Expense Tracking Process
This process for tracking expenses is designed to accomplish two objectives:
Provide insight on how our company spends money.
Report accurate information to the IRS.
There are four sections in this post:
1) Walkthrough on a Phone.
2) Walkthrough on a Computer.
3) A Summary of the "Master Expense".
4) How to record sales tax.
Phone Walkthrough
Adding a receipt
The first step is to add a receipt in OMS. This is best done on the day you make the purchase so that you won’t have to keep up with the paper receipt.
1) On the “Expense Tracking” dashboard locate the“Add Receipt” button. Give the receipt a name you can easily identify it later. Examples include, New hire tools, PVC for Belle Vista, or Lowes 3/10/22.
2) Attach a copy of the receipt. You can either upload a file from your phone or take a picture of it directly from this form.
3) Click "Save" to finish.
Categorize a transaction
Once the transaction is posted by Bank of America and uploaded to OMS the following Monday you will need to categorize the purchase.
1) On the “Expense Tracking” dashboard, click the green “Reconcile Transactions” flow button. This will open a view with all your transactions that still require attention. Click on the record ID of one to progress to the next step.
Note that the small number on the button identifies how many transactions you have to categorize. You will need to swipe down and refresh the page to update that number.
2) Resolve the errors presented in the red "ALERT!" box.
Refer to the "Summary of Master Expense" below for more information.
3) Once a receipt is added and all items are accounted for, the transaction will become reconciled and leave your view. Pressing "Save" will exit you from the flow and drop you back on the "Expense Tracking" dashboard.
Repeat until all transactions are reconciled and you're finished!
Computer Walkthrough
Adding a receipt
The first step is to add a receipt in OMS. This is best done on the day you make the purchase so that you won’t have to keep up with the paper receipt.
1) On the “Expense Tracking” dashboard locate the orange“Add Receipt” form. Give the receipt a name you can easily identify it later. Examples include, New hire tools, PVC for Belle Vista, or Lowes 3/10/22.
2) Attach a copy of the receipt. File formats that are photos, such as .PNG, .JPEG and similar should be attached under the “Image” option. File formats like .PDF should be attached under the “Document” option. Note you can also drag/drop files directly onto the form.
3) Click "Save And Add New" to finish.
Categorize a transaction
Once the transaction is posted by Bank of America and uploaded to OMS the following Monday you will need to categorize the purchase.
1) On the “Expense Tracking” dashboard, click the green “Reconcile Transactions” flow button on the left hand side of the screen. This will open a view with all your transactions that still require attention. Click on the record ID of one to progress to the next step.
Note that the small number in the corner of the button identifies how many transactions you have to categorize so you can quickly see if you're caught up.
2) Resolve the errors presented in the red "ALERT!" box.
Refer to the "Summary of Master Expense" below for more information.
3) Once a receipt is added and all items are accounted for, the transaction will become reconciled and leave your view. Pressing "Save" will exit you from the flow and drop you back on the "Expense Tracking" dashboard.
Repeat until all transactions are reconciled and you're finished!
Summary of the Master Expense
The credit card transaction, AKA the Master Expense, will have between 4 and 7 sections. If a section is listed, but you do not see it on your specific transaction, that means that it has no useful information and is being hidden.
The red “ALERT!” section identifies what errors are still on this transaction.
The orange “Receipt” section is where you link the receipt you created earlier to the transaction.
Once you click save it will pull the image/document of the receipt onto the transaction for your reference.
If you don’t have a receipt, but it's telling you that you need one, write that in the “Notes” field and let Jessica Bennett know.
The light green “Item Info” section is how you add items and categories to the transaction.
Fill in the “amount” of the item as it appears on the receipt.
Fill in the “description” so that it can be read by a person.
Assign it to a “category”.
Assign it to a “budget”.
*If it is any budget other than “Department Budget”, link it to the appropriate record.
Press "Save" to confirm. It will add the item then clear these fields.
The dark green “Summary” section will show how much is left to categorize and what items have already been added.
The pink “BofA Info” section will list the information that comes in from Bank of America.
The yellow “Categories” section will show all the child records and items that have been added.
If you need to make adjustments to information you've entered, you can do that here.
The purple "Legacy" section will show the linked Purchase Order on old transactions.
Recording Sales Tax
There are three processes for recording taxes depending on the circumstance.
1) If there are multiple items on the same transaction.
Then add an additional item with a name and category of "Tax" and assign it to the "department budget"
2) If the whole transaction is a single item.
Then add the tax to the cost of that item. That is, the single item on the transaction should equal the full amount of the transaction.
3) If the receipt does not list tax.
Then do nothing.