Expenses

Track business expenses, scan receipts, manage workspace categories with their own VAT defaults, and let depreciation schedules run automatically for investments.

Overview

The expenses page lists every recorded expense. Filter by category, project, date range or status. Click an expense to open the detail page; click New to add one manually, or Scan receipt to extract one from an image or PDF.

Categories

Categories are stored per workspace in the expense_categories table — they aren't a hardcoded enum. Each category carries:

• A key (slug used by the API and the form).
• A VAT treatment default (see below).
• A deduction percentage for partially-deductible categories.
• An auto-flag investment flag that turns matching expenses into investments automatically.
• A default useful-life in months for the depreciation engine.

The setup wizard seeds an industry-tailored set on top of the eleven system defaults, so a software-heavy workspace ends up with extra keys like cloud_services_eu, while a hospitality workspace might get food_client_meeting. New categories from the wizard validate the same way as system defaults — unknown or mistyped keys are rejected with a 400. Edit, archive or add categories from the categories settings page.

Creating an expense

Manual entry

1. Go to Expenses > New.
2. Type the supplier name. The supplier autocomplete suggests previously-used vendors as you type.
3. Pick a category. The form pulls the category's default VAT treatment, default VAT rate hint and deduction percentage straight into the matching fields. If a workspace-wide default expense category is set under workspace settings, it is pre-filled here.
4. Fill in the description, amount excl. VAT, VAT rate and date. The VAT rate and the payment method are pre-filled from your workspace defaults (set under workspace settings as "Standard VAT rate expenses", default expense category and default payment method). The VAT amount is calculated automatically; you can also enter the inclusive amount and let the form back out the components.
5. Optionally set the VAT treatment (overrides the category default), customer, project, reference and notes. The pre-filled category and payment method can be overridden on a per-expense basis.
6. Optionally attach a receipt.
7. Click Save.

Generate from supplier

When you're creating a new expense and you've typed a supplier name, the Generate button (sparkles icon, top right) runs an LLM prefill. It uses the supplier and any partial inputs to suggest a description, category, VAT treatment, amount and date. If the form's VAT rate still matches your workspace default, the prefill will overwrite it with what it finds on the receipt; otherwise it leaves your override alone. Review the result before saving — the prefill is a draft, not an autopilot.

From a template

When creating a new expense, click Start from template (only shown when you have saved expense templates). Pick a template and the form fills itself in place with the saved supplier, category, amount and other data. Adjust anything you need, then click Save.

From bank transactions

When your bank feed is connected, categorised outgoing transactions are automatically turned into draft expenses. Each one carries the transaction's counterpart as supplier, the absolute amount as gross, the category's default VAT rate and treatment, and the transaction's booking date. Draft expenses first appear in the bank-feed review inbox, where you can confirm, edit, or reject them before they land in your books. See reviewing auto-imported expenses for the full workflow.

Receipt scanner

For image or PDF receipts:

1. Go to Expenses > Scan receipt.
2. Upload a JPEG, PNG, WebP or PDF file.
3. Choose Single (one expense from the receipt) or Multiple (split a receipt into separate expenses).
4. Review the extracted supplier, date, amount, VAT and category.
5. Confirm to create the expense(s).

Receipt scanning is available on every plan, including Free. The number of scans per month depends on your plan.

VAT treatment

Every expense has a vat_treatment field that decides how it lands on your VAT return:

Value	Meaning
standard	Domestic VAT charged by the supplier — the default.
b2b_reverse_charge	Verleggingsregeling: you self-account for the VAT on an EU B2B purchase.
vat_exempt	The supply is exempt from VAT.
foreign_vat_charged	A non-EU supplier charged you VAT (typically reclaimable through the EU refund procedure).

The treatment is normally inherited from the category default. Override it on a per-expense basis when reality differs — for example, a Software-category expense from a US vendor that did charge VAT instead of applying the EU reverse-charge default.

Multi-rate lines

Receipts that mix VAT rates (a supermarket bill with food at 9% and drinks at 21%, say) are recorded on the expense's lines column — a JSONB array on the expenses table:

[
  { "description": "Food",  "amount_excl_vat": 22.50, "vat_rate": 9,  "vat_amount": 2.03 },
  { "description": "Drinks", "amount_excl_vat": 12.00, "vat_rate": 21, "vat_amount": 2.52 }
]

When lines is null or empty, the flat fields (amount_excl_vat, vat_rate, vat_amount, amount_incl_vat) are the source of truth — the single-rate path is unchanged. When lines is present, the line totals drive the flat fields and aggregators iterate the lines for accuracy on the VAT return.

INFO

The form UI for adding lines from the screen is a follow-up — at the moment lines are settable through the API. Single-rate entry from the form works exactly as before.

Depreciation for investments

Categories with auto_flag_investment = true (typically equipment and other capex) turn an expense into an investment automatically:

• The expense is marked is_investment = true.
• A monthly depreciation schedule is generated using the category's useful_life_months (default 60 if unset).
• The schedule uses straight-line depreciation with daily pro-rata for the first and last calendar month, in line with Belastingdienst guidance.
• Lines live in expense_depreciation_lines and feed your reports.

Editing the category, date or amount on an existing expense re-triggers the recompute — old lines are deleted and a fresh schedule is written. Toggling an expense out of an investment-flagged category cleans up the depreciation lines too.

Linking and filtering

Link expenses to:

• Projects — Track project costs.
• Customers — Associate purchases with a client (e.g. for rebillable expenses).
• Suppliers — Free-form supplier name; reused vendors surface in the autocomplete.

Filters on the list cover category, project, customer, date range and status (active vs archived).

Bulk actions

Select multiple expenses for:

• Categorize — Re-assign the category (re-runs the depreciation hook for newly-investment-flagged rows).
• Archive — Move to archive.
• Delete — Permanently remove.
• Export — Download as CSV.

Mileage allowance

If you drive a private car for business trips, you can book those trips as a single expense with a mileage allowance.

1. Go to Expenses and open the mileage allowance flow.
2. Pick the period you want to book.
3. Select the trips to include.
4. Click Book as expense.

The expense is created with one line for the total business kilometres.

If your workspace uses a company car, the actual car costs are already booked as expenses, so a separate mileage allowance is not needed.

Recurring expenses

For predictable costs (rent, subscriptions, hosting), set up recurring expenses to generate the records on schedule.

Import

Import historical expenses from CSV via Profile > Import > Expenses. Map your columns to the expense fields, preview, and confirm.

Tips

• Pick the right category first — VAT treatment, deduction percentage and the investment flag all flow from it.
• Set your workspace default VAT rate, default expense category and default payment method in Workspace settings to stop the form starting with empty fields every time. A 0% VAT setting works correctly; the form treats it as intentional.
• Use the per-expense VAT treatment override sparingly; if you find yourself overriding every entry in a category, the category default is wrong and should be edited.
• Always attach receipts. The pre-filing checks on the VAT page flag missing receipts before you file.
• For mixed-rate receipts, use the lines API path until the form UI ships — single-rate entry is fine for everything else.
• Investment expenses can take a moment to recompute when you change the date or amount. The depreciation lines refresh in the background.