Expenses

Every business has costs that are not a loan: the rent, the fuel for the route, electricity, paper. The Expenses module lets you record them with their receipt and have your accounting and your cash box see them by themselves, without writing a journal entry by hand.

Where it is and which plan includes it

Go to Accounting → Expenses. It is available on the Gold and Premium plans; on Free and Basic you see a notice that Expenses is available on Gold. It also needs accounting to be active: an expense with no entry would be money leaving with no trace.

If you work with agents, note that Accounting opens with either the accounting permission or the expenses permission: an agent who only has expenses permissions sees Accounting in the menu and lands straight on Expenses. The Accounting section bar only shows them the sections they can actually open. See Roles and permissions.

The life of an expense: Draft, Recorded, Cancelled

Every expense has a folio and goes through three statuses:

To create one, press Record expense. Inside the form you choose between Save draft (to finish it later) and Record (so it counts right away). If you pay in cash and there is no open cash box or not enough cash, the Record button is blocked and the form explains why; in that case you can Save draft and record it later.

What it asks for

The expense account

The list includes accounts 5301 to 5307 of the chart of accounts (operating expenses, collector salaries and commissions, rent, utilities, transport and fuel, stationery and other expenses). 5201 and 5202 do not appear: the system uses them for the uncollectible provision and write-offs. On the Premium plan you can create your own expense accounts and they show up here too.

The payment account

• Cash: it always comes out of the cash box. You do not choose a payment account.
• Transfer, card or check: by default it comes out of 1102 Bank. On the Premium plan, if you created your own bank accounts in the cash and banks category, you can pick them as well. The loan portfolio, the provision and the cash box cannot be used to pay an expense.

Which entry it posts

When you record an expense, Prestafolio posts one entry dated on the expense date: it debits the expense account and credits cash or the bank. Example: RD$1,200 of fuel paid in cash.

Had you paid by transfer, the credit would go to 1102 Bank (or the payment account you chose). The expense shows up as Expense in the list of journal entries.

Like every entry, it is tagged with the till of whoever recorded it: an agent's goes to their till and the owner's to Owner / Office. It is the same filter as in the trial balance.

Cash expenses and the cash box

An expense paid in cash comes out of the drawer, so:

• It needs an open cash box. If there is none, the form warns you (You have no open cash session) and takes you to cash. See Opening and closing the cash box.
• It cannot exceed the expected cash. If you ask for more than there is, it is rejected with There is not enough cash in the till for this expense.
• It shows up in the cash count, on its own line. The expense appears as a movement of type Expense and the reconciliation formula becomes Opening balance + Collected − Delivered − Expenses. See Cash count and movements.

How much cash is available (Cash available in your till) is only shown to people with the cash statistics permission. Someone without it can still record the expense, but if it exceeds what is there they get the rejection without the figure. See Cash permissions.

Expenses paid by transfer, card or check do not touch the cash box and need no open session.

Cancelling an expense

On a Recorded expense, press Cancel expense and confirm. This:

• Reverses the entry: nothing is deleted, an opposite entry is created. It shows up as Expense reversal.
• Returns the cash to the cash box if it was paid in cash, as an inflow in the open cash box. That is why cancelling a cash expense requires an open cash box.
• Leaves the expense as Cancelled, with no way to edit it.

The reversal always carries today's date. If today's period is closed, it is rejected with This can't be done: the accounting period for that date is already closed. The same happens when you record an expense dated inside a closed period. See Fiscal periods and closing.

The receipt

Every expense can carry one receipt: the photo or PDF of the slip.

• Formats: JPG, PNG, WEBP or PDF, up to 4 MB. Images are compressed on upload.
• You upload it from the form or from the expense details (Upload receipt, Replace, Remove receipt, View receipt).
• It counts against your plan's storage, just like clients' files. Removing the receipt, or deleting a draft, frees that space. See Storage.
• If the expense is saved but the receipt could not be uploaded, the expense is not lost: upload it later from its details.

Searching and reviewing

The expenses list comes with a summary (total recorded and a breakdown by account) and filters for From, To, Expense account, Payment method, Status, Collector and Recorded by (both owner only) and a search box for description, reference, notes or folio. The Download CSV button exports what you are looking at, with the same filters (it needs the export permission).

The Expenses screen opens on the current month: From shows the first day of the month and To shows today, and the list, the summary and the CSV use that range. To see another period, change From and To. To see the whole history, empty both dates or press Clear filters: with no dates there is no limit and the screen does not go back to the current month. The current month only applies when you first open the screen; if you empty only From, you see everything up to the To date.

The total and the by-account summary use the same filters as the list (dates, expense account, payment method, collector, recorded by and search) and add up only Recorded expenses: drafts and cancelled ones do not count. That is why, if you filter by the Draft or Cancelled status, the total box is hidden. An agent only sees the totals of the expenses they recorded.

When you record an expense, if similar expenses already exist (same account and same amount, or the same reference, in the previous 15 days) you see the Possible duplicate expenses notice with links to review them. It is only a notice: the expense is already recorded.

Who sees what

• The owner sees and operates every expense in the business.
• An agent sees and operates only the expenses they recorded. Other people's expenses do not show up for them, not even by link.

The Expenses permission group has three permissions: View, Manage (create, edit drafts, record, cancel and attach the receipt) and Export. See Roles and permissions.

The expenses report

Under Reports → Expenses you get the total spent and the expenses recorded, split by account, by month and by collector. Opening it takes two permissions: the reports one and the one for viewing expenses; downloading it as CSV also needs the export one. An agent sees only what they recorded there.

The report matches your accounting: an expense counts in the month of its date and, if you cancel it, the cancellation subtracts in the month it was cancelled. Drafts never count. A February expense cancelled in April stays in February and shows up as a subtraction in April.

If something goes wrong