What is an Expense Report? Excel Templates Included

There is also a designated place to specify the rate for mileage reimbursement. Many of the expenses your employees make when working for your business are deductible, but you can’t deduct those expenses until you record them somewhere and have proof that they happened. This information can be invaluable when preparing your business tax returns, or even for creating financial projections for the following year.

Included on this page, you’ll find a small business expense template for monthly and daily tracking, a template for tracking startup expenses, and a spreadsheet for monitoring income and expenses. Plus, get tips on completing small business expense tracker templates. expense reports are necessary whenever an employee pays for business expenses with their personal money.

Effectively Track Monthly Expenses with Real-Time Work Management in Smartsheet

Databox software enables you to monitor and report performance in one place. It combines data from different sources and helps you get a comprehensive view of your company’s financial health at a glance. With Databox, pulling data and KPIs from different sources onto one screen can be done in a matter of minutes. Just connect your data source (such as Google sheet with expense information), display your data any way you like, share your dashboard with others, or download it as a report.

A blank expense report is a great place to begin for an employee or small business owner who is just starting out. It has the required features to keep on top of basic business expenditures, and is easy to customize. You can even choose to fully digitize or file your expenses the old-fashioned way, with the printable expense report.

Why Do We Need Expense Reports?

An expense report contains a categorized and itemized list of expenses that were made on behalf of the organization. This report helps the employer or finance team determine what money was spent, what was purchased, and how much of the expenditure is approved for reimbursement. Having said that, the merits of expense reports are not restricted to reimbursement claims.

If you don’t need to report on revenue sources, just swap out the text to focus solely on expenses. Nurture and grow your business with customer relationship management software. Here, we’ll cover the basics of an expense report, how to fill it in, and see an example in action. We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team. The Mileage Log and Expense Report can be an indispensable tool for anyone who spends a lot of time on the road, and it’s available to both you and your employees.

Free Expense Report Templates

In the past, creating an https://www.bookstime.com/articles/multi-step-income-statement has been a dreaded task, but the introduction of expense report apps, as well as easy-to-use templates, has made the process less tedious. Another myth is that expense reports are only a necessity for your employees. Regular expenditures that the business must pay monthly, such as rent, salary, and utilities, are often examined in recurring expenditure reports. Any significant rises in this expenditure that can covertly harm the bottom line can be more easily detected with their help. You can see which departments might benefit from larger budgetary allocations. To keep your company’s finances on track, you may also use the expense report to see if the departments are following their assigned budgets.

In order to be fairly reimbursed, you need to keep track of expenses in an expense report. On the flip side, employers need expense reports to know how much the business is spending and where. You might be better off using the following template, which combines all of the expenses you make in one day on one line. The most effective way to create an expense report in Excel is to use a preexisting expense report template. Select an Excel expense report template from this page, and plug in your expenses for timely reimbursement from your employer. Perhaps you’re under the mistaken impression that expense reports are only necessary for large businesses with thousands of employees.

Use the template’s built-in odometer-reading fields to calculate each distance driven, and record the reason for travel, such as driving to the airport, a client meeting, or an offsite social gathering. In addition to  tallying your expense totals, the template also helps you track total distances driven so you can ensure the most accurate and timely reimbursement possible. This basic expense report template simplifies the business expense process for employees. Enter the primary purpose for each expense, employee name, employee ID, department, and manager.