Expense Receipts & Expense Reports: capture, submit, and approve expenses

Expense Receipts & Expense Reports let you capture receipts automatically, turn them into expenses, group expenses into a report, route that report for approval, and pay it out, all from one place. This article walks through the complete end-to-end flow.

There are three connected pieces. First, a receipt inbox receives receipts by email and reads them for you. Second, an approved receipt becomes an expense you can edit. Third, you can combine expenses into an Expense Report that an approver reviews and that you then reimburse.

A receipt is proof of a purchase; an expense is the spending record. Approving a receipt creates an expense, but does not approve payment. Use the resulting expense instead of entering the same purchase again. You can also enter expenses manually without using the receipt inbox.

Find and review receipts

As a Firm Admin, open Expenses > Expense Receipts. The Needs attention tab shows receipts waiting for review. Use All, Approved, or Rejected to see other receipts. Search by merchant or user, filter by user and receipt date, and choose Filter.

Open a merchant name to review the receipt beside its original attachment. Confirm the merchant, receipt date, currency, total including tax, and included tax. Choose an expense category from the user's default entity. Save for later saves your edits without approving. Approve and next approves the receipt and opens the next receipt waiting for review. The expense is created shortly afterward; open the approved receipt and choose View expense once processing finishes.

Find expenses and prepare reports

Open Expenses > List Expenses. Firm Admin users see expenses for the selected entity; other authorized users see their own. Use status tabs, search, and category, project, user, or date filters to find expenses. Click a column heading to sort, choose the number of rows to show, or use Columns to customize the list. Column choices are remembered in your current browser.

The action bar above the expense table always shows Create Expense Report. Select eligible expenses individually or use Select all available on this page. Reports can contain your own unpaid expenses that are not already assigned to a report or payment. With GL Posting permission, Create draft payment prepares a draft for eligible approved expenses. Review the draft before posting it.

Who can use this?

What you can see depends on your role and how your administrator has set up your company.

• Expense permission : create and manage your own expenses and Expense Reports.
• Firm Admin : also sees the Expense Receipts inbox, the Receipt Email Addresses setup screen, and Expense Categories, and can view every user's expenses.
• Workflow Approval permission : required to approve or reject an Expense Report when approval is turned on.
• GL Posting permission : required to post expenses for payment.

Expense lists and reports use the selected entity. Receipt email addresses belong to your company, and receipt conversion uses the user’s default entity. Creating an Expense Report requires both Expense permission and an enabled Expense Report approval workflow for the entity. Firm Admin alone does not replace these requirements.

How the pieces fit together

The full flow has five stages:

1. Capture : a receipt arrives in your company's inbox (by email) or you enter an expense by hand.
2. Review : a Firm Admin reviews what was read from the receipt and approves it.
3. Expense : the approved receipt becomes an expense you can edit.
4. Report & approve : you group one or more expenses into an Expense Report and submit it to an approver.
5. Pay : after report approval, prepare its payment. Individual approved expenses can also be paid directly.

The rest of this article explains each stage.

Part 1 : Set up the receipt inbox

The receipt inbox gives your company a dedicated email address. Anyone can send receipt PDFs or photos to it, and Versa reads the merchant, date, amounts, taxes, currency, and line items for you.

Only a Firm Admin can set up the receipt inbox. Each user can have one receipt email address per company.

Create a receipt email address

1. Sign in and select your entity (organization).
2. Open the Expenses menu and choose Receipt Email Addresses.
3. Click New Receipt Email.
4. Enter a Custom Name (3 to 30 characters; letters, numbers, and hyphens only). The page shows the email address this will create and checks whether the name is available.
5. (Optional) Pick a Default Expense Category. This category is pre-selected when you approve receipts sent to this address. You can still change it during approval.
6. Click Create Receipt Email.

The address follows the pattern your-name-expense@app.versaclouderp.com. The custom name must be unique across all Versa companies.

Manage an existing address

From the Receipt Email Addresses list you can:

• Edit : change the custom name or default category. Changing the custom name generates a brand-new email address; the old one stops working.
• Deactivate / Reactivate : pause an inbox without deleting it. A deactivated address stops receiving receipts.
• Regenerate : create a new address for the same custom name.
• Delete : remove the inbox so you can create a new one. Only the owner can delete their own inbox.

What you can send to the inbox

Forward or send receipt files as attachments to the address you created. Supported file types are PDF, PNG, JPEG, JPG, and TIFF. Word, Excel, plain-text, and HEIC files are not processed.

If an email has several supported attachments, each one becomes its own receipt. If an email has no attachments, a single receipt is still created from the email itself.

