Every agency has its unique expense management workflow. Some appoint CFOs to receive and tracking expenses, while others assign project managers with this responsibility.
Regardless of the workflow, there are two methods for creating and assigning a new expense to a project:
a) Assigning expense from project detail
1. Go to the project detail to the budget item to which you want to assign an expense
2. Click on the "+Add New Expense" button. Allfred will redirect you to the New Expense window.
3. Allfred supports Optical Character Recognition (optional). Upload the received invoice, and Allfred will automatically recognize the details and fill out the necessary fields for you. Allfred will even suggest the most probable assignment of expenses to specific budget items, streamlining your workflow.
4. Choose the type of expense from the available options.
5. Select the contractor. If the contractor isn't listed in Allfred, create a new one and save their details.
6. Review all expense details and fill in missing information. If the expense is paid, mark the "Already Paid" checkbox.
Note:
Project Managers, Team Leaders and Managing directors cannot edit the Create date or the accounting accounts.
CFOs can view additional fields and are also responsible for selecting the accounting account, VAT rate on expense item level or choosing the correct legal entity and agency bank account.
7. Assing the expense to budget items. If you started from the project detail, Allfred automatically prefills related budget item. You can assign one expense to multiple budget items (e.g., invoices from Meta or Google) by clicking the "+" button to add new budget items.
8. If the budget item assignment is approved by you, you can click on "Approved" checkbox.
9. Save the expense. Project Managers can save an expense as a draft for further editing or 'Request Items Approval' from colleagues or send the expense direct to CFO for the finance manager's final review. CFOs can automatically save expenses as final when all associated budget items are 'Approved'.
b) Assigning expense from Finance section or via +New button
Go to Finance -> Expenses -> +New Expense or use +New button in upper right corner -> Expense.
The process remains the same as described above. The difference is that the budget items are not prefilled.
Assigning expenses to Our work budget items (Work Expenses):
Allfred allows you to assign the costs directly to Our work budget items (e.g. in case of outsourced internal services, invoices from freelancers or individuals that don't have access to Allfred to track their time spent on tasks). When assigning expenses, Allfred will offer you Our work items for selection.
If you choose to assign the expense to agency work category, Allfred will provide an option to track associated hours by simply checking the "Track hours" checkbox. Then, specify the task into which you want to track hours, the position, the number of hours, and the date for time tracking. Remember, task must exist when assigning expenses to Work item with the tracking hours option.
If you prefer not to track hours, Allfred will only deduct the assigned amount from the project's available budget. The number of available hours to spend remains the same.
To get an overview of assigned costs for Our work at the project level, simply click on the amount of the spent budget in the project detail. This will open a modal window displaying detailed information about the expense, reported date, position, tracked hours, and the total amount.
