Expenses capture money spent by the current company. Assign a cost to a project when it belongs to a job, or leave the project blank when it supports the business as a whole. Approved entries feed the financial views that help you understand cost and margin.
Find and Review Expenses
Open Expenses to review active costs for the current company. Every card brings the most important details together:
Project expenses display the connected project. Costs without a project are labeled Company expense, keeping general overhead separate from job costs.
Choose Company or Project Expense
Company expense
Leave Project blank for office rent, software, insurance, marketing, utilities, and other business overhead.
Project expense
Select a project for materials, subcontractors, permits, equipment, fuel, or another cost attributable to that job.
An approved project expense contributes to that project’s total expenses, estimated profit, collected profit, and margin. Company expenses remain outside individual project totals.
Choose How to Add the Expense
Select Add Expense, then choose the path that matches the record in front of you.
Manual entry is available to users who can manage or submit expenses. Scan Receipt appears only when receipt scanning is included in the company plan and the user has scanning permission.
Enter an Expense Manually
Complete the form with the cost’s accounting and job context:
Select Save Expense after checking the values. The amount must be greater than zero, tax must be zero or positive, and a category is required.
Use the date shown on the receipt or vendor invoice. Financial reports place the expense into their selected date range using this expense date.
Choose the Right Category
Categories make expense analysis useful. BuildFlox provides a standard set for each company:
Pick the category that best represents the cost rather than defaulting everything to Other. Consistent classification produces clearer category totals in reports and project summaries.
Select or Add a Vendor
The vendor is optional, but it helps identify where money is being spent and groups costs in the Expense Analysis report.
- Open the Vendor list and choose an existing active vendor.
- If the vendor is missing, select Add Vendor.
- Enter the required vendor name and optional email and phone.
- Save the vendor and continue with it selected.
Vendor names are matched within the current company without case sensitivity. If the same name already exists, BuildFlox reuses the existing vendor instead of creating a duplicate.
Enter Amount and Tax Separately
Enter the pre-tax cost in Amount and the receipt’s tax in Tax Amount. Expense cards and financial totals show their combined value.
If the receipt total already includes tax, separate the subtotal and tax into their respective fields so the combined expense matches the receipt.
Scan a Receipt or Vendor Invoice
Select Scan Receipt, then choose a JPG, JPEG, PNG, WebP, or PDF. BuildFlox analyzes the document and prepares suggested expense fields.
The uploaded receipt is stored privately for the company. The extraction service validates the signed-in user, company membership, plan entitlement, and scan permission before analyzing it.
Review Every Suggested Field
Scanning accelerates entry; it does not replace review. Compare every suggestion with the original document and correct anything uncertain.
- Confirm the amount and tax
- Verify the vendor and invoice number
- Check the category and expense date
- Select the related project or Company Expense
- Read any extraction warnings
Select Confirm Expense only when the record is accurate. Nothing becomes an expense until you explicitly confirm the review.
If automatic extraction is unavailable, the receipt remains available and the fields can be entered manually before confirmation.
Respond to a Possible Duplicate
During scan confirmation, BuildFlox compares the proposed record with similar expenses using details such as vendor, invoice number, amount, and date.
Review
Return to the review screen and inspect the document and entered fields before saving.
Save anyway
Override the warning only when both costs are legitimate separate expenses.
A duplicate warning is protective, not a final rejection. Use the original receipt and vendor records to make the decision.
Understand Expense Statuses
A user with Manage Expenses creates an Approved expense. A submit-only user creates a Submitted expense for review. Rejected and Void are inactive states retained for audit purposes.
Company expense reports, project expense totals, estimated profit, and margin exclude Submitted, Rejected, and Void entries.
Edit or Remove an Expense
Users who can manage expenses can open the expense action menu and choose Edit to correct its category, project, vendor, amount, tax, description, invoice number, or date.
Choose Remove when an expense should no longer appear in active lists or financial totals. Confirming removal changes the expense to Void and retains an audit record; it does not silently erase the financial history.
Rejected or already-void expenses cannot be edited. Removal is safe to repeat and leaves the record inactive.
See Expenses in Reports and Project Profitability
The Expense Analysis report uses the selected date range and Approved expenses to show:
Approved project expenses also appear in project financial summaries and profitability reporting, where BuildFlox compares revenue with expenses to estimate profit and margin.
Business plans can include authorized multi-company reporting. Companies remain operationally isolated; the overview aggregates eligible financial totals without merging their underlying records.
Plans and Expense Permissions
Expense access requires a company plan with Financial Management. Receipt scanning and financial reports have additional plan capabilities.
- View Expenses — review company and project expenses
- Manage Expenses — create approved entries, edit, and remove
- Submit Expenses — create Submitted entries and see your own submissions
- Scan Receipts — upload and review receipt or invoice scans
- View Financials — open financial reports and project summaries
Downgrading a plan hides and blocks financial features without deleting existing expenses, receipts, or scan drafts.