Part 2 : How receipts arrive and get read

When a receipt arrives, Versa creates a receipt record and reads it in two automatic steps.

1. Reading (OCR) : the system reads the raw text of the receipt image or PDF.
2. Understanding (AI) : the read text is turned into structured fields: merchant, transaction date, currency, subtotal, tax, total, and the individual line items. The system also suggests an expense category when it can.

This usually completes within a few minutes. New receipts appear with a Pending review status while they are being processed.

Part 3 : Review and approve a receipt

A Firm Admin reviews each receipt before it becomes an expense.

The receipt inbox

Open Expenses > Expense Receipts. The inbox shows merchant, receipt date, user, total, and status. Start with Needs attention, or use the status tabs, search, user, and date filters. A Possible duplicate note identifies receipts that need a closer look.

Statuses you will see:

• Pending review : newly arrived or still processing.
• Needs review : flagged for a closer look (for example, the amounts did not reconcile, or conversion failed).
• Approved : approved for conversion. The linked expense becomes available when processing finishes.
• Rejected : rejected and not turned into an expense.

Click a merchant name to review the receipt alongside the original attachment. Expand Extracted line items and email details for supporting information.

Review and approve a receipt

1. Compare the merchant, receipt date, currency, total including tax, and included tax with the attachment.
2. Choose an Expense category and add optional Review notes.
3. Choose Save for later to save corrections, or Approve and next to approve and continue reviewing.

Once conversion finishes, the approved receipt offers View expense. The expense uses the merchant name as its title and retains the supporting receipt documents. The receipt total includes tax; the resulting expense separates the before-tax amount and tax so the report total matches the receipt.

Reject a receipt

Click Reject receipt to mark a receipt as not usable. A rejected receipt is not turned into an expense. You can still edit and approve it later if you change your mind.

Remove an approval

For an approved receipt, Remove approval resets the receipt to Needs review. If the expense created from it has not been used elsewhere, it is removed; if it has dependencies (for example, it is already on a submitted Expense Report or a payment), it is kept but unlinked from the receipt.

Part 4 : Expenses

Whether they came from a receipt or were entered by hand, individual expenses are the building blocks of an Expense Report.

Create an expense by hand

1. Open Expenses > List Expenses and choose New expense.
2. Under Expense details, enter the Title, Expense date, and Category. Add a project and description if needed.
3. Under Amounts, enter Amount before tax, Currency, and Exchange rate multiplier. Tax fields appear when enabled for your entity. Required fields are marked with an asterisk.
4. Add supporting documents under Attachments. Use Add another file for additional files.
5. Choose Create expense, or Save and create another to continue entering expenses.

View or edit an expense

Open an expense title from the list. The summary shows the total including tax, expense date, user, and status. Separate sections show expense details, amounts, and attachments. The report link opens the associated Expense Report.

For an editable expense, choose Edit Expense. Update the fields in Expense details and Amounts, then choose Save changes. Cancel returns to the expense. Firm Admin users also have a status control. Use the separate Attachments section to manage supporting documents.

Find your expenses

• My Expenses (menu: Expenses > List Expenses for most users) shows your own expenses.
• A Firm Admin sees List Expenses, which shows every user's expenses and lets you filter by user, status, category, project, and date.

Each expense has a status of its own: Created, Approved, Declined, or Paid. The Expense report column shows which report, if any, an expense belongs to.

Part 5 : Expense Reports and approval

An Expense Report groups expenses so you can submit them together. To use reports, your administrator must enable an Expense Report approval workflow for your entity. Without this setup, you can work with individual expenses.

Is approval turned on for your company?

If Expense Reports appears in your Expenses menu, approval is set up for your entity and the workflow is enabled. If you do not see Expense Reports, check that you have Expense permission and that your administrator has enabled the workflow for the selected entity.

A Firm Admin turns the workflow on by setting up a workflow for Expense Reports (in Setup), choosing one or more approvers from users who hold the Expense permission, and giving each approver an approval limit.

Find an expense report

Open Expense Reports from the expense navigation. Search by report description or user, choose a sort order and reports per page, then select Filter. The list shows each report's expense count, total including tax, and approval status. Open the report name or choose View to review it. Use New Expense Report to start an empty report.

Create an Expense Report

1. Open Expenses > List Expenses (or My Expenses).
2. Select the checkboxes next to the expenses you want to include, or choose Select all available on this page to select all enabled checkboxes on the current page. Other pages are not selected. Use Clear selection to start again. For a report, choose your own unpaid expenses that are not already assigned to a report, payment, or draft payment.
3. Click Create Expense Report above the table. If nothing is selected, a message asks you to select at least one expense. If permission or workflow setup is missing, the message explains what is needed.
4. A report is created with a default description (for example, Expense Report 2026-08-10) and you are taken to the report's edit page.

