An expense claim can hold your own expenses that you paid yourself and your own completed business trips. Expenses marked as paid by the company, refunds and income documents can't go on a claim. Each expense or trip can be on only one claim at a time.
Expenses
An expense can go on your claim when all of these are true:
- You added it. A claim holds only the claimant's own expenses. You can't put a colleague's expenses on your claim.
- You paid it yourself. Its Paid by is Personal or Not set. Expenses with Paid by set to Company are left out.
- It's an expense, not income or a refund.
- It has a date and an amount, and it has finished scanning.
- It has some business use. An expense set to 0% business use is a personal purchase and can't be claimed.
- It isn't already published to your accounting software on its own.
- It isn't on another claim.
Set Paid by
Paid by tells SparkReceipt whose money paid for an expense. You see it on accounts with a paid plan:
- On an expense, set Paid by to Company, Personal or Not set.
- To change many at once, select expenses in the document list and choose Set paid by.
- To find them, filter the document list by Paid by.
You don't have to set Personal on every expense. Expenses left as Not set can go on a claim too. Mark the company card and company account purchases as Company so they stay off claims.
Partly business expenses
If an expense is only partly for business, the claim still pays back the full receipt total, because that is what you paid. The claim, its PDF and its spreadsheet show the business use, for example Business use 50%, so the approver sees the split. See How do I count only part of an expense as business?
Trips
A trip can go on your claim when it is:
- yours, recorded by you;
- completed, not still being recorded;
- classified as Business;
- priced: it has a mileage rate from its vehicle or your account's default rate, and its route distance has been worked out.
The claim pays the trip at that rate, plus any passenger rate, and shows the distance and rate. Trips with no rate show "No mileage rate". Set a rate in your mileage settings. See How to track mileage with Trips in SparkReceipt
Currencies
A claim can hold expenses in different currencies. SparkReceipt keeps a separate total for each currency and doesn't convert them on the claim. If you publish the claim to your accounting software, the items are converted to your home currency there.
Why an item doesn't show up, or can't be added
Add items only lists expenses and trips that qualify in the dates you picked. If an item is missing, widen the From and To dates first. If you add items from the document list or Trips and some of them don't qualify, SparkReceipt adds the rest and tells you why it skipped the others:
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| Already on another claim | Remove it from the other claim first, or leave it there. |
| Marked as paid by the company | If you paid it yourself, set Paid by to Personal. |
| Still being scanned | Wait for the scan to finish. |
| No amount yet | Add the total to the expense. |
| No business use | Raise its business use above 0%. |
| Already published to your accounting software | It's already in your books on its own, so it can't also be paid back through a claim. |
| No mileage rate | Set a rate for the vehicle or a default rate in your mileage settings. |
What happens if an item changes later
The claim keeps each item's amount from when you added it and checks every item again when you submit. If an item no longer qualifies at that point, for example someone set its Paid by to Company, you see Fix these items, then submit with the reason. Fix the expense or trip, or remove it from the claim.
If an expense or trip is deleted after it was added, the claim keeps its amount and marks it Source deleted. Remove those items before you submit.