Searching and managing expense reports

SECURITY  All users can search and manage their own expense reports. Expense report approvers can approve and reject expense reports. Managers can set expense reports as ready to transfer to QuickBooks.

NAVIGATION  My > Timesheets > Expense Reports

NAVIGATION   > Timesheets > Search > Expense Reports or > Timesheets > My... > Expense Reports

  • To display a list of all records of a given entity in your Autotask instance, click Search without applying any filters.

Search results containing more than 25, 50, or 100 records (depending on your Records per page setting) are paginated. Use page navigation to view additional results. At most, 5,000 data record will be retrieved at any one time.

The Active filter defaults to Active on the Organization Search, Contact Search, My Organizations, and My Contacts pages, as well as on the global Search by Organization, Contact (First Name), Contact (Last Name), and Contact (Email). The counters in the My menu also reflect only active entities.

NOTE  There are several options for phone number filters. The Phone filter will look for a contains match that includes any characters (such as - or () ) entered in the filter box. The Organization Search and Contact Search pages have a Phone (numbers only) option that will ignore special characters in the filter and the results. It will do a contains search for just the numbers entered in the filter box. The Contact Search page also allows you to do a Phone (Starts With) search. It will search for phone numbers that start with the value entered in the filter box.

The Expense Report Search page features a Common Filters filter that lets you quickly locate your expense reports by status. Your expense reports can have the following status designations:

Name Description

Expense Reports Waiting My Approval

If you are an expense report approver, this filter will locate expense reports that were submitted to you.

My Expense Reports (All)

All expense reports you have submitted, regardless of status.
My Expense Reports (In Progress) The report has not been submitted.
My Expense Reports (Waiting Approval) The report has been submitted, but neither approved nor rejected by your expense report approver.
My Expense Reports (Approved) The report has been approved. The name of the expense report approver and a date and time stamp are shown in parentheses.
My Expense Reports (Rejected) The report has been rejected by your expense report approver and is once more available for editing. Click the report to open it and view the reason for the rejection, then resubmit.
My Expense Reports (Paid) Expense reports which have been approved for payment by the expense approver and whose status has been updated to Paid by the person issuing the payment. Refer to Searching and managing expense reports. If this step is not performed, the expense report will remain in a status of Approved for Payment, whether or not payment was actually issued.
My Expense Reports (Transferred to QuickBooks) Only available if the QuickBooks Extension is enabled.

The following tool buttons appear above the results list:

Tool Button Description

Many Search pages (but not the widget drill-down tables) allow you to create a new instance of the selected entity. This button is visible before you execute a search:

  • Click New.
  • Contract, Ticket, and Project entities allow you to create several different entity types. Click New and select an option.

For help with populating the fields, refer to the context-sensitive Help of the page that opens.

The results tables of a number of entity searches allow you to edit some columns right in the table. To keep your changes, you must click Save.

  • On the Opportunity Search page, the Closed Date is editable for all opportunities whose status is Closed or Implemented.
  • On the Invoice History and the Invoice accessory tab, the Invoice Number and Date Paid columns can be edited.
  • On the Automated Billing Product Associations page, you associate a Billing Product to a Device.
  • On the Project Payments search page, you can enter an amount into the Add Payment column.
  • On the Expense Reports search, you can enter a QuickBooks Reference Number.

Allows you to discard any changes you made in the table during the current session.

SECURITY  By default, Export is available to users with Admin security level and disabled for all others. It can be enabled for other security levels. Refer to Can export Grid Data.

NOTE  When exporting to CSV: To ensure consistent date/time formatting in the CSV output, we strongly recommend that the user’s date/time format settings in Autotask be identical to the Windows date/time format settings of the computer performing the export. This will prevent conflicts in how the software that generates the report interprets the date/time format.

  1. Click the Export as CSV icon.
  2. A window opens that allows you to download and open the exported file.

NOTE  Note that only the selected columns of the first 5,000 records will be exported.

IMPORTANT  The export file does not contain all fields that are required to re-import the data using the data import templates, and the data headers do not match.

The Column Chooser allows you to customize search results tables throughout Autotask. It determines the following:

  • Which columns are displayed on the table
  • The left-to-right display order of the columns

NOTE   Column Chooser settings on search results tables and some standard reports are part of the user settings stored on the Autotask server. You can log in from any computer and have your column chooser settings applied to your Autotask session. To clear the data stored in your Autotask instance and reset the column chooser settings to the Autotask default settings, click Reset Settings in My >  Miscellaneous > Settings.

