New expense

Here's how to record your out-of-pocket expenses (your own money that you spend on business expenditure) on FreeAgent.

Where to start?

If you're a sole trader, and have no staff, start by clicking on the Expenses menu.

If your business is a limited company or partnership, or a sole trade with staff, choose Expenses from the My Money menu.

Or, you can quickly start setting up a new expense by choosing New Expense from the Quick Links menu on the Overview screen.

1. Choose the user

Make sure you have the right user selected, the person who spent this money personally.

Very first expense: no user visible

The very first expense you create on your FreeAgent account doesn't give you the option to choose the user.  This expense has to be for yourself.

If you don't have any expenses to record, put in a dummy expense and then next time you record an expense you'll be able to see the users drop-down menu.

You can always delete your dummy expense later.

For all expenses you've paid for personally, except for mileage in your own car which is dealt with separately, click Add New Expense.

2. Create New Expense

Payment or refund

Choose whether this was a payment or a refund. It'll usually be a payment but sometimes you might need to record a refund, for example if the employee was personally paid back for something he or she has previously claimed on expenses, such as a train ticket which was not used because there were engineering works in progress.

Category and VAT

Choose the category for the expense. Make sure it's in the right area for VAT. For example, if your employee bought some stamps at the post office, make sure that you categorise this as Postage so that no VAT is claimed on it.

You can add new categories too.

Date and amount

Enter the date of the expense.

Enter the amount of the expense, as on the employee's receipt. Put the figure in inclusive of any VAT. Remember, if you need to override the default Auto VAT setting, you can choose from a set percentage, or choose Amount from the menu if you need to manually enter VAT.

Description

Put a description of what this was for. You might also want to make a note of why the employee incurred it, particularly if it's a tax-sensitive expense such as business entertaining.

Link to project

You can link this expense to a project...

...and optionally re-bill it to that project's customer, at cost or with a mark-up.

Recurring

If this expense is going to happen again in the future, for the same employee and same amount as before, for example, a mobile phone voucher, use the Recur option to put it in again automatically.

Once you've finished entering the expense, click Create New Expense to save it, Create and Add Another to save this expense and start entering another one, or Cancel to close this screen without saving the expense.

That's it. Job done.

The expense has been added to the list of costs incurred by this user which he or she can expect the business to pay back for.

I've made a mistake entering my expenses.

You can edit expenses up to and until you file your VAT return.

I want my business to pay me back for what I've spent.

Naturally you do.