Expenses

An expense is money someone spent on a job: a taxi, a stock photo, a print run, a flight. My expenses in the sidebar is where everyone claims, and it is open to every member with the expense permission, not only to Finance.

Expense tracking must be on, with a billing entity and expense categories configured. Tracking follows Finance by default, but an administrator can switch it on independently in Settings > Tracking. See Finance Setup for the claim setup. Switching expense tracking off hides My expenses and prevents new claims while retaining existing records. Finance approval and payment workflows still need Finance.

Claim an expense

Choose New expense and add your receipt inside the form. Runnit reads the receipt in the background and offers what it found, field by field, with how confident it is. Accept a value or type over it. Nothing is submitted, approved or paid off the back of a receipt: reading it only ever suggests.

In the receipt area, select Choose a file, or Photo on a phone. Once a receipt is attached, use Replace to choose another file or the remove button to detach it. Select View receipt to inspect the file in a new tab while keeping your form open. On a narrow screen, these controls sit below the receipt name.

The form asks for:

Field	Notes
Merchant, date, description	The basics
Category	Chooses the tax treatment and where the cost lands
Project and budget line	Where the cost belongs
Amount and tax	Includes tax or Excludes tax, with the tax rate
Paid with	My own money, a Company card or a Company account. Only your own money is reimbursed
On-charge	Charge this to the client, with a markup as a percentage or an amount
Split	One expense across several budget lines by share, which must total 100%

Two special kinds have their own sections:

• Mileage: enter the distance and Runnit values it at the statutory rate for the claim’s date and freezes that rate on the claim. If the rate for your jurisdiction has not been confirmed yet, the claim is blocked and says so rather than guessing.
• Per diem: enter the days, location and salary band. If the matching rate is missing or unverified, saving is refused with an explanation. Your entered fields stay available to correct, and the previously saved claim keeps its category and amount. Ask someone who manages Finance settings to review the rate configuration, or correct the claim details and save again.

Mileage and per diem claims must use the statutory rate’s currency. Choose that currency before saving; this calculation does not convert the rate.

Fixed markup is shared only by the billable splits, including on a zero-cost claim. Non-billable splits add no client charge. The claim total agrees with its lines, and foreign-currency split values keep their rounding remainder.

A category marked as a disbursement passes the amount through at cost with no markup and no outgoing tax, because you are paying it as the client’s agent.

Choose a date and enter zero or a positive amount. If the date is blank or the amount is invalid, the form identifies the field and keeps your entries for correction. Invalid amount text does not save the previous amount. Correct the field, then save or submit again.

Save draft keeps it. Submit sends it for approval, and after that the claim can no longer be edited. You can Discard a saved draft that you own or have permission to manage. Rejected claims and claims whose approval was reversed stay in the history. If a claim is rejected or its approval is reversed, use Save changes to keep corrections, then Submit when it is ready for review again. These claims cannot be discarded.

If saving or submitting says the accounting period is soft closed, the form opens Reason for late expense beside the error. Explain why you need to lodge or correct the expense, then select Save draft, Save changes or Submit again. Your entered details stay in the form. The reason can be up to 1000 characters and applies to both saving and submitting during that visit. Runnit records it and notifies Finance when the change succeeds.

A fully closed period cannot be changed by entering a reason. Ask Finance to reopen the period first.

Check saved categories and allocations

The desktop list shows each claim’s category. On a phone, a claim without a merchant uses its category as the card title. Category unavailable means the saved category’s name could not be loaded; it does not mean the claim has no category.

Open a submitted claim to inspect its saved budget line. The name remains visible when you can read that budget, even though the claim is read-only. Budget line unavailable means the claim has an allocation whose name could not be loaded with your current access. Unallocated means no budget line is selected. Close and reopen the page to retry a failed lookup, or ask your administrator about missing access. Checking these labels does not change the claim.

Status

An expense carries four independent statuses, so you can always tell what is true:

Axis	Values
Approval	Draft, submitted, approved, rejected
Billing	Not billable, unbilled, held for an invoice, invoiced, credited
Payment	Company paid, awaiting reimbursement, in a run, reimbursed
Accounting	Not synced, synced, sync failed

Policy notes

After you submit, Runnit checks the claim and shows what it found: a possible duplicate of the same supplier, amount and date; a total that does not match the receipt; a date outside the project’s dates; a missing receipt over the threshold; a mileage claim over the annual cap. Some notes are warnings and some block the claim, and each says which.

