Documentation/ Document types/ Expense invoices
Expense invoices
Utilities, services, rent, insurance, accountancy, fuel: everything the business consumes to keep going that is not part of what it buys to sell or to make something from. They have a list of their own because they are coded differently.
On this page
The list
You find it under Documents → Expenses → Expense invoices, at
/documents/facturasGastos. It shares its layout and its actions with the purchase invoice
list.
How they differ from purchase invoices
| Purchase invoice | Expense invoice | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is for | Goods or raw materials | Services and utilities |
| How much the line detail matters | A lot: items, quantities and prices | Little: the amount and what it was for |
| Feeds the product master | Yes | No |
| Consolidation with delivery notes | Yes | No |
| Price checking | Yes | No |
| The nominal account | The purchase's expense account | The service's expense account |
One supplier can send you both: the invoice for the goods is a purchase; the invoice for the carriage that brought them, or for hiring their containers, is an expense.
What is extracted
The same as an invoice header: issuer, recipient, number, date, net, taxes, withholding, total, payment method and due date.
The line detail is pulled out too when the document carries it, but it does not feed the product catalogue or the price history: on an expense, the line is just description.
Nominal coding
As on purchase invoices, two accounts are set: the creditor's and the expense. The second is what splits the amount by nature, utilities, outside services, taxes, rent, and what makes the spend worth analysing.
It is filled in automatically from your company's history: as invoices from the same issuer go through, the account settles down and stops needing you.
Taxes and withholding
Expenses are where the less usual tax cases cluster, and all of them are picked up:
- Withholding tax, common on professional services and on rent.
- Several VAT rates on one document.
- Exempt transactions and intra-community invoices.
- VAT included in the total, not broken out, as on till receipts and simplified invoices.
Going over them is covered in the section on the document header.
The everyday cases
| Document | Type | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity, water, telephone | Expense | Usually several items on them, and sometimes several tax rates. |
| Rent on premises | Expense | Usually with tax withheld. |
| Professional fees | Expense | With withholding tax. |
| Fuel and tolls | Expense | A lot of small receipts. |
| Office supplies | Expense | Unless you resell them. |
| Goods for resale | Purchase | Even if the supplier also sends you expenses. |
A document uploaded to the wrong list is put right by transferring it, at no cost to your plan.