Edition: Professional, Business, Enterprise
User-level: All user levels, with access modified in the security matrix
Previous steps: Office item rates
Enter Office Expenses for project-related tasks that your team complete. Office expense transactions can be on-charged to your client on project invoices.
What are office expenses?
Office expenses are fixed-cost items that you produce in your office for project-related tasks. The office expense items are shown in the list of project expense transactions and can be on-charged to your client on a project invoice.
For example:
Printing black & white or colour - per page charge $3.00
Photocopying - per page charge $1.00
Binding - $10.00 per document
Presentation kits - $50 per kit
Survey equipment hire - $180 per day rate
Create a different office item rate for each variation of these office tasks you want to on-charge the costs for. Such as a different office item for each paper size (e.g. letter, A3, A4, B1, A0), document types, photocopying type, or binding.
Why use office expenses?
Track all the related project expenses for tasks completed within your office, and on-charge these costs to clients on project invoices.
Unlike Cash or Travel expenses, office expenses are not linked to a staff. This means the transactions created will not show up linked to any staff names in reporting, and the costs for office expenses are not derived from staff costs either. See the Rates article for more information on how the costs are calculated.
The Office Expenses List
The Office Expenses list can be found from the Side Navigation > Financials > Office Expenses.
Columns available
Details are shown in the office expenses list
Project - Select the project the office expense transaction will be linked to. This can be any billable or non-billable project for the open organisation. If the expense is not linked to any of these projects, then link it to the internal project, which is used to track non-specific internal costs.
Stage - Select which stage from the project this expense was completed for.
Task (optional) - Optional field that allows you to choose which project task the expense is related to.
Date - The date the office expense is set to. Usually, the date the expense was incurred.
Rate - Select the fixed cost rate. This controls the per-unit cost with which the expense cost is calculated.
Note - Type a description of what the expense was for, which can be shown on the invoice to the client.
Invoice - This will populate with the invoice number the expense has been allocated to. If the expense is not on an invoice, it will be blank.
Units - The number of units used for the transaction. E.g. 2 days rental for the surveying equipment, or 5 pages of colour printing.
Total - The total value of the transaction. This is the rate of fixed cost value times the number of units. E.g. $180 per day for equipment rental is the rate fixed cost. The equipment is rented for 2 days (2 units). Total cost is $180 x 2 = $360.00.
Add an office expense
The top row of the list is where you will enter a new office expense, indicated with a + icon.
Select the project that the expense is related to from the dropdown.
Select the stage.
(Optional) Select a project task to link the expense against.
Select the rate. This controls the per-unit fixed cost for the type of expense. e.g. Printing colour A4 - $3 per unit.
Set the date of the expense.
Type a note to describe the reason for the expense. This can be shown on the project invoice to the client and seen by the project team in the transactions tab.
Type the number of units. This is used to calculate the total for the expense. e.g. If 5 x A4 colour pages were printed then 5 units are entered here.
Save.
The new office expense will move to the list below. The list is automatically arranged by date descending from latest to oldest.
Delete an office expense
The delete an office expense option is only available if the office expense line has not yet been invoiced. If the saved line has already been invoiced, then the row action button is hidden.
Single row - To delete a single office expense, click the row action button and select 'Delete'.
Multi-row - To delete multiple office expenses at once, select the checkbox(es) on the row left for each item you want to delete. Then choose 'delete' in the bulk action menu at the bottom of the list.
After the delete action has been processed, the list is refreshed and the office expense(s) will be removed.
Deleting an office expense cannot be reversed. If you accidentally delete an office expense, you will need to manually re-enter it.
Edit an office expense
Editing an office expense is only possible if the expense transaction has not yet been invoiced. If the saved line has already been invoiced, then the row action menu will not be visible.
To edit an office expense:
Click the row action menu and go to Edit
Edit the details needed. You will only be able to amend these fields:
Office Expense Date
Note
Units
Click Save.
If you need to change other fields like the project or stage, there are two options. You can either WIP Transfer the expense to the appropriate project or stage, or you will need to delete the expense and re-enter it.