Expense Tracking Overview

Expense tracking is one of the most fundamental aspects of professional services. In the course of delivering engagements for clients, you will often incur expenses that you will want to charge back to the client. Without accurate expense tracking, the team will fail to invoice properly and the business will underperform. Ruddr provides simple, yet powerful, expense tracking functionality.

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Expense Reports

All expenses in Ruddr must be contained within an expense report. An expense report is a logical grouping of expense items. You can group expenses and name expense reports in a manner that best suits your organization. Clicking on the Expenses option (Figure 1) in the nav bar will show your list of expense reports (Figure 2). You can adjust the results by selecting a specific year in the Year filter. Figure 1 - Expense Reports in the Expenses Area Figure 2 - Expense Reports You cannot create expense items without first creating an expense report. To create an expense report, click the New Expense Report button at the bottom of the expense report list screen (Figure 2). To learn more, see the Create an expense report article.

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Expense Items

When you click on an expense report, you will be shown a report summary at the top and then the list of individual expense items (Figure 3). The summary will include the amount reimbursable to the member, the amount billable to the client, and the total amount of the expense report. Figure 3 - Details of the Expense Report Include a Report Summary and the Individual Expense Items To add an expense item to a report, simply click the New Expense Item button at the bottom of the page. To learn more, see the Add expense items to an expense report help article.

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Expense Approval

Each project in Ruddr can have expense approvals set to automatic or manual. For projects with manual approval, once all of your expenses are entered, you can click the Submit for Approval button (Figure 4) at the bottom of the screen. The button label will show the number of expense items that will be submitted for approval. Figure 4 - The Number of Expense Items being Submitted with this Report Displays on the Submit Button If you realize that you need to add more expense items to a report, you can add those items and then click the Submit for Approval button again to submit just the new items for approval. It is important to realize that expense reports as a whole do not get approved in Ruddr; only the individual expense items get approved. As discussed in General Workspace Settings, default time and expense approval settings can be set for the workspace. However, each project in Ruddr can be set up for either manual or automatic expense approval, depending on the requirements of the project. If a project uses automatic expense approval, expense items will be immediately approved by Ruddr when they are created. If the project uses manual expense approval and the Multi-Step Approval Workflow is disabled in the workspace, the Project Admin will be notified to review and approve submitted time items. Expense approval configuration is set within the Approval Options section (Figure 5) of the Edit Project drawer. Figure 5 - Project Approval Options without Multi-Step Approval Workflow Feature Enabled When a project is configured for manual expense approval, the Project Admin of the project will be notified any time expenses are submitted for approval for that project. The Project Admin is responsible for evaluating and approving (or rejecting) each expense item for the project. If a project is configured for automatic expense approval, the expense items will be immediately approved when they are created. Multi-Step Approval Workflow If your workspace has the Multi-Step Approval Workflow feature enabled and your approval options are set to Manual, then you will be able to specify whether you want to leverage the workspace’s default approval workflow or if you want to specify a custom workflow for this project. For more information, view the Managing Multi-Step Approval Workflows article in the Ruddr Help Center. To learn more, see the Expense approval help article.

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Member Selector

If your security role has the Administer time and expenses permissions, you will see a Member selector (Figure 6) at the top-right of the expense report list. This allows you to select and impersonate any member of the workspace to which you have access. Figure 6 - Leverage the Member Selector to View/Manage Expense Items for other Members in your Workspace When impersonating another member, you will see that member’s expense reports. Clicking on one of the member’s expense reports will show all of the expense items associated with that report. As a member with time and expense administration rights, you will be able to make edits to the expense items so long as those items are not associated with a published invoice or archived project. Any edits you make to an expense item will be reflected in the history of the expense item. To learn more, see the View and manage expense items of other members article.

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Exporting Expense Reports

Often times, members and/or expense auditors may need to export the information related to an expense report. Ruddr provides the ability to export an expense report, including data for each of the expense items in that report. By clicking the export button at the top right of the Expense Report Detail screen (Figure 7), users can specify a format and download a copy of the expense report. Exporting an expense report to ZIP will create a compressed file (.zip) containing a PDF copy of the report and all receipts uploaded with the expenses. Figure 7 - Export an Expense Report