Expense Report Overview

Use the Vision Expense Report application to enter your expenses and associate them with specific projects and accounts.

Use the Expense Report application to:

  • Enter an expense date, description, and dollar amount for each expense item.
  • Define project, phase, task, and account values for each expense item.
  • Determine company-paid and billing options for each expense item.
  • Select pre-defined expense categories for processing expense items, when applicable.
  • Add credit card charges to an expense report.
  • Mark a credit card charge as personal and thus paid for by the employee.

You can create and edit an expense report at any time, using as many rows as you need to record all of your expenses. When you complete an expense report, submit it to a designated administrator for approval.

Your Expense Report access rights (System, Company, Group, or Staff) determine the transactions that you can process in the application. Expense Report access rights are assigned by your system administrator.

Your system administrator can configure Vision to notify approvers when expense reports are submitted for processing and/or when expense line item charges are entered or rejected.

Expense Categories

Your system administrator can set up expense categories to use for standard expense entries. These categories have predefined bill by default, billable message, and direct, indirect, and reimbursable account information. You do not have to enter any of these values on your expense report when you enter an expense using an expense category.

To use an expense category, select the category from the drop-down list in the Category field of the Expense Report form.

Line Item Approvals

If your firm uses the Expense Report Line Item Approval feature, principals, project managers, and supervisors can approve or reject individual lines on expense reports. Depending on the configuration options that your system administrator selects, you may not be able to post expense reports with unapproved line items.

Credit Card Charges

If you use the Credit Card feature and you import charges from your credit card company into statements in Vision, employees can add the company-paid imported charges to their expense reports. The Expense Report form has a Credit Card pane that displays the imported charges for the company-issued and company-paid credit cards that are assigned to an employee. Employees can also mark imported charges as personal (employee-paid) and remove them from the Credit Card pane.

Employee-Paid Credit Card Charges

This applies if you import charges from your credit card company into Vision for a company-issued and employee-paid credit card.

When you import a charge from your credit card company into Vision, the charge displays in the Credit Card pane on the Expense Report form in Time & Expense > Expense Report for any expense report user who is authorized to use the credit card (in Credit Card Configuration). To ensure that an employee does not add the charge to an expense report, select the imported charge on the Credit Card pane and click the Mark Personal button. This removes the charge from the Credit Card pane.

You specify the default credit account for a company-issued, employee-paid credit card in the Employee Expense Account field in the Expense Credit Distribution section on the Posting tab of Configuration > Accounting > Company Settings .

Posting Expense Reports

When all of your employees' expense reports for a selected period have been submitted and approved, you are ready to post the expense reports to your Vision database. Use the Vision Transaction Center to post expense reports. Before you post expense reports for a selected labor period, be sure that the data on all submitted/approved expense reports is accurate.

Approvals Workflow

You can use the approvals workflow to process employee expense reports. You must enable the approvals workflow and then configure it:

  • To enable the approvals workflow for expense reports:
    1. Click Configuration > Time & Expense > Company Expense.
    2. On the Company Expense Configuration form, select the Use Approval Workflow for Employee Expense Report option.
  • To configure the approval workflow for expense reports:
    1. Click Configuration > Workflow > Approval Workflows).
    2. On the Approval Configuration form, set the Approval Level option to Expense Report or Both Expense Report and Expense Line to enable expense report approvals.

    3. Set up notifications, approval steps, and other workflow settings.

After you configure the approval workflow for expense reports, related fields and options are enabled on the Expense Report form.

Related Topics:

  • Expense Report Security Access
    Your system administrator assigns security access rights to each Expense Report user. You can be assigned to one of three security access levels: Staff, Group, Company, or System. Your access level determines which processing options are available to you.
  • General Ledger Accounts for Expense Report Posting
    Debits and Credits are applied to the general ledger when you post expense reports that are entered in Time & Expense.
  • Expense Report Status
    Each expense report that you enter in the Expense Report application has a status value that reflects the current processing stage of the expense report. Expense report status values display on the Expense Report Selection form and on individual Expense Report forms.
  • Status Changes for Expense Reports
    Your editing and approval rights determine the changes you can make to the status of an expense report.
  • Expense Report Alerts
    Your system administrator can configure Vision to notify approvers when expense reports are submitted for processing.
  • Expense Reports and Supporting Documents
    For expense reports, you can associate documents with transactions.
  • Guidelines for Editing an Expense Report
    You can make changes to an expense report before it is posted. You cannot edit posted expense reports.
  • Originating Vendors
    For line items that you enter for employee expense reports, accounts payable vouchers, and accounts payable disbursements, you can enter an originating vendor (if appropriate), in addition to the actual employee or vendor who is getting directly paid.
  • Example: Split an Imported Charge Between Two Projects
    You can split an imported charge among multiple projects on an expense report.
  • Procedures
    You open, enter, submit, approve, and view or print expense reports from Time and Expense.
  • Screens
    In addition to the Expense Report Form, you use dialog boxes to complete related tasks, such as selecting expense reports, viewing status, associating supporting documents, or providing details about travel-related expenses.
  • Expense Reports
    You can see an overview of expense charges, a detailed report, or a report on the status of selected expense reports.
Parent Topic: Time and Expense Overview