report Purpose page and navigates to the Expense Report Details page. |
The details page is broken down into several sections.
Summary Section - Displayed across the top of the screen is a summary containing information about who the expense report is for with their person organization listed, the Location provided in the Purpose screen, the Voucher #, and the Purpose.
Project Allocation Section -- The next section
provides a recap of all the Project / Tasks that were defined on the project
allocation section on the Purpose page. Notice the Project #
column. If there is more than one project listed in this section, a
new column titled "Charge To Project" will appear in the
following line item detail section. The values in this Project # column correspond
to the values in the Charge To Project drop down choices. Pressing on
the glasses (
)
icon in this section will present the user with a page providing detailed
project information.
Line Item Details Section -- This is the main data entry section of the expense report. For each expense item, you can add an entry. All fields are required. Depending on the Expense Type selected, a wizard screen may be presented requiring additional expense detail information. The following table explains the meaning of the various icons in this section:
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Indicates a warning that the defined threshold for this expense type has been exceeded. Unanet does not prevent the expense from being entered, it simply flags the entry for the User and/or the Approver to notice. To set the thresholds for an expense type, see Setting Up Expense Types. The user can also view a listing of existing Thresholds by pressing the "Thresholds" button on this screen. |
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This is the copy icon. It can be used to duplicate a line item detail row. This may be useful if you have a similar expense for multiple days. You could create one, copy it several times, and edit any information that changed -- such as the date. |
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Delete that detail row from the expense report. |
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This is the 'magic wand' icon (not a bomb). this icon can be used to open a wizard for a particular expense detail line. Here you can enter the vendor, receipt information, and comments along with any other information specific to that expense type. In many cases, clicking on the Amount field will perform the same function -- invoking the wizard. Certain expense types have customized wizards, all other expense types to have a 'generic' wizard available. |
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Current row selected. This is useful if you would like to view the Wizard Summary and Comments Window contents for a particular row. |
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To add additional line item entries, populate a number in the text box next to the 'new row' icon before clicking on it. By default, one new row will be added. |
The following table provides a description of each of the fields available in this section -- all fields are required if present:
Date This is the date for the specific expense line item. Expense Type The contents of this list is controlled by the Unanet Administrator. It will show any "active" expense types. Some expense types will have an accompanying wizard. Amount Depending on the expense type, you may be able to directly enter an expense amount in this field. If the expense type requires the population of additional wizard fields, clicking on this field may invoke a wizard. The amount may then be calculated on the wizard and placed in this field for you. VAT Amount This is an optional field that will only be displayed if your system is configured to capture VAT (Value Added Tax) information (see the unasense.vat.enabled unanet.property for additional information). If either the VAT Amount or VAT Location field is populated, both fields are required. This field is used to capture the VAT dollar amount associated with the line item -- it is not a calculated field. For more information about VAT, check out the Reclaim Tax page. VAT Location This is an optional field that will only be displayed if your system is configured to capture VAT (Value Added Tax) information (see the unasense.vat.enabled unanet.property for additional information). If either the VAT Amount or VAT Location field is populated, both fields are required. This field is used to capture the VAT Location associated with the line item. For more information about VAT, check out the Reclaim Tax page. The values in this field are maintained by the Unanet Administrator via the VAT Location page. Payment Type This field specifies the payment type. Currently, the possible values for this field may include: Employee, Company Paid or Corp. Card. The value in this field will influence whether the line item will be included in any reimbursement calculation. Each user can set the value that they would like to appear in this field by default via their User Profile page. There is one unanet property than can influence which values are available in this drop down -- unasense.nonemployee.show_company_paid. This property can be set to prevent non-employees from having the company paid option. Charge To Project This field will only appear if there is more than one Project specified in the Project Allocation section. If this is the case, the drop down list will contain a numeric entry that corresponds to each of the projects listed in the Project Allocation section (see Project # column) and one additional entry called: Allocation. Selecting the Allocation entry will allow the system to allocate the associated line item amount to the default allocation specified on the Purpose Page. Selecting on of the other entries will allocation 100% of that line item cost to a particular project entry in the Project Allocation section. Project Type When only one entry exists in the Project Allocation section, this value is defaulted to the default Project Type for the Project (as established by the Project Manager). When more than one allocation entry exists, this field is left blank by default, forcing the user to specify a value. The available values for Project Type are maintain by the Unanet Administrator via the Project Type screen. Totals There are a number of totals provided in this section that summarize various amounts for the entire expense report. These fields are not editable. Wizard Summary This field contains a summary of any Wizard specific data. In order to view the contents of this field for a specific line item, the user must first click on the ( Comments This field will show a summary of any comments entered on a Wizard screen and/or can be edited directly on the details page, by first clicking on the (
Approval History Section -- This section provides a history of the expense report, and it's progress through the various statuses on it's way to completion.
