4. Expense Handling (AEC Version)

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 your 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. GBP – The value in the default currency i.e. GBP
6. Dropdown box – A dropdown box to select whether the Expense is Chargeable or Retention

NOTE: If the Expense is given a status as Retention from the dropdown menu, the Expense will then move to under the Handled Expenses heading of the Budget vs. Actual page.  If the Expense is given a status of Chargeable, a box will appear asking you to 'Select the additional cost to associate this expense item to'.  Any additional costs that you have will then appear in a dropdown box to you to choose from.  You can then click save to save the Chargeable Expense Item.

NOTE: Expense items set to Chargeable 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 Chargeable 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.