If you incur costs on behalf of your company or a client, you can track those expenses in Harvest. You can use your browser or our mobile apps for tracking, editing, and reporting on your expenses. Harvest also allows you to mark your expenses as billable or non-billable depending on whether or not you want to invoice your client for them. 

The expenses functionality is not available with all plan types and is an optional module that might not be enabled in your company’s account. If you don’t see the Expenses section but think you and your teammates might find it useful, please ask an Administrator in the account to consider enabling it.

Tracking expenses in a web browser

1. Go to Expenses.
2. Click the green Track expenses button.
3. Choose your date, project, and category. 
4. Check the box beside This expense is billable if necessary. “Billable” means you will invoice your client for the expense. Nonbillable expenses are not billed to your clients. They cannot be pulled into an invoice, and are not included in your uninvoiced amounts.
   • Note: Expenses tracked to billable projects will default to being billable. Expenses tracked to nonbillable projects will, by default, be nonbillable.
5. Click Save expense.

More information about the different parts of an expense

• Project: If you do not see the project you are looking for, please ask an Administrator to assign you to it.
• Category: Expense categories are managed by Administrators in the account. If you do not see one that matches the expense you are adding, please ask an Administrator to create a new expense category.
• Amount: This could be either an amount of money (if you are expensing something like a meal) or a number of units (for example, if you are recording mileage). If the expense category requires a number of units, an Administrator will have already set the fee amount for each unit, and Harvest will automatically calculate the total.
  • The currency for an expense is determined by the preferred currency set for the project’s client. If you have an expense in a different currency, you may want to manually convert the amount to the project’s currency and, perhaps, add the original amount to the expense notes. An Administrator will be able to tell you exactly what your company’s procedure is for this situation.
• Notes: This field is optional but can be useful for adding more details about the expense, such as the vendor.
• Attach receipt: You can upload a .png, .gif, .pdf, .jpg, or .jpeg file to each expense. Either click the link to find the file you want to upload, or drag and drop the file into the orange New expense box.

Editing and deleting expenses in a web browser

As long as an expense is not locked, you can edit anything about it or delete it. To edit an expense:

1. Head to Expenses.
2. Click the Edit button to the right of the expense entry in question.
3. Edit any of the fields and click Update expense, or click Delete and confirm to permanently delete it.

An expense might be locked because it has already been invoiced, your time and expenses have been approved for the week, or the associated client, project, and/or expense category has been archived. You cannot edit or delete a locked expense entry. Please contact an Administrator in your account if you need to make any changes to a locked expense entry.

Submitting expenses for approval in a web browser

If an Administrator has enabled timesheet approval in your organization’s account, you will see a Submit for approval link for each week in your Expenses section. Clicking the link will take you to a page where you can review your time and expenses for the week, then click the green Submit for approval button to confirm.

Note that submitting a week will always submit the time and expenses for that week—there is not a way to submit them separately.

Once an Administrator or Manager has approved your time and expenses for the week, they will be locked against further editing. Please contact an Administrator in your account if you need to make any changes to an expense entry that has already been approved.

Tracking, editing, and submitting expenses in the mobile app

If you have the Harvest mobile app on your iPhone or Android phone, you can also track expenses when you are away from your computer. The mobile app can be especially useful when you want to attach a receipt to an expense, since you can use your phone’s camera to take a picture or attach one from your phone’s gallery.

The following Help Center article has more details on entering and editing expenses in our mobile apps: Mobile app: Tracking expenses.