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How do I create an expense?

FreshBooks makes it easy to keep track of your spending with expenses. This is helpful if you're required to document business-related purchases already made for your business and for tax deductions.
Create expenses, as well as recurring expenses that can generate automatically on a frequent basis, especially for subscription-related costs. Upload receipts to your expenses, and mark an expense up for rebilling to your clients anytime.
To learn more about managing your expenses, including duplicate expenses, handling refunds or credits, updating or removing the category, merchant, sales taxes and more with individual and bulk actions, use How do I manage my Expenses? instead.


Create an Expense

There are three ways to create a new expense: 
  • On the Dashboard, select the Create New button, then select Expense
  • Select the Expenses section, then select the New Expense button, if needed, select Manually Create
  • Select the Expenses section, at the top of the list, select the + New Expense button
From the first two ways above, you'll be taken to the New Expense page:
New expense screen with fields to fill out.
  1. A category is required, select Add category to select a category or subcategory (or create your own custom subcategory instead)
  2. To attach a receipt image to the expense, use the steps in How do I attach a receipt to my bills and expenses? here
  3. The Date is automatically set to present day, select to change it to a different date instead
  4. If needed, select Add Merchant and enter in a new merchant or choose from a pre-existing list of merchants you've used before
  5. If needed, select Add description to give more details on the expense
  6. To add taxes, select the Add Taxes link and use the steps in How does sales tax work? here
    1. If you need to override the tax amount with a different total, select inside the tax amount and update it
  7. Next to Grand Total, select in the 0.00 area and enter in the full amount of the expense
  8. Under Expense Settings are a few more options:
    1. If you need to assign this expense to a client/project, or add a markup, select Assign to client/Project and use the steps in How do I rebill expenses? here
    2. To make the expense automatically generate copies on a frequent basis (Make Recurring), go to the Recurring Expense section below
    3. The currency is remembered based on the last expense you created, select Currency to change to a different currency, then select Done to save
  9. When you're done, select the Save button to finish.
 

Create a Quick Expense 

Quick expense section with fields to fill out.
 
If you’re looking to quickly create or edit an expense, use these steps:
  1. From the Expenses section select the + New Expense button above the list
    New Expense button above list of expenses.
  2. Select Add Merchant and enter in a new merchant or choose from a pre-existing list of merchants you've used before
  3. Select Add category to select a category or subcategory (or create your own custom subcategory instead)
  4. The Date is automatically set to present day, select to change it to a different date instead
  5. If needed, select Assign to client/project to assign the expense to a client or to a specific client's project
  6. To add taxes, select the Add Taxes link and use the steps in How does sales tax work? here
    1. If you need to override the sales tax amount with a different total, select the advanced expense settings and follow the remaining steps in the Create an Expense section above
  7. Under Grand Total, enter in the full amount of the expense
  8.  If needed, select Add description to give more details on the expense
  9. To attach a receipt, select the attach receipt link 
  10. When you’re done, select the checkmark button to save the expense. If you’re looking for more settings like adding a markup, make recurring, or change the currency which is remembered from the last expense created, select advanced expense settings instead and follow the remaining steps in the Create an Expense section above.

Create a Recurring Expense

If you have expenses that are identical and repeat on a frequency, use the below steps to set up a recurring expense to take care of creating expenses automatically:
 
Recurring expenses are automatically deleted if your account becomes suspended or cancelled.
 
  1. Select the Expenses section
  2. Then select the New Expense button at the top
  3. On the New Expense screen, under Expense Settings, select Make Recurring
    New Recurring Expense button on an expense creation screen.
  4. Then select the Make Recurring button again to confirm
  5. In the New Recurring Expense area, choose a date under Next Expense Date that you want the first recurring expense to generate on
  6. Next, in the How Often, choose either Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, or Custom as the frequency
  7. In the How Many? field, choose between Infinite or 0 remaining and specify the number of expenses you want it to generate
  8. Add in the rest of your expense details with the remaining steps in Create an Expense section above
  9. Select Save to finish.
 
New and existing recurring expenses will appear in the Recurring Expenses sub-section next to All Expenses inside the Expenses section. From here, you can edit any recurring expense to update it.
Recurring expenses sub-tab above list of expenses.
 
To stop a recurring expense, you can delete it with the below steps: 
  1. In the Recurring Expenses sub-section, check off the box next to the expense
  2. Select the Bulk Actions button
  3. Select Delete.

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