Welcome to the Fit Small Business Xero training course. In this lesson we're
going to cover how to create and manage expense claims in Xero. To follow along
with me, log in to your Xero account now, or click the link below this video for a
free 30-day trial of Xero. You can also click this link to access our full Xero
course and other helpful resources. Let's get started. If an employee or business
owner spends personal funds to purchase items for their business, they must
complete an expense claim to be reimbursed. Expense claims are similar to
expense reports in that you can submit multiple receipts on one expense claim.
For example if you attended a conference and you used their personal credit card
to pay for airfare, rental car, and hotel, you can submit receipts for all of these
items on one expense claim to request reimbursement. While traditionally
expense claims would be submitted by paper and processed by hand, Xero lets you
create reports within the software and attach receipts digitally. Tthen Xero
handles all the accounting for you. To create an expense claim in Xero, click on
accounts, and then click on expense claims. In the next screen we're going to go
ahead and click on the add receipt button. And here are the fields of
information that must be completed for an expense claim. In the receipt from
field, you want to enter the name of the company as it appears on your receipt.
You want to go ahead and select the date for the transaction. The reference field
is optional. You may include any additional information in this field
regarding this purchase. And in the description field, you want to enter the
business purpose for this expense. If you purchase items you can enter the
quantity purchased in this field here. In the unit cost field here, you want to go
ahead and enter the amount of the purchase here. From the drop-down in the
account field you want to select the account that the purchase should be
categorized to. Please note if an account has not been flagged to show in expense claims
it will not show up in the drop-down. To make this change you will need to go to
the chart of accounts and add the flag to the account. You can click here to
learn more about how the chart of accounts works. From the drop down of the
tax rate field, you want to select the appropriate tax rate if applicable, or
leave the default rate of 0% if there is no tax rate. In the tax rate lesson we
walk through how to set up tax rates. Click here to access this lesson.
Tracking category: if you use tracking categories such as region, as in this
example, then go ahead and select the appropriate tracking category from the
drop down here. In the upper right hand corner, this icon represents attach.
You can attach copies of receipts and other supporting documentation to this expense
claim. You can also add additional lines if you need to by clicking this link
here. Here at the bottom you have an option to save and add another receipt,
you can select this option if you have multiple receipts that you need to enter.
Please note that the expenses do not have to be related for you to select
this option. In the next step we will show you how to submit receipts for
approval. And the save button: once you have completed all of the fields you can
click the Save button. You can also save even if you have not completed all the
fields and come back later to complete them. Xero will not allow you to actually
submit a receipt for reimbursement until all fields have been completed.
So we'll go ahead and save this. You should see a confirmation here up at the
top that the receipt was actually saved. So all the receipts that you have added
in expense claims will appear in this screen. Receipts that have not been
submitted for approval will appear here on the current claim tab. The total
number of receipts along with the total amount will appear over here to the right.
So as you can see we've got three receipts that total
$870 in this example. So next we want to go ahead and select
the receipts that we'd like to go ahead and submit for approval. You can either
click this box here at the very top of the column to select all, or you could
select individual receipts and submit them that way. Once you've made all your
selections you can simply click the button that says submit for approval.
And this is just our confirmation. So we'll click OK, yes we want to go ahead and
submit those for approval. All expense claims that have been submitted but not
authorized for payment will appear in the awaiting authorization tab here.
Once the expense claim has been approved, it will move over to the awaiting payment
tab. If you have an advisor role then you can approve, decline, or delete your own
expense claims, as well as other employees'. Click here to learn more about
user permissions. Now let's walk through how to approve, decline, or delete expense
claims. So we'll return back to the expense claims tab like we did at the
beginning by clicking on accounts, and expense claims. And then let's go ahead
and click on awaiting authorizations. And then we'll click on the row that shows
our expense claim that we just entered.
So these are the receipts that we have waiting for approval. First of all to
take action on any of these items you can click the check box here to select
all of them, or make individual selections here. Click the approve button
to authorize payment for individual receipts or the entire claim. You can
click the decline button to decline payment for individual receipts or the
entire claim. A notification will be sent to the person that submitted the claim
to let them know that it has been declined.
You can also delete a receipt that you do not wish to pay. A notification will
also be sent to the person that submitted the claim letting them know
that you have deleted the claim. Approved total down here: based on your selection
Xero will automatically calculate the total amount of the claim that you have
approved. We've got a delete expense claim button here that allows you to
delete the entire claim, which again will send a notification to the person who
submitted the claim. And then to the left of the delete expense claim button we've
got a view expense claim summary report. This is actually an aging report for
all expense claims. It will show you all of the unpaid expense claims and the
number of days they have been outstanding or unpaid. Here is an example
of an expense claim summary report for our fictitious company Acme Web Pros
Plus. So we'll go ahead and approve this expense claim. Once you have approved an
expense claim, you can immediately authorize it for payment. If you scroll
down, there is a section here you'll see called authorize expense claim. So we
can go ahead and indicate the payment due date when we would like the claim to
be paid. And indicate the reporting date which can be the same date or a
different date. And then we can go ahead and click the blue button when we are
ready to authorize the payment. Please note that after payment has been
authorized you can pay the expense claim by check. To learn more about this click
this link. If you manage your payroll in Xero, you can also reimburse an employee's
expense claim using payroll. Click the link below for more information on how
to do this. So we'll go ahead and authorize this for payment.
And we've got our notification showing us that expense claim has been
authorized for payment. That wraps up the lesson on how to create and manage
expense claims in Xero. To access our full Xero course or any of the other
lessons in this series, click this link. You can also find a link below this
video for a free 30-day trial of Xero. If you have feedback about this course
or if you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Also don't forget
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