AccountsExpenses
Expenses List
How to use the Expenses list to review costs, filter them, and understand the expense summary cards.
Expenses is the costs-only view of the ledger. It uses the same underlying transaction system as the wider Transactions screen, but keeps the page focused on money going out of the business.
Expense Summary
- Total Expenses: The number of completed expense entries in the current filters.
- Total Amount: The full gross value of those expenses.
- Annual Expenses: Your spend so far this financial year. This one card deliberately ignores the date range you have chosen, so you always have a year-to-date figure to compare the range against. It still respects your other filters, such as category, so it describes the same slice of spending. Set when your financial year starts in Settings > Organisation Information > Finance Options.
- Monthly Expenses: The average spend per month across the range you have selected, with the number of months shown underneath.
- Total VAT: Shown when your business is VAT registered.
- Net Amount: Also shown for VAT-registered businesses so you can split gross and net quickly.
Summary Charts
- Expenses by Category: A bar chart of spend per category for the selected range, so the biggest costs stand out immediately.
- Breakdown by Category: The same data as a pie chart, showing each category as a share of the total.
- Breakdown by Payment Method: Where the money went out from, which is useful for reconciling against a card or bank account.
- Breakdown by Vehicle: What each van or car cost, with No vehicle for the expenses that aren't for one. It appears once an expense in the current filters has a vehicle. Each vehicle's costs also count against it in its reports, set against what it earned in the Vehicles Report.
- Colours and grouping: Each slice uses the colour set on the category, payment method or vehicle. Smaller categories beyond the top few are grouped into a single Other slice so the chart stays readable.
Filters And Search
- Search: Search checks descriptions, payment references, linked customer details, and linked job or customer addresses.
- Expense Category: Useful when you want to isolate one spending bucket.
- Date range: Works from the entry date of the expense. Alongside the usual shortcuts you can pick This FY or Last FY to jump straight to a whole financial year.
- Business: Narrows the screen to one business when your login can see more than one.
- Vehicle: Shows once your business has a vehicle, if your role can see vehicles. Narrows the costs, and the summary and charts above them, to one or more vehicles, sold ones included, or to No vehicle.
Working With The Table
- Expense-only view: The page hides the transaction-type filter because this screen is already focused on expenses.
- Open a row: Clicking a row opens the expense details popup.
- Attachment marker: A paperclip beside the description means the expense has a receipt or document attached, which makes it easy to spot the costs still missing paperwork.
- New Expense: Opens the create popup for a new outgoing cost.
- Column selector: Use this when you want extra fields such as VAT, Net Amount, Payment Reference, Vehicle, or linked job details visible in the table.
Why Expenses And Transactions Both Matter
Every expense is still a transaction underneath. Use Expenses when you want the clean cost view. Use Transactions when you need to compare costs against charges, payments, refunds, or other money movement in one ledger.
Related articles
- Creating an Expense: Covers the fields in the new-expense popup.
- Expense Detail View: Shows what you can inspect after opening an expense.
- Transactions List: Useful when you need the expense in the context of the full ledger.
- Transaction Attachments: Explains the paperclip marker and how to attach receipts.