To customize the table, do the following:

  1. Click the column chooser icon above the search results. The Column Chooser page opens.

Columns appear either in the Available Columns or the Selected Columns panel.

  1. Double-click a column name or select one or multiple columns and click the left or right arrow to move columns to the other panel.
  2. To change the display order of the columns, select one or multiple columns in the Selected Columns panel and click the up or down arrows.

NOTE  Top-to-bottom order in the Selected Columns list becomes left-to-right order on the Search Results list.

  1. Click Save & Close.

NOTE  If the characters + # appear after the column name, then that column may have multiple items returned for some rows. If that occurs, the first item will appear in the row followed by + and the number of additional items returned. To display the list of additional items, hover over the item in the column.

Click the refresh icon to execute the search on the current table again, using the same search criteria to find new records that were added since you first performed the search.

Option Available for Available on bulk menu? Description

Actions

View Expense Report

All users

 

Select to open an expense report.

Users can see their own expense reports, approvers can additionally see expense reports of resources they are the approver for.

If you are the resource and the report status is In Progress or Rejected, you can add or edit expense items and attachments.

Rejected reports will show the reason for rejection at the top of the page.

If you are the approver, the Approve or Reject Expense Report page will open. Refer to Approving or rejecting expense reports.

Edit Expense Report Properties

 All users

 

Select to modify information at the expense report level.

Users can edit expense reports with a status of In Progress or Rejected.

Approvers can edit expense reports with a status of Awaiting Approval. Refer to Adding or editing an expense report.

Copy Expense Report

 All users

 

Refer to Copy an expense report.

Submit Expense Report

 All users

Select this option to submit the expense report to your approver.

Submitted expense reports cannot be edited.

Approve Expense Report

Expense report approvers

Select this option to change the status of the expense report to Approved for Payment.

Expense reports updated to the status of Approved for Payment appear in My > Timesheets > Expense Reports for the resource who submitted the report. Refer to Approving or rejecting expense reports.

Reject Expense Report

 Expense report approvers

Select this option to reject an expense report. Refer to Approving or rejecting expense reports.

The report disappears from your "Waiting Approval" list and is returned to the user so they can fix the issues you identified. It must be resubmitted by the user.

Set Expense Report as Paid

 Expense report approvers

Changes the status of an expense report to Paid. This has nothing to do with actually issuing payment. It is a housekeeping option that shows the user that payment has been issued.

Set Expense Report as UnPaid

 Expense report approvers

 

Changes the status of an expense report back to Approved for Payment. This is a housekeeping option that indicates to the user that payment is about to be issued.

Delete Expense Report

 All users

 

Select this option to delete the expense report (after confirmation). You can only delete your own expense reports with a status of In Progress or Rejected, not reports where you are the approver.

IMPORTANT  Deletion cannot be undone.
QuickBooks (Web Connector)

Set as Ready to Transfer to QuickBooks

Managers

This section is only visible if the new QuickBooks integration is enabled.

The menu items are active for approved expense reports. Manager security level is required.

Expense Reports that are set to "Ready..." will be transferred the next time the Web Connector is run.

Set as Not Ready to Transfer to QuickBooks

Managers

If your Autotask instance has the Multi-currency feature enabled, the Amount to Reimburse is shown both in the internal currency and in the reimbursement currency.

If you find that you submit the same expenses from one expense period to the next, you can copy an existing expense report to create a new report with the same expenses.

NOTE  Expense report attachments are not copied.

  1. To open the page, use the path(s) in the Security and navigation section above.
  2. On the Expense Report Search page, select Copy Expense Report from the context menu.

The New Expense Report window opens. The Name and Cash Advance fields are pre-populated from the original report. The Period Ending field is set to the current day. All fields can be edited. Refer to Adding or editing an expense report.

  1. Edit if needed and click Save & Close. To display the new expense report on the table, click the Refresh icon above the table. The status of the copied report will be In Progress.
  1. Select View Expense Report to open the report.

Each Expense line item in the new report is copied exactly from the original report, except for the Expense Date. The Expense Date is re-calculated, based on the difference, in days, between the item’s Expense Date on the original report and the original report's Period Ending date.

For example, if the original report's Period Ending date is May 7, and the report includes Expense A, dated May 5, then the difference between the dates is 2 days.

So, if the copy's Period Ending date is set to June 10, then the date for the copied Expense A will be June 8, that is, June 10 minus 2 days.

  1. To edit any line item, click the item to open the Edit Expense window. Refer to Adding and editing expenses.