Zoho Expense Integration

Zoho Expense integration lets you track and manage project related day-to-day expenses of your employees.

Click to learn more about access privileges for integration with other Zoho Apps.

Use case

A software company has users across the globe and their mission statement is to meet each and every users needs. The more they engage in person with their customers, the more they grow as an organization. To achieve this, they arrange customer meetups in groups. They target the cities where their customers are more and arrange meetups in those cities. The employees of the organization travel to the cities to meet their customers. Sylvia, an employee in the organization, travels to Los Angeles, USA, for the customer meetups. The company provides a preloaded debit card, and the employee can use that card for any expenses. However, the bills of these expenses need to be submitted to the organization where the auditor validates these expenses. Each meetup is added as a project in Zoho Projects, and Sylvia needs to upload these expenses in the respective project. Although Zoho Projects helps to manage the meetups, there is a requirement for the client to add the expenses. This requirement can be sorted when the organization integrates Zoho Projects with Zoho Expense.

In the below screenshot, you can view a bill of the fuel expense incurred while travelling to the venue where the User meetup is conducted. This is added as an expense in the Expense tab directly from the respective Project in Zoho Projects.

Benefits

Track expenses using Expense reports.
View expense along with the actual cost and compare it with the project budget.
Expenses need to be approved before they can be invoiced giving you more control over costs.
Upload receipts and submit them for approval.

Feature Availability: Premium and Enterprise plans of Zoho Projects.

Integrate Zoho Expense

Click in the upper-right corner of the top navigation band.
Navigate to Marketplace > Zoho Apps > Zoho Expense.
Click Activate Zoho Expense.
If you do not have an account in Zoho Expense, you will be asked to create a new organization.
Select the Zoho Expense organization from the drop-down.
Select the Integration Preference.
Choose Expense Claims & Expense Reports (Powered by Zoho Expense) to track expenses.
Toggle the option Sync Zoho Projects users with Zoho Expense if you want to add users from Projects to Expense.
Disable this option to add users manually from Expense.
Set Project Restriction.
Enabling the toggle will prevent users from creating projects from Zoho Expense.
Click Next.
Set the Sync Preferences.
Customer Duplication Preference:
Overwrite: Customers in Zoho Expense will be overwritten if their name is same in Zoho Projects. Zoho Projects Customer will be linked with the existing customer in Zoho Expense.
Clone: Customers in Zoho Expense will not be overwritten if their name is same in Zoho Projects. We will create a new customer in Expense with the same customer name.
Map the fields between Projects and Expense.
Customers: These need to be manually imported from Expense to Projects. Once imported, the fields can be synced two ways between Projects and Expense.
Projects: These are synced from Projects to Expense. Hover over and click on View under Mapped Fields column to view existing mapping of default fields and edit the mapping of project custom fields.
Click Save.

Contact Duplication Preference

While integrating the Zoho Finance suit, select the Contact Duplication Preference based on your requirement.

When a primary client is added to Zoho Projects, they will also be added to Zoho Expense. If Zoho Expense has a client with the same name, the user can either duplicate or overwrite the existing contact.

Overwrite: Contacts with the same name in Zoho Finance will be overwritten by the details in Zoho Projects.
Clone: Contacts with the same name in Zoho Finance will not be overwritten. Instead, a copy of Zoho Projects contact will be added to Zoho Finance.

Create Expense Claims

Navigate to your project and select Expense tab.
Select Expense Claims and click New Expense.
Enter the Date and the Merchant details.
Select the Category of the expense from the drop-down and enter the Amount.
Enter the Description, Customer and Reference# if desired.
Add to Report by selecting from the existing reports or by creating a new report.
Attach receipts from your computer or cloud.
Click Save and Close or Save and New to add a new expense.

Edit Expense Claims

Navigate to your project and select Expense tab.
For Unreported Expenses:

Click and select Edit.
Make the required changes and click Save and Close.

For All Expenses:

Click open the required expense.
Click on the top right corner.
Make the required changes and click Save and Close.

Approved expenses cannot be edited.

Merge Expense Claims

Navigate to your project and select Expense tab.
Under Expense Claims select any 2 expenses which you would like to merge.
Click and select Merge.
Select a master expense and click Continue.

Delete Expense Claims

Navigate to your project and select the Expense tab.
Under Expense Claims select the expense which you would like to delete.
Click and select Delete.

Create Expense Reports

Navigate to your project and select the Expense tab.
Select Expense Reports and click New Report.
Enter the Report Name, Business Purpose, and the Duration.
Click Submit.

Submit Expense Reports

Navigate to your project and select the Expense tab.
Select Expense Reports.
Click open the required report.
Click Submit in the upper-right corner.

Edit Expense Reports

Navigate to your project and select the Expense tab.
Select Expense Reports.
Click open the required report.
Click in the upper-right corner.
Make the required changes and click Save.

Approved expenses reports cannot be edited.

Delete Expense Reports

Navigate to your project and select the Expense tab.
Select Expense Reports.
Click open the required report.
Select the expense which you would like to delete.
Click and confirm your action.

Delete Integration

The portal owner can delete the Zoho Expense integration.

Click in the upper-right corner of the top navigation band.
Navigate to Marketplace > Installed Apps.
Select Zoho Expense.
Click Disable Integration.
Click Delete Integration.
Zoho Projects and Zoho Expense mapping will be removed. Projects synced from Zoho Projects to Zoho Expense will now be considered as projects of the Zoho Finance Suite.