Spesenverwaltung — Expenses & Vendor Bills Guide

What it does

The Expenses hub at Ausgaben handles two distinct kinds of financial documents:

• Employee expenses (Spesen) — reimbursable out-of-pocket costs submitted by employees. These go through an approval workflow and are then reimbursed via payroll or billed to a client.
• Vendor bills (Belege) — invoices from suppliers that your organisation needs to pay. These sit in a to-pay queue ordered by due date and are cleared when paid.

The hub also has an Inbox that accepts inbound receipts by email. Simply forward a vendor invoice to your organisation's dedicated address and the system creates an inbox item automatically. AI reads the document to extract the vendor name, amount, and due date.

The four sections

How to set up

1. Note your inbound receipt email address — shown on the Ausgaben overview. Forward any vendor invoice to this address and it lands in your inbox automatically.
2. Review expense categories — go to Organization > Expense Categories. The system ships with over 180 Swiss-standard categories. Each category has a VAT rate, receipt requirement, approval requirement, and optional spending limits. Customise as needed.
3. Set per-employee expense limits (optional) — on each employee's profile, set monthly and yearly expense limits. Expenses below these limits are approved automatically.
4. Pre-create vendors (optional) — go to Vendors > New. Add bank details, VAT number, and default payment terms. Or skip this and let the AI create vendors from inbound receipts as they arrive.

Daily use

Employee expenses (Spesen)

1. The employee goes to Ausgaben > New Expense, picks a category, enters the total amount including VAT, and uploads a receipt (image or PDF).
2. The system splits the gross amount into net and tax automatically based on the category's VAT rate.
3. Depending on the expense type: expenses already paid go straight to approved; expenses needing reimbursement enter the approval queue (or auto-approve if within the employee's limit); expenses to bill to a client are flagged accordingly.
4. Managers review pending expenses from the Ausgaben inbox and approve or reject with notes.
5. Approved expenses are either included in the next payroll run (for reimbursement) or pulled onto a client invoice via Invoicing > Add unbilled expenses.

Vendor bills (Belege)

1. Forward a supplier invoice to the organisation's inbound email address — or upload it manually in the Inbox.
2. The AI extracts the vendor details, amount, and due date.
3. A team member with inbox access opens Ausgaben > Inbox, reviews the extracted details, confirms or corrects the vendor, and classifies the item as a vendor bill.
4. The bill lands in Ausgaben > To-Pay, sorted by due date.
5. When the bill is paid, mark it as paid individually or use Batch mark paid to clear several at once.
6. Users responsible for payments receive a daily reminder about upcoming and overdue bills.
7. Paid bills move to Ausgaben > Archive.

Works together with

• Payroll — approved employee expenses are reimbursed through the payroll run.
• Invoicing — billable employee expenses flow into client invoices. Vendor bills are outgoing costs and are not billed to clients.
• Projects — employee expenses can be linked to a project for cost tracking.
• Vendors — the AI can automatically create a new vendor from an inbound receipt if none exists yet.

Tips

• Employees enter the total amount including VAT — the system does the VAT split. Make this clear during onboarding, as it is the most common point of confusion.
• Inbox access and payment queue access are separate roles. The person who classifies inbound receipts does not need to be the same person who marks bills as paid.
• Vendor matching tries IBAN first, then name. If neither matches, the AI creates a new vendor. Review new vendors carefully to avoid duplicates.
• The VAT rate is captured at the time of submission for employee expenses. Changing a category's VAT rate later does not affect already-submitted expenses.
• Receipt files are stored securely and are not accessible via direct URL. They can only be viewed through the application.
• The 180+ default expense categories are shared across all tenants. When you customise a category, your changes apply only to your organisation — the shared default is not affected.