Track every expense, approve it, and bill it - in one place
Log company and employee-reimbursable expenses with categories, receipts, mileage, and optional project allocation. Expenses flow through approval, into payroll reimbursement, or straight onto client invoices - with recurring schedules, CSV import, and reports built in.
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Manage Expenses
October 2026 · All employees
Flight to Austin
Travel · Website relaunch · Billable
$428.00ApprovedFigma subscription
Software · Overhead · Recurring
$45.00PaidClient site visit
Mileage · 84 km · Reimbursable
$50.40PendingOffice supplies
Supplies · Overhead
$126.75Pending
This month
$3,482
Billable
$1,210
Awaiting
4
The expense lifecycle in five steps
- 01
Log
Create the expense with amount, category, receipt and an optional project.
- 02
Categorize
Tag it company or reimbursable, mark it billable, attach mileage.
- 03
Approve
A manager reviews it in Manage Expenses and moves it from pending to approved.
- 04
Bill / Reimburse
Billable expenses flow onto invoices; reimbursable ones feed payroll or payment.
- 05
Report
Expense, HRMS expense and income-vs-expense reports for full visibility.
Six expense management capabilities
From the first receipt to the profit report - jump to any capability to see how it works.
Expense Tracking
Log company and reimbursable expenses with optional project, task, or client allocation - or none at all for overheads.
See how it works02Categories & Receipts
Organize spending with role-scoped categories, attach receipts, and log mileage per entry.
See how it works03Approval Workflow
A pending → approved → paid lifecycle with dedicated admin and approver views.
See how it works04Recurring Expenses
Set schedules for rent, subscriptions, or retainers and let the system generate entries.
See how it works05Billable Expenses & Invoicing
Mark expenses billable and add them to invoices on demand, or auto-attach to recurring ones.
See how it works06Reports & Analytics
Expense reports, HRMS expense reports, and income-vs-expense analysis out of the box.
See how it worksExpense Tracking
Every expense is logged with an amount, date, currency, category, and an optional link to a project, task, or client. General overheads - office supplies, a software subscription, a utility bill - can skip the project and client fields and still land in the right category.
Employees submit their own expenses from the Expenses screen. Admins and approvers manage every submission from Manage Expenses, with filters by employee, status, category, project, and date range.
New expense
DraftAmount
$428.00
Currency
USD
Category
Travel
Date
Oct 03, 2026
Project (optional)
Website relaunch · Acme Corp
- Log expenses with or without a project, task, or client
- Two entry points: Expenses and Manage Expenses
- CSV import for bulk upload or historical migration
- Mileage field for travel and vehicle expenses
- Multi-currency support with exchange-rate conversion
Categories & Receipts
Expense categories give your team a consistent set of spending buckets - travel, meals, software, contractor fees, or whatever your business uses. Each category is role-scoped, so a sales rep sees only the categories relevant to their role while finance sees everything.
Every entry supports file attachments for receipts, invoices, or supporting documents, and a dedicated mileage field captures distance for travel reimbursement without a separate form.
Categories
- 42
Travel
Sales · Delivery
- 27
Meals
Sales
- 15
Software
Finance · Admin
- 9
Contractor fees
Finance
Receipt
$428.00
84 km mileage logged
- Create unlimited expense categories
- Control which categories each role can see and use
- Attach receipt images or documents to any expense
- Log mileage per entry for travel reimbursement
Approval Workflow
Every expense follows a clear three-status lifecycle: pending → approved → paid. A submitted expense starts as pending, a manager or admin approves it in Manage Expenses, and it moves to paid once the reimbursement or company expense is settled.
Approval permissions are role-based and ownership-scoped - a team lead might approve only their direct reports' expenses while a finance admin approves across the company, using the same visibility model (none / owned / added / both / all) as the rest ofCrmLeaf.
Client site visit
Office supplies
Flight to Austin
Figma subscription
Team lunch
- Three-status lifecycle: pending, approved, paid
- Manage Expenses screen for admins and approvers
- Fine-grained, ownership-scoped permissions per role
- Notifications on submission and status changes
Recurring Expenses
For costs that repeat on a schedule - rent, SaaS subscriptions, retainer fees, insurance premiums - set a recurring schedule and CrmLeaf generates new expense entries automatically on each cycle. No manual re-entry, no missed months.
Recurring doesn't mean unreviewed: each generated entry follows the same approval workflow and appears in Manage Expenses for the approver to process.
Recurring schedules
- Nov01$2,400
Office rent
Monthly · auto-generated
- Nov05$45
Figma subscription
Monthly · auto-generated
- Jan01$860
Insurance premium
Quarterly · auto-generated
- Set recurring schedules on any expense
- Entries generated automatically on each cycle
- Generated entries follow the standard approval workflow
- Stop or modify the schedule at any time
Billable Expenses & Invoicing
Mark any expense as billable and it becomes available to add to a client invoice - on demand or automatically.
On demand - use the “Add to invoice” action from the expense list to attach approved billable expenses to any open invoice.
Automatic - enable the per-company toggle and every recurring invoice picks up all uninvoiced billable expenses for its client as it generates. Each expense is stamped as invoiced, so nothing is billed twice.
Invoice INV-1042
Acme Corp- Design services - October$4,800.00
- Flight to AustinExpense$428.00
- Client site visit (84 km)Expense$50.40
- Mark expenses as billable at creation
- Add billable expenses to any invoice with one action
- Per-company toggle to auto-attach to recurring invoices
- Invoiced expenses are stamped to prevent double-billing
- Billable expenses feed project budget tracking
Reports & Analytics
Expense Report - filter by date range, category, project, employee, and status to see exactly where money is going and what's still pending.
HRMS Expense Report - built for payroll and HR teams, focused on employee-reimbursable expenses for reconciliation and processing.
Income vs Expense Report - compares total income against total expenses over a period, so leadership sees the bottom line at a glance.
Income vs expense · last 6 months
+$184,320
- Three dedicated expense reports out of the box
- Filter by date, category, project, employee, status
- HRMS report for reimbursement reconciliation
- Export to CSV and PDF
Expenses that flow into invoices, projects, HR, and budgets
Expense data doesn't sit in a silo. Billable expenses pull onto invoices, project-linked expenses feed budget-vs-actual tracking, reimbursable expenses integrate with HR and payroll, and the income-vs-expense report ties it all together.
See InvoicingInvoicing
Billable expenses flow onto one-off and recurring invoices
Projects
Allocate expenses to projects and tasks for cost tracking
HR & Payroll
Reimbursable expenses feed HRMS reports and payroll
Budgets
Project expenses drive budget-vs-actual analytics
Common questions about expense management
Start tracking expenses in CrmLeaf
Log your first expense, set up categories, and see how approval and billing work - all inside your free trial.