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Expense reports

In short​

An expense report groups several expenses - of all types, including mileages and per diems - into a single submission and approval. It is a convenience for the people who submit and approve, not a posting unit: each expense keeps its own category and coding, and finance posts each one individually after approval.

Expense reports are optional. They are enabled by assigning a number series in setup; where they are not used, employees submit each expense on its own.

Why it matters​

The benefit of a report belongs to submitters and approvers, not finance:

  • A submitter adds expenses to a report and groups them however suits them - by trip, by calendar month, by project - then submits the whole report at once instead of one expense at a time.
  • An approver reviews the grouped expenses together and acts on them in one place.

A report never merges its expenses. Each expense carries its own category and coding - assigned by SmartExtract when the receipt is read - so every expense stays an individual item that can be approved, rejected, and posted on its own. The report is just a wrapper around them.

How it works​

Submitter​

The employee adds expenses of any type - regular expenses, mileages, and per diems - to a report, grouped however they choose, and submits the report. Employees do this in the web portal or mobile app; see For Expense Users.

Approver​

The approver reviews the submitted report and can:

  • approve everything,
  • reject everything, or
  • reject individual expenses while approving the rest.

Approved expenses continue to finance; rejected expenses return to the submitter to correct and resubmit. For how approvers are determined, see Approval workflow.

Finance​

Once approved, the report has done its job. Because each expense, mileage, and per diem carries its own category and coding, finance checks the coding on each element and posts each one individually - the report itself is never posted as a single document. See Review expense before posting and Post expenses.

Status in Business Central: every expense that belongs to a report shows the status Pending Report Approval - whether the report is still a draft or genuinely waiting for approval. From Business Central's point of view, the report must be approved before any of its expenses can be processed, so finance acts on a report's expenses only once the report itself is approved.