Skip to main content

​
What is the Vault?

The Vault is Smartbills’ secure document storage system for receipts, expense reports, invoices, and other financial records. It acts as a digital filing cabinet where all expense-related documents are organized, searchable, and available for audit. The Vault ensures your organization maintains a complete paper trail for every transaction, with documents archived automatically as expenses move through their lifecycle. The Vault is accessible from /{slug}/vault.

​
How It Works

1

Automatic Archiving

When an expense is created, its receipt image or PDF is stored in the Vault. As the expense moves through the lifecycle (categorized, added to a report, approved, reimbursed), the Vault record is updated with the latest metadata.
2

Report Archiving

When an expense report is approved and reimbursed, the complete report, including all attached expenses, receipts, comments, and approval history, is archived as a single document package in the Vault.
3

Manual Upload

Users can also upload documents directly to the Vault that are not tied to a specific expense. This is useful for contracts, vendor agreements, or other supporting financial documents.
4

Search and Retrieval

All documents in the Vault are indexed and searchable. You can search by vendor name, date range, amount, category, employee, or any text extracted by OCR from the document.

​
What Gets Stored

​
Access Control

Access to the Vault is governed by the that access permission. This ensures that only authorized users can browse and retrieve stored documents.
The Vault is read-only for most users. Documents are archived automatically by the system. Only admins can delete documents from the Vault.

​
Search and Retrieval

The Vault provides several ways to find documents:

​
Key Terminology

​
Roles Involved

Manage Documents

How to search, view, and organize documents in the Vault

Vault Overview

Navigating the Vault in the web application

Expense Reports

Understand how reports are archived after reimbursement

Roles and Permissions

Learn about who can access the Vault