Expense Management holds no money of its own. Every event — a claim approved, an advance paid, a card bill settled — posts a balanced journal into the same ledger as every other finance document, dated by the document's date and linked back to its source record. Posted lines are immutable; corrections are reversals. What the module adds on top is the employee subledger: per-employee open items that carry what the company owes each person and what each person owes back, reconciled to control accounts like any receivable or payable.
The posting map
| Event | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Claim posted (on final approval) | each line's expense account; input GST for ITC-eligible tax | Employee Payable, net of any advance adjustment |
| Reimbursement (single or batch) | Employee Payable | Bank |
| Claim settled via payroll | Employee Payable | Payroll Payable |
| Advance paid | Employee Advance | Bank |
| Advance settled against a claim | Employee Payable | Employee Advance |
| Advance recovered in cash | Bank | Employee Advance |
| Card transaction posted | the transaction's expense account | Card Payable |
| Card statement paid | Card Payable | Bank |
Two details in the claim posting are worth knowing. First, the ITC split: on a line marked ITC-eligible, the tax goes to the input-GST account and only the net amount hits the expense head — the tax is recovered, not expensed; on other lines the gross posts to the expense head. Per-component tax details (CGST, SGST, IGST, cess) are also captured for tax reporting, on a best-effort basis that never blocks the ledger posting. Second, dimensions: cost centers are stamped on the expense lines only — never on the control or bank lines — so cost-center reporting stays a clean P&L view, while branch rides every line it applies to.
Where the accounting inputs live on the claim
The header of an expense claim carries the accounting context: Resource (the employee whose subledger carries the payable), Claim Date (the posting date), Currency Code, Branch, PaymentGL Account (the bank or cash account a finance reimbursement credits) and, on the Reimbursement tab, Reimbursement Mode — FinancePayment (paid by a finance reimbursement, singly or in a batch) or Payroll (settled through a payroll run, with Payroll Period and Payroll Component to say which). Each claim line carries the Expense GL Account it debits, its Cost Center, Tax Amount and Itc Eligible flag, and the recharge fields (Is Billable To Customer, Customer Account, Markup Percent). The header also shows the three statuses the ledger side reads: Approval Status, Posting Status and Payment Status.
The posting steps are entity actions on the claim, so they appear as buttons and can be driven by automation: Evaluate Policy, Post Claim, Post Reimbursement (asks for the bank account and payment date), Settle Via Payroll, Compute Recharge and Link Recharge Invoice.
Employee balances are open items
Posting a claim raises an open payable item against the claimant's employee record; paying an advance raises an open recoverable item the same way. Reimbursements, settlements and recoveries reduce those items until they close. Because balances live as open items rather than as GL detail, the GL stays summarized — the control accounts carry totals, the subledger carries the per-employee story — and the employee-payable ageing always ties to the control account, since both read the same items. This is the same open-item machinery behind the AR and AP subledgers.
Automatic posting, and its one failure mode
Final approval posts the claim automatically (stamping Status and Posting Status to Posted), and replaying a decision never double-posts because an already-posted claim is skipped. But the approval decision and the posting are deliberately decoupled: if posting fails — a missing Employee Payable control account is the classic cause; the error names the missing account type — the approval stands and the failure is logged rather than rolling the sign-off back. The tell is a claim whose Approval Status is Approved while Posting Status is not. Fix the cause and run Post Claim on the claim; Troubleshooting decodes each posting error.
Rebilling clients: recharge
Claim lines marked billable-to-customer carry the customer and an optional markup. Compute Recharge on the claim flags those lines as pending billing and returns the per-customer (and per-project) totals — cost, and cost with markup applied. You then raise the customer invoice through your normal sales flow for those totals, and Link Recharge Invoice stamps the lines as Billed against that invoice, closing the loop so nothing is rebilled twice or forgotten.
Reconciliation and period close
Control-account reconciliation ties the employee-payable and employee-advance open-item totals to their GL control balances, alongside the AR, AP, bank and other reconciliations. Period close includes advisory checks for both employee subledgers, so an untied balance is surfaced before the period is closed rather than discovered after.
Common questions
Which period does a claim post into?
The period containing its claim date — the same rule every document and journal follows. Reimbursements post on their payment date. A claim dated last month posts into last month, provided the period is open.
Why isn't the employee a party on the payable, like a supplier?
Because the employee is identified on the open item, not on the journal line. The control accounts are configured so their lines need no party — the subledger holds the per-employee detail while the GL stays summarized. It also means expenses and payroll share one person key: the employee record.
The claim is approved but never appeared in the ledger — is the approval lost?
No. The approval committed; the posting that follows it failed and was logged. Fix what the error names — almost always a missing control account or a claim with nothing postable — and post the claim manually. The claim's posting status tells you which side you are on.
Can a posted claim be corrected?
Not by editing — posted journal lines are immutable. Correct through the finance reversal pattern: reverse the posting journal, fix the claim, and post again. The original stays in the ledger as the audit record, exactly as with manual journals.