You can also start from Expenses > Expense Reports > New Expense Report to create an empty report and add expenses to it afterwards.

Work with the report

On the report page you can:

• Edit the Description.
• Add to Group any of your unassigned expenses listed under Available Expenses to Add.
• Remove an expense from the report.
• Review the totals (amount, tax, and total with tax).

Once a report is submitted or approved, you can no longer add or remove expenses from it.

Submit for approval

1. On the report page, click Submit for Approval.
2. The status changes from Pending Approval to Approval Request Sent and the report is locked. A non-admin user cannot edit a submitted report.

Approve or reject a report

The person assigned as the approver for the report's workflow stage sees the report in their approval queue. That approver must hold the Workflow Approval permission.

1. Open the report from the approval queue.
2. Choose Approved or Rejected.
3. Add a comment if you want to explain the decision.
4. Confirm. On approval, the status becomes Approved and each expense on the report is marked Approved. On rejection, the status becomes Rejected.

Approval and payment are separate. Approving a report does not pay it; it only unlocks payment.

Part 6 : Pay an approved report

After a report is Approved, the Pay Expense Report button appears on the report page.

1. Open the approved report.
2. Click Pay Expense Report.
3. Choose the Supplier to reimburse.
4. Review the bill preview (one line per expense, using each expense category's GL account).
5. Click Create Payment Bill.

This creates a bill in Accounts Payable. The bill starts as a draft; post and pay it through the normal bill flow, just like any other bill.

Pay expenses without a report (Create draft payment)

If your administrator has not set up Expense Reports, or you simply prefer to pay expenses one at a time, a user with GL Posting permission can pay approved expenses directly:

1. Open Expenses > List Expenses.
2. Select approved expenses that have not already been paid.
3. Click Create draft payment.

This creates a draft payment disbursement against your company's configured expense payout account. You will see the message Draft Payment created. Review and post. Finish posting it to complete the payment.

Related features

• Expense Categories : set up in Expenses > Expense Categories (Firm Admin). Each category links to a GL account for posting and can be pre-selected for a receipt inbox.
• Multi-currency expenses : enter the Exchange rate multiplier on a foreign-currency expense so totals convert to your company's base currency.
• Approval workflow setup : Firm Admins configure approvers and approval limits under Setup workflows for Expense Reports.

Tips

• Set a Default Expense Category on each receipt inbox so the most common category is pre-selected at approval time.
• Use a clear, consistent Custom Name for each inbox (for example, the person's name or a team name) so receipts land in the right place.
• Send only PDF or image files. Avoid HEIC, Word, and Excel: they are not processed.
• Compare the receipt fields against the original attachment before approving. Expand Extracted line items and email details when you need more information.
• If your company uses approval, make sure each submitter's preferred approver is assigned in Setup so reports route to the right person automatically.

Troubleshooting

• I do not see Expense Receipts or Receipt Email Addresses : these menu items are only available to a Firm Admin. Ask your administrator to create the receipt inbox or give you the role.
• A receipt did not appear after I emailed it : confirm you sent it to the correct address shown on the Receipt Email Addresses screen, that the inbox is Active, and that the file is a supported type (PDF, PNG, JPEG, JPG, TIFF). It can also take a few minutes for a new receipt to be read.
• The amounts on a receipt look wrong : open the receipt, correct the fields, and choose Approve and next. The system reads most receipts accurately, but foreign number formats and handwritten receipts can need a quick check.
• I do not see Expense Reports in the menu: check your Expense permission and the selected entity’s approval workflow. A Firm Admin needs to enable an Expense Report workflow in Setup.
• Create Expense Report does not create a report: select at least one eligible expense first. You need Expense permission and an enabled Expense Report workflow, even if you are a Firm Admin. Some enabled checkboxes may be available for creating a draft payment but not a report; report selections must be your own expenses with no existing report, payment, or draft payment.
• I cannot edit a report : once a report is Approval Request Sent or Approved it is locked. Ask an approver to reject it back to you, or contact a Firm Admin if a correction is needed after approval.
• Pay Expense Report does not appear : payment is only available after the report is Approved and has not already been paid. If you pay expenses individually, the GL Posting permission is required.
• Create draft payment fails : every selected expense must already be Approved and not already paid. Approve the expenses first, or remove any that are already paid.

What this article does not cover

• Posting and paying bills in Accounts Payable: see the bill payment guide for the AP flow.
• Detailed accounting setup for expense categories, GL accounts, and tax codes: see your administrator or the accounting setup guides.
• Approval workflow configuration steps for Firm Admins: covered separately in the workflow setup documentation.