Record Expenses

Use Expenses for operating costs that do not need the purchase-order and goods-received workflow.

Create an expense

1. Go to Expenses > Expenses and select New Expense.
2. Enter the transaction date, description, amount, expense category and supplier where relevant.
3. Naming a supplier is optional. If the one you want is not on the list, Add a supplier under the box puts it on file with nothing but a name, without losing what you have typed so far.
4. Select the VAT treatment: standard-rated, zero-rated, exempt or out of scope. Use standard-rated only when you hold a valid tax invoice and may claim input VAT.
5. Select a tracking category if the cost belongs to a branch, project or cost centre.
6. Select Create Expense. It is saved as a draft and nothing has reached your books yet.

Scan the receipt instead of typing it

At the top of Expenses > New Expense there is Scan a receipt. Photograph the till slip, or pick the supplier's PDF, and the date, the total, the VAT, the supplier, their VAT number and the invoice number come back filled in. Check them against the paper in your hand, select Apply, then save the expense yourself. Nothing is captured and nothing reaches your books until you save it.

It works on an expense you have already captured too. Attach the document from the expense's own Documents panel and nothing is prefilled, because the expense exists already. What you get instead is the comparison: if the slip reads R431.20 and the expense says R413.20, it says so. Transposed digits are the most common capture mistake there is, and they are invisible without the original beside them.

• If the figures do not reconcile, only the total is offered. Subtotal plus VAT has to equal the total, and the VAT can never be more than 15/115 of the total. When a reading fails either test there is no way to tell which of the three numbers was misread, so the split is dropped rather than guessed and you type the VAT in yourself. The date, supplier, VAT number and invoice number are still filled in for you.
• A slip with mixed VAT rates needs two expenses. A pharmacy or grocery slip with zero-rated food alongside standard-rated goods cannot be one expense, because an expense holds a single VAT rate. Captured whole at 15% it claims back more input VAT than the document carries. The scan says so and asks you to split it.
• How it was paid is read off the tender line at the foot of the slip and nowhere else. No tender line, no answer: a cash purchase booked as a card payment would never reconcile against your bank statement.
• The supplier is offered, never created for you. A name that matches one you already have is filled in. When nothing matches, it asks whether you meant one of the close ones it found and offers to add it. A supplier is a permanent record with a currency and a place on your Aged Payables, and near-duplicates cannot be merged afterwards, so the question is deliberate. Leave it blank is a fine answer for a one-off purchase.
• Photographs (JPG and PNG) and PDFs are both read, up to 500 scans a month per company. If scanning is ever unavailable the upload still works and the form is filled in by hand as before.

Approve an expense

Approving is what posts the expense and any input VAT to the ledger and makes the item available for bank matching. After that it cannot be edited or deleted, because the entry is in your books.

Expenses > Expense Approvals lists everything you have captured but not yet approved. That is your list of costs still to deal with, and it works the same whether you are on your own or have a team: approve one, approve several at once, or reject one with a comment. You can also approve a single expense from its own page if you are already looking at it.

Have somebody else check it first

This step is optional and only means anything with more than one person. Send for Approval on a draft moves it to Awaiting approval, which says out loud that somebody else should look at it. Whoever sends it cannot then be the one who approves it, which is the entire point: the cost is checked by a second person.

• The Send for Approval button only appears when there is another active user on the company. If you are the only user, approve the expense yourself.
• Withdraw from Approval puts it back to a draft, for when the other approver is no longer available.
• The Stage column tells the two apart: Draft was captured and left, Awaiting approval was deliberately sent to someone.

Set up expense categories

Go to Expenses > Expense Categories. Create categories that match how you want operating costs grouped. Avoid near-duplicates such as "Telephone" and "Phone" unless they deliberately post to different accounts.

These categories are what Reports > Expense by Category groups by, so the effort spent naming them well is what makes that report readable.

What happens next

An approved expense is available as a debit match during bank reconciliation. If you record an unmatched bank line directly as an expense, OxyAccounting creates the expense and ledger entry as part of that reconciliation action.

Correct a mistake

• Edit the expense while it is still in an editable state.
• For a posted expense, use the available cancellation or reversal action so the ledger history remains visible.
• When a supplier refunds an expense, record an Expense Refund from bank reconciliation. This reverses the expense and its input VAT; a bank transfer does not.