Expense Management: From Receipt Chaos to Clean Approvals

The problem with informal expense tracking

When employees pay business expenses from personal accounts and submit receipts via WhatsApp or email, you get: missing receipts, duplicate claims, delayed reimbursements, and a reconciliation nightmare at month-end. More seriously, undocumented expenses create GST input credit problems — you can't claim ITC on an expense without a valid GST invoice.

How the Proactiq expense lifecycle works

Every expense goes through a defined 4-stage workflow:

1. Draft — Employee creates the expense entry and attaches the receipt
2. Submitted — Sent to the assigned manager for review
3. Approved / Rejected — Manager acts on it. Employee receives an automatic email notification with the decision and any comments.
4. Reimbursed — Finance marks it paid after bank transfer. Employee receives a second notification with the payment date and reference.

Submitting an expense

Go to Finance → Expenses → New expense. Fill in:

• Title — What the expense was for (e.g., "Client dinner — Bangalore")
• Amount — Exact amount as shown on the receipt
• Category — Travel, Meals, Software, Office Supplies, etc.
• Date — Date of the expense, not the date of submission
• Vendor GSTIN (optional) — Required to claim input tax credit on this expense
• Receipt — Upload a photo or PDF. Stored permanently. Linked to this expense record forever.

Setting up expense categories

Go to Finance → Expense Categories to create your category list. Good categories:

• Travel & Conveyance
• Meals & Entertainment
• Software & Subscriptions
• Office Supplies & Equipment
• Training & Development
• Client Gifts
• Professional Services (CA, legal, consulting)
• Advertising & Marketing

Your chart of accounts should match these categories — it makes month-end P&L reconciliation significantly faster.