3. Expense Handling

This lesson explains how to handle expenses on projects. This means you can determine whether an expense cost should be charged back to the client and factored into invoicing, absorbed as a cost to the business, or accommodated into an agreed allowance.

Step 1: Go to you dashboard by clicking the Home tab and find the Live Project Status box.

Step 2: Click on a project’s Budget vs. Actual traffic light to go straight to the Budget vs. Actual page of that project.

TIP: If you right-click and open in a new tab, you can work down all of your Live projects and open up their Budget vs. Actuals in tabs contained within one window. This makes it quicker and easier to work through each project one-by-one, closing the tabs as you go.

Step 3: Scroll down to the Unhandled Expenses area of the Budget vs. Actual, where you will see all unhandled project expense items, listing:

1. Resource – The CMAP user the expense relates to
2. Date – The date the expense was incurred
3. Description – A description of the expense item e.g. 'Hotel for client meeting'
4. Status – Where it’s up to in the financial approval process e.g., 'Open', 'Awaiting Payment', etc.
5. Value – The value in the default currency i.e. GBP
6. Handling Options – A dropdown box to select the relevant handling option

NOTE: If Point 6, the Handling Options dropdown box is unavailable, that’s because the expense item is still awaiting financial approval. Only approved expense items can be handled.

Step 4: Click into the dropdown box to select the relevant handling approach:

1. Charge – If the expense item is to be charged back to the client
2. No charge – If the expense item isn’t to be charged back to the client
3. Allowance – If the expense item should be factored into an existing budgeted allowance for expenses

Step 5: Once handled, the expense item will move to the Handled Expenses area of the Budget vs. Actual page.

NOTE: Expense items set to Charge are added to the Additionals area of the Budget and CMAP automatically sets both the cost and sale price to match the value of the expense item.

NOTE: Expense items set to Charge will prompt the Invoicing traffic light on the Live Project Status dashboard to turn red since the total of scheduled invoices will now differ by the amount of the chargeable expense item. This prompts project managers to remember to bill their chargeable expenses.