Configure expense reports

An expense report is a collection of expenses, mileages and per diems all bundled together into one submission. This can minimize the approval work for approvers, as all submissions are bundled together into one approval entry. Expense users also benefit from using Expense Reports, because they get a quick overview and total across multiple expenses.

Typical uses for Expense Reports include:

• Collecting together business trip expenses that include submissions of different expense types. For example, taxi journeys, meals, and accommodation.
• Collecting together monthly expenses for a project.
• Requiring expense users to submit expenses by a due date, instead of submitting each expense individually.

Enabling Expense Reports

Expense Reports are included in the Essentials module of Expense Management, meaning there are no extra costs in using it.

Setting up expense reports is quite simple, with all the configurable fields being located on the Expense Management Setup page.

1. Navigate to the Expense Management Setup page.
2. In the General FastTab, set the field Expense Report to either Mandatory or Optional. This will enable the Expense Report tab on the page.

Here you can see all the configurations available for expense reports. Some of the most commonly used fields include:

• Enable Departure and Return Date/Time. If you enable this option, extra fields for start and time, and end date and time become available in the Expense Mobile App and Expense Portal. If a submitted expense, mileage, or per diem is outside this date range, a comment is added in the Expense Report page in Business Central. Note that this feature can be useful for projects and periodic expense reports, and not just for business trips.
• Expense Report Pre-approval. If you select Optional or Mandatory here, an extra Pre-approval Amount field becomes available in the Expense Mobile App and Expense Portal. If a submitted expense report exceeds this amount, a comment is added in the Expense Report page in Business Central.
• Posting Grouping Method. By default, each document submitted is posted according the the expense type. However, you can select instead to group all submitted documents in an expense report as a single entry.

Adding additional field codes

You might find it useful to add extra configured fields to an expense report, such as a project number or task number. If you have added the same configured field to the expense, per diem, and mileage document types, then the field value in the expense report will be inherited for all the documents added to the expense report.

Video