Setup order

What this is for

Expense depends on settings in Accounting, Administration and Workflows. If you set them up in the wrong order you can save claims but not approve them, or you cannot submit them at all. Follow this order once, when you start using Expense.

Many of these problems show up late. Winlium does not check an account when you save Expense Settings. A wrong or missing account is found only when a claim is approved. Setting things up in order avoids that.

Before you begin

Before you begin

1. Step 1. Accounting: accounts, taxes, financial year
2. Step 2. Administration: Expense Settings
3. Step 3. Workflows: templates for Expense Claim and Advance Request
4. Step 4. Expense Categories
5. Step 5. Expense Policies
6. Step 6. Petty Cash Funds
7. Step 7. Budget Planning (optional)
8. Step 8. External Payees (only if you pay non-staff)

Step 1. Accounting

Everything Expense posts goes to accounts you create here, so do this first. In Accounting set up:

• Expense accounts, one for each category of spend (for example Fuel, Travel, Meals). A category must point to one.
• Employee Payable: the liability account for what you owe staff after a claim is approved.
• Staff Advance: the asset account for cash advanced to staff.
• Corporate Card Payable: a liability account, if you record corporate card spend.
• Petty Cash control accounts: one per fund. A fund's Control Account and Funding Bank Account must be of the type Cash and Cash Equivalents; Winlium refuses any other type with Petty cash control account must be a Cash & Cash Equivalents account — "{name}" is not.
• External Payee Payable: a liability account, if you pay non-staff.
• Bank and cash accounts (also Cash and Cash Equivalents) that Finance pays from.
• Taxes, such as VAT at 7.5%, each with a purchase account. A claim line that carries a tax with no posting account stops at approval with Tax "{name}" on line {id} has no posting account configured. See VAT and WHT.
• An open financial year and period that covers the dates of claims and today's date for payments, advances and top-ups. Without one, posting stops with No active financial period found for date: {date} or Financial period for date {date} is blocked for transactions. See Financial years and periods.

Why first: Expense Settings, categories and petty cash funds all let you pick from these accounts. If they do not exist, the pick lists are empty.

Step 2. Expense Settings

In Administration choose Expense Settings and save it at least once. See Expense Settings. Choose the accounts from Step 1 and set the rules you want.

Why now: Settings hold the accounts used when a claim is approved. A company that never saved settings has no budget warning, no auto-approval, no receipt threshold and no advance rules, and approval fails for want of accounts:

Step 3. Workflow templates

Create an approval template for Expense Claim and one for Advance Request in Workflows, or choose a Default Claim Workflow and Default Advance Workflow in Expense Settings. A default is used only when no template's conditions match. See Workflows and approvals. For claims from non-staff, use a template matched on payee type, or set the External-Payee Workflow (fallback) in Expense Settings.

Why before categories and claims: submitting a claim looks for a template at that moment. If there is none and no default, the user cannot submit:

Step 4. Categories

Create your categories, each with its expense account from Step 1. See Categories. Claims need a category on every line.

Step 5. Policies

Create policies to set limits and rules. See Policies. A policy is optional unless Require Policy Assignment is on in Expense Settings. If it is on and no active policy matches the person who creates a claim, creating the claim fails with:

Step 6. Petty Cash Funds

Create each fund, then top it up with Replenish Petty Cash. See Petty Cash Funds. A new fund starts at ₦0.00, so a Petty Cash claim cannot be approved until the fund is filled (Petty cash fund "{name}" has insufficient balance ... Replenish the fund first.).

Step 7. Budget Planning (optional)

If you want warnings or blocks on overspend, set up an active Base budget in Accounting > Budget Planning that lists your category expense accounts, and run "calculate actuals". See Budget checks. Without a budget, no check happens and there is no message.

Step 8. External Payees (optional)

Add payees for contractors and vendors, or let a reviewer create them while processing public submissions. See External Payees. Set the External Payee Payable Account in Step 2 first.

Who can do this

Each step is done by people who hold the permissions of that screen: Accounting setup for Step 1, admin:expense-settings:update for Step 2, and the Expense setup permissions for Steps 4 to 8. Today only the Owner standard role holds them. See Roles and permissions.

Ledger impact

Ledger impact: Setting up Expense

Does not post to the ledger.

Configuration only. Nothing here posts to the ledger. It chooses the accounts that later claims, advances and top-ups will use.

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