Overview of expenses for accountants

Payhawk provides powerful options for monitoring and reporting on your company expenses and seamlessly utilizes its optical character recognition (OCR) functionality to extract expense information from attached receipt notes and invoices automatically.

Every employee at your company can create and submit expenses in Payhawk.
Only Payhawk administrators can define the settings for the expense types at your company and the workflows for approving expense requests and payments.

Types of expenses in Payhawk

Employees at your company can create the following types of expenses:

Card expenses
Bill payments
Company cash
Reimbursement
Mileage
Per diem

Lifecycle of expenses

The following table lists the available tabs under which an expense is positioned depending on its status and based on the approval workflows required by the organization.

Tab	Status details
Submit	The Expenses > Submit tab contains expenses that have the Submit option for the expense type in Workflows switched on and have not been submitted yet. These expenses await employees (or the authorized people on their behalf) to explicitly confirm the expense submission one by one or in bulk by clicking on the Submit button. If the Submit option for all expense types in Workflows is switched off, the Submit tab will be automatically hidden. From here, the authorized people or roles at the company can also: Review expenses. Merge expenses. Split expenses into multiple items. Split card transactions into multiple expenses. Add or remove expenses from subscriptions. (For paid amounts) Download the payment confirmation. View expense history. Delete expenses. Once submitted, the expense will automatically: Move under the Approve tab if the expense requires approval. Move under the Review tab if the expense doesn't require approval.
Approve	The Expenses > Approve tab contains all expenses that have the Submit option of the expense type in Workflows switched on and are pending approval. If you are an approver, you can approve them directly in the Expenses app, either one by one or in bulk. If you are not an approver or if an approval process for all expense types is not required, the Approve tab will be automatically hidden. From here, the authorized people or roles at the company can also: Review expenses. Merge expenses. Return expenses to employees. Split expenses into multiple items. Split card transactions into multiple expenses. Create subscriptions or remove expenses from subscriptions. (For paid amounts) Download the payment confirmation. View expense history. Reject expenses. Delete expenses. Once an expense is approved, it will automatically move under the Review tab.
Review	The Expenses > Review tab contains all expenses that are ready for review. These include the expenses that do not require the submission and, therefore, the approval step when they are created. From here, the authorized people or roles at the company can also: Review expenses in bulk. Merge expenses. Return expenses to employees. Create subscriptions or remove expenses from subscriptions. (For paid amounts) Download the payment confirmation. Split expenses into multiple items. Split card transactions into multiple expenses. View expense history. Reject expenses. Delete expenses. Once the expense has been reviewed, it automatically moves under the Pay tab. In case of a card expense, it will directly move under All.
Pay > Confirm details	The expenses under the Expenses > Pay > Confirm details tab require confirmation of their payment details before the payment is initiated. From here, the authorized people at your company can: Return expenses for review. Create subscriptions or remove expenses from subscriptions. Specify whether a bill needs to be paid immediately after authorization or will be scheduled for payment for a specific or due date. Mark expenses as paid one by one or in bulk. View expense history. Delete expenses. Once done, click on Confirm details and the expense will move under the Pay > Authorize tab.
Pay > Authorize	The expenses under the Expenses > Pay > Authorize tab are all that require authorization for their immediate or scheduled payment. From here, the authorized people at your company can: Return expenses for review. Authorize bills for immediate payment or for payment on their scheduled specific or due date. Override scheduled payments and pay them immediately. Reschedule scheduled or immediate payments. Mark expenses as paid one by one or in bulk. Create subscriptions or remove expenses from subscriptions. View expense history. Delete expenses.
Pay > Scheduled	The Scheduled tab contains all bills that have been scheduled for a specific date or their due date. From here, the authorized people at your company can: Return expenses for review. Override scheduled payments and pay them immediately. Reschedule scheduled or immediate payments. Mark expenses as paid one by one or in bulk. Create subscriptions or remove expenses from subscriptions. View expense history. Delete expenses.
All	The Expenses > All tab contains all expenses regardless of their above-mentioned statuses. From here, for paid expenses, the authorized people at your company can: (For paid amounts) Download the payment confirmation. Create subscriptions or remove expenses from subscriptions. View expense history.

Automatic data extraction with OCR

As part of its expense management solution, Payhawk has developed a native OCR tool, which automatically extracts the relevant information from uploaded invoices and receipt notes, and transfers it to the Payhawk system.

For more information about which expense data is read and automatically populated by the OCR tool, see the article on the automatic population of expense field data in Payhawk.

Checking for duplicate expenses

Payhawk automatically detects duplicate expenses. For example, if an employee submits the same invoice twice—once for a Payhawk card transaction and again as a reimbursement request—the system will flag it.

Duplicate checks are based on all of the following criteria:

Amount
Supplier
Document date
Document number

If a duplicate is found, the system will allow the submission but will display a warning for the reviewer during the review step.

If the submitter edits any of the checked fields, the reviewer will be notified, provided the warning in the review assistant is enabled.

Icons and navigation

For faster and more intuitive navigation, the current state of an expense in Payhawk is indicated with an icon and can be any of the listed in the following table.

Icon	Indication	Details
	The expense is missing a document.	Often, expenses without uploaded documents are card payments waiting for the cardholder to add a receipt note or an invoice.
	The expense has an attached document or is reviewed.	Expenses marked with this icon and having a payment document uploaded also have the required accounting data automatically extracted from the receipt or the invoice. Expenses marked with this icon may have already been reviewed by an accountant even if they don't have an uploaded document.
	The expense is archived.	Archived expenses are read-only and cannot be edited. However, they can be viewed and exported, their payment documents downloaded and their history traced.

Color codes

You can have a quick overview of the expense status based on the following color codes the system utilizes: