Expense Entry

Expense entry is where you enter expenses against a project These costs could be paid by you, paid by a company credit card, or paid from a cash advance. Each cost you enter is called a cost card in Projector. You then submit the cards for approval by your organization. The typical workflow for cost entry is:

• Select the week when the costs were incurred

• Find the project the expense goes against

• Select the type of cost (airfare, meals, etc)

• Enter the amount of the cost

• Enter additional details like location or exchange rate

• Optionally attach receipts

• Submit the cost for approval 

The following permissions are for Projector Administrators, Engagement Managers, or Project Managers. If you are only here for expense entry, then these settings are probably not very interesting to you.

To access expense entry you must either be

• A resource (enter expenses for yourself)

• A user with the cost center permission View Resource/Disbursed Expense Reports (enter expenses for groups of other people)

• Be the cost entry delegate on a resource's profile (enter cost on behalf of a specific person. Often used by administrative staff to enter expenses for C-level executives)

An expense report's currency is determined by the company assigned to the resource's cost center at the time of the ER's creation.

You can enter expenses for other people in your organization if you have the cost center permission Maintain Expenses.

Expenses can only be entered for projects that are open for expense entry. A project is considered open if the Open for Cost checkbox is ticked on the Project Info Tab.

Some projects limit expense entry to those assigned to the project. This is controlled by the Only allow booked resources to report expenses to project checkbox on the Project Info Tab.

Once an expense report is completely approved to pay, you can no longer add new cost cards.

If you are using Projector's accounting module, then the period must also be open for cost.

To upload receipt documents the document storage module must be enabled.

A large number of additional expense entry related settings can be found on the System Settings Editor Cost Tab.

Location can be required on a cost card. A list of locations and whether they can be used for expense entry are found in the Location and Holiday Editor. 

When entering expenses, we remember the last cost card's details and duplicate them. For example, if you create a cost card for location Germany and set the currency to Euros, when you create your next time card we'll default to those same settings. This stickiness lasts until you leave expense entry or refresh the expense entry page. "Sticky" fields include Paid By, Location, and Currency.

Mileage reimbursement rates are driven by the resource's location. You can also set a location on a where a cost was incurred, but it does not impact mileage rates. 

Mileage distance units can be miles or kilometers. The unit chosen is determined by your resource's location.

Projector does not allow the upload of Portfolio PDF files. A portfolio is multiple PDF files combined into a single document. We disallow them because the PDF rendering engine cannot handle this file format.

The header contains top level actions for the page and displays notifications. From here you will specify the week, add projects, save, submit, and view warnings or alerts.

Enter the expense report name here.

Details about this expense report are shown just under the name.

The upper right contains a status window about the current invoice. The color indicates whether the report is approved, rejected, or draft/submitted. 

 

 

  

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By default a new expense report defaults to the current week. Click on Add a Week to add additional weeks. Each additional week is added to the list. The current week is highlighted in gray.

The Save button is available whenever a change has been made to the current expense report. In addition, navigating away from the current week by using the calendar will automatically save any pending changes. Saved changes are not submitted.

The Submit button checks in all cost cards so that they can go through your organization's approval process. Even after submitting you can still edit the cards as long as they are not approved. Once approved you can no longer edit the a card. An approved card has the symbol

.

When you submit an expense report, you'll be prompted to notify potential approvers. Tick the checkbox next to each person that you would like an email sent to.

The week across the top shows the total of all cost cards on that day. If any cost cards are rejected then the day and hours display in red.

The Net Due area shows the amount you can be reimbursed for this week. Cash advances and company paid expenses are not included in this amount.

The subtotals section shows the gross amount of your expenses, the amount covered by a cash advance, the amount covered by company paid credit cards, and the net amount you will be reimbursed.

The search field is how you will add projects and expense types to your expense report screen.

Clicking in the search field displays a list of your most recently used projects. In addition you can search by typing in a client, engagement or project name.

• Clicking in the search field displays a list of projects you've used recently.

• Typing a character initiates a search after a brief pause. Pressing Enter immediately initiates the search.

• Unavailable projects are shown grayed out. Hovering over the unavailable project presents a tooltip for the reason why.

Click on a project to view its details.

Finally select the expense types you need to enter costs against. You can select multiple types if you wish. I the expense type is grayed out then it has already been added to your expense report.

The cost entry grid is where you type in your expenses. The grid is grouped by project, with a row for each expense type. In the example below you can see one project with three expense types underneath it. If you have multiple expenses for a single day, then a green bubble indicates the number of cost cards (

) . To enter an expense, click in a cell for the appropriate day of the week and expense type.

A popover appears for you to enter your expenses for that day.