If submission is blocked, the form shows the specific policy explanation, such as a required receipt or missing budget allocation. Your entries remain available, even if no policy notes were saved. The claim remains unsubmitted. Fix the problem, then submit again.

Who can read your receipt

Your receipt is private while you prepare the claim. Once attached, you and people with permission to view, approve or manage that expense can open it. Other members cannot find it in shared file lists or search, or read it through a copied file link. Access follows current permissions, including when a reviewer’s access is removed.

Removing the receipt or discarding the draft does not make the file public. You can still open your own upload while you have expense access. Receipts cannot be copied into another collection or opened through a public document-viewer link. Upload a separate file if you need to share a document for another purpose. If your receipt is already in cloud storage, upload it again through My expenses so the new file is private from the start.

What you can see

You can see the amounts and receipt for your own claims. Reading another person’s claim needs expense viewing, approval or management permission. Its amounts, receipt and private notes also need cost access for every linked project and client. Without that access, the claim’s status and policy finding codes remain visible, and Open shows a read-only review. Missing amounts mean unavailable, not zero. List totals are hidden if any matching claim contributes hidden costs, including claims beyond the current page.

You can edit another person’s draft with expense approval or management permission when its fields are visible. Submitting or discarding it, or applying a receipt reading, needs expense management permission. If the claim cannot be loaded, the form offers no save or submit action.

Approving

Approvers work from the Approvals inbox or from the expense itself. If the claim has an approval request, select Open approval request and decide there. The assigned approvers and approval rules still apply. Claims without an approval request keep their direct Approve and Reject actions. You can also move an eligible expense to a different budget line. Approved expenses count as cost on the budget, and an approved billable expense joins Uninvoiced work ready to on-charge.

When a review returns a claim, Why this claim was returned shows the saved feedback in its expanded details and form when your access includes it. Use the feedback to correct the claim, then Save changes or Submit. A new submission hides the previous rejection message while it waits for review. If the reviewer left no comment, no feedback box appears.

Before deciding, use View receipt in the expense form or approval detail. It remains available on read-only claims and completed approvals when you have permission to read the expense and its file. The file opens in a new tab, so your approval comment stays in place. Close that tab to return to the review.

The approval detail checks the current attachment. It shows when no receipt is attached, or when the check failed. Try again repeats the check without submitting a decision. Being assigned an approval does not grant access to the expense or file; ask your administrator if access is missing.

Unapproving an approved expense reverses its cost. An expense that is already in a reimbursement run cannot be unapproved.

An expense held by an invoice draft or included in an issued invoice also cannot be unapproved or moved to another budget line. Remove it from the draft, or fully credit it for reissue, before correcting it. A partial credit or a write-off credit does not unlock the expense. If the correction is refused, the approval, budget allocation and cost stay unchanged.

After issue, the list and expanded expense both show Invoiced. A correcting credit can make some or all of the expense available to invoice again; any part still invoiced keeps the cost and allocation locked. See Invoicing for credits and corrections. If an older claim is shown as a draft or unapproved but is still invoiced, resolve its invoice before editing, submitting or discarding the claim.

Getting reimbursed

Money you spent yourself is paid back through a reimbursement run. See Paying Suppliers and People. That guide also covers CSV downloads and recovery. If a claim is waiting for a confirmed bank account, a person with expense management and bank details permissions can set up the reimbursement account.

Next step

Order work from suppliers: Purchasing.

Help from Ru

Ask Ru to explain this workflow, inspect records you can access, or carry out supported steps when you authorise them. Your permissions and approval rules still apply. See Finance with Ru.

When Ru includes a compact expense review, it shows the selected claim’s four statuses, visible total, receipt information and up to ten saved policy findings. The coverage line tells you how many findings are shown. Findings from before the last edit remain marked as older checks; an unchecked claim is not treated as passed. Receipt information and amounts stay unavailable when your access does not include them.

Choose Open this expense to review that claim in My expenses. Showing the review does not edit, submit, approve or pay it, or run another policy check. An Awaiting reimbursement status does not by itself mean it is ready to pay.

Approved expenses add their client charge to budget used and their purchase cost to budget cost. Unapproving a claim removes those amounts until it is approved again. Recorded currency values stay in place when exchange rates change. See budget burn.