4Lesson 4
· 9 min read

Expense Management & Approvals

Expenses without a system become fraud without intention

When team members pay business expenses from their personal accounts and submit receipts informally, you lose visibility, create accounting chaos, and make reconciliation a nightmare. Proactiq's expense module fixes this end-to-end.

The expense lifecycle

Every expense in Proactiq moves through a defined workflow:

  1. Draft — Employee creates the expense and attaches a receipt
  2. Submitted — Sent to a manager for review
  3. Approved / Rejected — Manager acts on it. Employee gets an email notification automatically.
  4. Reimbursed — Finance marks it paid. Employee gets a second notification.

Submitting an expense

Go to Expenses → New expense. Enter the title, amount, category, and date. Attach a receipt photo using the file upload — this is now stored permanently in Cloudinary and linked to the expense record.

Expense categories

Common categories to set up: Travel, Meals & Entertainment, Software & Subscriptions, Office Supplies, Client Gifts, Training & Development, Communication. Good categories make your P&L readable and your tax filing straightforward.

Receipt rule: No receipt, no reimbursement. Set this as policy from day one. The upload feature makes compliance easy — employees can photo the receipt on their phone before they even leave the restaurant.

Apply this in your Proactiq workspace

Everything covered in this lesson is available in your free account right now. Open your workspace and put this into practice while it's fresh.

Open Proactiq free
Expense Management & Approvals — Finance & Invoicing Mastery | Proactiq Academy | Proactiq OS