The example below presents a sample Expense Detail page:
The following table will provide a description of the functionality available for each of the various buttons available on the expense detail page.
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When clicking on save, the system will attempt to validate the various entries and commit the updates to the database if all validations are successfully passed. |
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Clicking on the purpose button will present the user with the Purpose Page associated with this expense report. |
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Clicking on the submit button will first invoke any 'save' behavior and upon successful validation of the expense items, submit the expense report to the approval process. |
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Clicking on the preview button will present the user with a non-editable -- more printer friendly version of the expense report. |
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Clicking on the threshold button will present the user with a pop-up listing of all expense types and their corresponding threshold values. See the threshold example below for additional information. |
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This button will optionally be displayed depending on the unanet.property value: unasense.user.import.enable. This allows the user to import credit card transactions. Click here for more information. |
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Clicking on the allocate button will present the user with a non-editable version of the expense report that shows the breakdown of changes according to the specified project allocations. |
Although every expense has a wizard (for entering vendors, receipt information, and comments), there are also ten other wizards that have built-in programming logic behind them. These expense types are:
If any of these wizards are selected in the detail page, then additional information (other than vendor, receipts, and comments) is captured as shown in the pop-up windows below. For each wizard, the information is summarized and displayed in the Wizard Summary window next to the comments for easy readability on the detail screen. See the wizard help page for examples of each wizard.
You can open a wizard in one of two ways.
You can press the wizard icon () on the appropriate detail line, or you can click in the Amount field on the
appropriate detail line.
See expense types for more documentation about the
wizards.
Below is an example of an AIR wizard:
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Note: There is one expense type that acts differently from all other expense types, but is not associated with a wizard. If you create an expense type called ADVANCE, then the amount entered in that field is treated as a deduction from the total reimbursement of the expense report. See expense types for more documentation.
Note: The Wizards may look a little different if the Administrator has enabled VAT in the system. Click here for an example.
Anyone can view the current thresholds of each expense type that was entered by an
administrator. By pressing the threshold button (
), you will see a window pop up similar to the one
shown below: If, for each line on the detail page, a threshold is exceeded for an
expense type, you will see a warning icon () next to that detail line. Thresholds are defined when creating expense
types. See expense types for more
documentation. An example is shown as follows:
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When a user is saving their Expense Report or Expense Request, if a threshold has been
exceeded, there is a flag in the system that you can be enabled that will force a comment to
explain why the threshold was exceeded. The name of this parameter (that goes in the
unanet.properties file) is called unasense.threshold.exceeded.need_comments.
From the Detail Page, you can press the preview button (). This will
show a summary of the Expense Report that you can print to a printer. The Wizard
summary and Comments are concatenated together in the far right hand column. See image
below: This is also the format that a manager who approves expenses will see the
report.
Note: The print Preview may look a little different if the Administrator has enabled VAT in the system. Click here for an example.
Once a user submits their expense report, control is passed to the first person in the Approval Group that the user belongs to for expense approvals. The approval group each person belongs to can be established via the Person Page. In this case, control of the expense report is passed to George James (Gary's manager defined in the system) and the Status of the expense report is set to SUBMITTED. George James would now see Gary's expenses in his approval queue. The Approval History is also shown at the bottom of the page. See example below.
Up until an Expense Report has been through the entire approval process and is set to
COMPLETED, a user can press the edit button (
), to get his/her expense report back to make
additional changes or adjustments. That expense report can then be submitted again,
but will need to go through the entire approval chain again.
Selecting the User -- Expense -- Active menu option will display a listing of all 'active' (non-completed) expense reports. This listing includes Voucher number, the amount, the date and Purpose.
An example Active list is shown below.
You can edit the expense Purpose Page (
), delete the entire expense report (), or edit the expense details page (
) by clicking the appropriate icon.
If you want to search for a previously completed Expense Report, click on User -- Expense -- History. This search screen will allow you to specify any particular selection criteria to narrow down the possible listing.
Expense Requests are verify similar to Expense Reports. By expanding the Request menu, you will see another set of sub menus for Add, Active, and History -- much like the options for Expense Report. These options follow the exact same requirements of an Expense Report, except that these are requests for expenses.
Once a Request is approved by the manager(s), then that Request becomes and active Expense Report for that user.
Request's for Expenses also show a faded watermark in the background to help distinguish a Request from an actual Expense Report. This watermark is shown throughout the Request and that request's approval process, until the request becomes an Expense Report.
Expense Requests have slightly different statuses than Expense reports. Check out the statuses help page for more information.
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