Track rebillable expenses

A flight, a contractor invoice, a licence bought for one engagement. Each one changes what a project made, and the only thing deciding which way is whether the client pays it back.

Expenses live on the project under Finance, next to the margin figures they feed. If you can log expenses but cannot see the project’s costs, the same place is called Expenses instead (see If your tab says Expenses).

File an expense

Steps

1. Open the project, choose More on the tab bar, then Finance (or Expenses). On Finance, select the Expenses and revenue section below the summary figures (the tab opens on Overview). In the Expenses panel, click New expense.
2. Fill in What was it for, the Amount, and the Category (Travel, Accommodation, Meals, Equipment, Software, Subcontractor, or Other).
3. Set the currency to the one the money actually left your account in. It defaults to the project’s.
4. Decide Rebill this to the client, on by default.
5. Click Add expense. It saves as a Draft.

Note

The exchange rate is recorded when you file, not when somebody reads the report months later, so a rate that moves next quarter cannot rewrite what this cost you.

Rebillable or absorbed

Setting	Meaning	Effect on margin
Rebillable (default)	The client pays it back	Nets to zero: cost and revenue both rise by the amount.
Absorbed	Your firm swallows it	Reduces margin by the full amount.

Rebillable nets to zero rather than adding revenue because passing a £400 flight on at cost earns you nothing. Counted as revenue with no matching cost, every rebilled expense would look like profit, and a month of heavy travel would read as your best month.

There is no markup option. An expense is passed through at cost or absorbed in full.

Caution

Rebillable is not the same as the project being billable. A billable project can still carry costs you eat. If a rebillable expense sits on a non-billable project, the project wins and it counts as absorbed.

Approval

State	Meaning
Draft	Yours. Nobody else sees it.
Submitted	Waiting on an approver.
Approved	Counted. The only state that reaches the margin report.
Returned	Sent back with a reason shown on the row. Fix it and submit again.

Submit your own Draft with Submit for approval, or pull it back with Withdraw while it is still Submitted. Your own submitted claim reads Another approver decides this.

An approver has two choices on somebody else’s submitted claim:

• Approve counts it.
• Return with a reason sends it back. A reason is required, up to 1,000 characters, and the claimant sees it on the row, so say what to fix.

To fix a Draft or a Returned claim, click Edit on its row. A returned claim’s form shows Returned: and the reason above the fields. Change the amount, description, currency, date, category or whether it is rebillable, save, then Submit for approval again from the list, which clears the reason. Changing the currency records that currency’s rate at that moment; other changes keep the rate the claim was filed with.

Only the person who filed a claim can edit it. An approver approves or returns, and never rewrites somebody else’s claim.

Who can approve is the same rule as timesheets: your nominated approvers if the workspace names any, otherwise Owners, Admins and Portfolio Managers. You can never approve your own claim even as an approver, and the button never appears on your own rows.

Caution

Approved is final. There is no un-approve, because reversing one would move a margin figure somebody has already reported. Correct a wrong claim with an offsetting entry.

From Onplana Tasks

The Onplana Tasks apps file and follow claims without opening the web app, so the taxi gets logged in the taxi.

App	File one	See yours
Browser extension	🧾 beside the add box	Your expenses at the top of the form
Windows and Mac	🧾 beside the add bar, or Log an expense in the command palette	Your expenses in the command palette
Android	Tap +, then Log expense	Tap +, then Your expenses

Whatever you typed in the add box becomes the claim’s description. It saves as a Draft, and your list opens with it at the top and Submit beside it. Claims from the apps are filed as rebillable, the default; to file one as absorbed, use the web app.

Filing needs a connection. Offline, the app says so rather than saving the claim to send later, because a claim sent twice is a double charge somebody has to catch. See the browser extension, Windows, Mac and Android guides.

Deleting a claim

You can delete a claim only while it is your own Draft. After that it is in somebody else’s queue.

Caution

A deleted expense does not go to the recycle bin. Expenses are the one record in Onplana that departs from the recover-it-later default. Withdraw rather than delete if you might want it back.

Reading the totals

The header shows Approved cost, Rebillable (how much of it you expect back), and a count awaiting approval. Both figures are per currency and never added together, because one blended number would move with the exchange rate rather than with your spending.

A cost you know about but cannot find in the margin report is almost always sitting in Submitted, not lost.

If your tab says Expenses

A project’s budget and earned value are shown only to people who can see the project’s costs. A project member who can log expenses but cannot see costs still needs somewhere to file them, so for them the section under More is called Expenses instead of Finance.

It holds the expenses panel and nothing else: no budget, no earned value, and no Compliance tab. The list shows your own claims only, and the total reads Your approved cost. People who can see the project’s costs, and expense approvers, see everyone’s submitted claims. Nobody sees somebody else’s Draft.

Related

• See your margin, where approved expenses land.
• Export to your accounting system, which sends approved expenses on as invoice lines.