Expense Management

Expand-All Collapse-All

The Expenses tool allows you to associate an expense (or expenses) with:

Forms
Events
Interviews
Trips
Stops

Each expense has multiple properties associated with it, such as type, status, total, and user. You can either upload or photograph a receipt for an expense, which Slate can scan, interpret, (using optical character recognition; OCR), and use to set the aforementioned expense properties.

Currently, it's not possible to adjust the currency from USD (e.g., entering an expense in EUR).

Configuring Expense Types and Statuses

Expense Types

Expense types characterize expenses, and you can customize them by creating/updating prompts using the "expense_type" prompt key. It is possible to group like expense types by setting a category value for the corresponding prompts. These are the default expense types:

Value	Category
Lodging	Costs
Meal	Costs
Registration Fees	Costs
Car Rental	Transportation
Mileage	Transportation
Plane Ticket	Transportation
Train Ticket	Transportation

Expense Statuses

Expense statuses characterize the current reimbursable status of an expense, and you can customize them by creating/updating prompts using the "expense_status" prompt key. These are the default expense statuses:

Value
Awaiting Reimbursement
Non-Reimbursable
Paid - Corporate Card
Paid - Personal Card
Reimbursed

Adding an Expense

To add an expense to an event, trip, slot, etc., take the following steps:

Navigate to the object associated with an expense, such as a trip
Navigate to the "New Expense" page appropriately:
- For Trips: Click "New Expense". You can also specify an expense for any stops, events, or interviews associated with that trip here, too
- For Forms, Events, or Interviews: Click "Edit", then click the "Expenses" tab, and finally click "New Expense"
Optionally, scan or upload an image of a receipt (this process is covered in-depth below)
Enter information from the receipt, and then click "Save"

To assist with adding expenses, you can click "Scan Receipt" to scan/upload a receipt on either a mobile or desktop device. Slate will utilize OCR to:

Retrieve values from the receipt, such as: name, date, total, subtotal, tax, and metadata about the business (e.g., address, phone number). Gratuity is not currently captured
Assign a confidence level for how valid the total and subtotal values are; consequently, confident values are retained while non-confident values are rejected

The following steps outline how to use this functionality:

Click Scan Receipt
Scan/upload the receipt
Wait for Slate to complete the OCR process
Verify the entered values
Enter any missing values

Printing Expenses

The "Print Expenses" tool will output a PDF enumerating all expenses associated with a specific trip. This PDF will include:

When the PDF was prepared/created
Information about each expense, such as the user, date, and total
Highlighted totals
An image of the receipt, if applicable

The following steps outline how to use this functionality:

Navigate to the trip
Click Print Expenses
Print or save the PDF

It is not currently possible to modify how Slate outputs this PDF.