Creating Expense Categories and Configuring Rules and Policies

Administrators can add new expense categories at any time into Nexonia. Once added, they are ready for use immediately for all Nexonia users to code their expenses with.

  Note for customers using Intacct (with T&E integration), NetSuite, or Dynamics GP based integrations: expense categories will be created via your configuration sync. This article will cover how to configure the category once it's been integrated into Nexonia.

To add a new expense category, navigate to: Settings > Company > Expenses > Categories.

Click Add if you'd like to create a new expense category or click the  next to an expense category if you need to configure an existing category.

Most fields do not require the default value to be changed. However, we will cover the more common settings when configuring an expense item:

• Name: Fill in the name of the category as it will appear for selection when creating expenses
• Number (Optional): While primarily used in Reporting, the internal ID for your category or the GL value could be populated here. If your chart of accounts is non-integrated, this may be mandatory for your configuration.
• Type: Most expenses will be Regular. The other common types are Distance (Mileage) & Per Diems. For information on these, please refer to the respective article:
• Managing a Mileage Expense Category
• Managing a Per Diem Expense Category
• Multi-Date: No (default) only requires a single transaction date for the expense. For some unique categories like Airfare or Hotel, a multi-date option is available which requires users to fill in a "From" and "To" date.
• Has Tip: Typically changed to Yes for categories like Meals & Taxi. When turned on, the expense item will have an additional field above the Total field where users can indicate how much of the total was a tip.
• Account: Select your GL Account from the dropdown list if your Chart of Accounts has been uploaded/integrated with Nexonia. This will let the export know which GL to use when exporting expenses in this category to your ERP or accounting system.

• Memo: Nexonia's memo field, more commonly referred to as a business purpose, is a text based field at the end of an expense intended to capture additional details about an expense. This can be optional, required or turned off if unnecessary.
• Attendees: Like Tip, Attendees also fits well with entertainment and meal based categories. The field can be optional or required. As users add attendees to their expenses, Nexonia will remember those names and create a recently used list per user.
• Attendees Default: If Attendees is on, typically this option should be set to Employee so that when a user starts to add attendees to their expenses, their name is already selected as a default.

• Policy amounts per attendee: If set to Yes, policy limits will be applied based on the number of attendees on the expense item.
• Policy Amounts: This controls how the policy limits are applied:
  • Per item (default) - the individual expense item cannot exceed the amount defined.
  • Per report, per day - the total of all expense items that are in the same expense report, use the same expense category and have the same transaction date cannot exceed the amount defined. 
• Receipt Default: this settings controls the Receipt field in an expense item - Yes (default)) means you're expecting a receipt to be attached to this expense type, No means you do not.
  • Note: this does not determine if the item is a policy violation, those rules are set in the Policy section as outlined below.

Expense Policy Rules 

Expense Policy rules can be set at the bottom of the page. Nexonia supports setting both a warning (Policy Warning) or a blocker (Prevent Submit). An item that triggers a policy warning can still be submitted to the approver, but will flag it to the submitter and the approver. An item that triggers a submit blocker will not be permitted to be submitted until it complies with the policy rule. Only administrators are permitted to submit items with a submit blocker.

Based on your specific expense policy requirements, you can configure based on some common criteria:

• If value above...: Specify the maximum amount allowed per expense item.
• Tip Above (%): Specify the maximum percentage allowed for tip (requires Tip field to be set to Yes)
• If no receipt and value above...: Specify the maximum amount allowed per expense item when missing a receipt. 
•  Note: The Receipt field on an expense needs to be set to No for this policy to take effect.
• Policy Text: Enter any guidelines you'd like the users to to see when they use this category.
  

In the example below for "Parking", we've included the following policy rules:

• Guidelines in the Policy Text on what we expect in the memo field.
• Any expenses over $50.00 will be blocked from submission.
• Any expenses missing a receipt and having a value of $0.00 - $20.00 will be allowed to be submitted but flagged to the approver.
• Any expenses missing a receipt and having a value above $20.00 will be blocked from submission.
• Any expenses submitted over 30 days old will be flagged to the approver.