What Are ‘Advanced Expense Reports’? Expense Approvers and Effortless Expense Reports

Advanced Expense Reports is a set of additional features designed to enhance your experience with Dext Prepare’s Expense Report process.

Note: Advanced expense reports are available for businesses on the Dext Business plan and Partners on the Practice Advanced plan.

Two features are included in Advanced Expense Reports:

Expense Report Approvals establish a new level of User Privilege: the Expense Approver. Now specific account users can be assigned to sign off on other employees’ expenses before they’re marked as completed.

Effortless Expense Reports is a tool used to automate the creation, population and completion of Expense Reports. After you set it up, it’ll routinely create Expense Reports for specified users on the account. Whenever these users submit an item to Dext Prepare, it’ll automatically be added to the Expense Report for the period it was submitted in.


Expense Report Approvals

You must have the appropriate user privilege level to approve Expense Reports.

Individual team members with the Expense Approver level of privilege can be assigned to an expense report as the approver. The approver of a report cannot be changed, however expense reports can be approved by all account Administrators, regardless of the team member assigned as approver.

Expense Reports can only be approved as a report, not as single items.

You can assign the ‘Expense Approver’ role to new and existing account users, by going to My Team in the sidebar, then clicking Manage next to the colleague and clicking Edit User Privileges.

Submitting an Expense Report

  1. When a team member has completed their Expense Report, they need to select the report and click Submit for Approval
  1. Then choose an Assigned Approver and click Submit.

The Assigned Approver can be; a user set up as an Expense Approver, the Admin User for the account, or your Bookkeeper/Accountant who can access your account.

  1. The Expense Report will be marked as Waiting

Approving an Expense Report

  1. The Expense Approver will receive a notification email and they can click on the View Expense Report button contained in the email.

Or they can to log in to Dext Prepare, navigate to the Expense Report section and click on the report.

  1. They can edit the details of the Expense Report or click to Approve Report.
  1. Once approved a confirmation banner will appear.

Effortless Expense Reports

Effortless Expense Reports automate the creation of Expense Reports on Dext Prepare.

By using Effortless Expense Reports:

  • A new report will be created for each user every week, fortnight or month.
  • Any new items submitted by users with Effortless Expense Reports will be automatically added to their report
  • At the end of the report period, the Expense Report will automatically close and a new report will be created

You can set up Effortless Expense Reports by:

  1. Accessing the Expense Reports section of the sidebar.
  2. Then clicking on the Effortless Expense Reports button in the top right of the screen
  1. You will then enter the setup wizard that will guide you through the necessary steps
  1. Specify how frequently you’d like new reports to be issued (weekly, fortnightly or monthly). Click Next.
  2. Specify which date of the month, or day of the week (for weekly or fortnightly) you’d like the Expense Reports to be created. Click Next.
  3. Specify which users on the account should have Effortless Expense Reports.

Note: Users with Effortless Expense Reports will have all of their submitted documents automatically added to their Expense Report.

  1. Specify whether you’d like existing items in the Inbox from your specified account users to be included in the Expense Report.
  2. Click Create. The new Expense Reports will be created.

You can identify Effortless Expense Reports from regular Expense Reports. The ‘Robot’ icon indicates that an Expense Report has been created through an Effortless Expense Report.

You can edit how Effortless Expense Reports work in this account at any time, by pressing the ‘Effortless Expense Reports’ button in the top-right of the screen.


How to Approve Expense Reports using the Mobile App

You can now approve expense reports submitted for approval using the mobile app! 

To approve an expense report on the mobile app: 

  1. Log into the mobile app
  2. Click the Expense Report button
  3. Click into the expense report you’d like to review 
  4. Once you’ve reviewed the items in the report, click the three dots button in the top corner
  5. Select Approve Report