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Overview

Every expense in Smartbills records who actually paid: you, or the business. This single flag determines whether the expense needs reimbursing, what information is required of you, and where it appears. The control is the Paid by business toggle, described in the interface as “Toggle if this expense was paid by the business”.

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What changes

When you mark an expense as paid by the business, Smartbills tells you: “Category and expense report are not required for business expenses. These will be managed through the business’s accounting process.” Opening such an expense later shows “This is a business expense. Category and report are managed by accounting.”This is not the category being optional in general. It means responsibility for coding it has moved from you to the finance team.

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Setting it on one expense

During upload, choose who paid in the upload dialog. On an existing expense, open it and use the Paid by business toggle.

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Setting it on many at once

Select expenses in the list and use the bulk action to change who paid across the whole selection. This is the fastest way to correct a batch of corporate card charges that were imported as personal.

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Defaults by context

The upload dialog preselects based on where you started from:
  • Started from Expenses: defaults to personal
  • Started from Business Expenses: defaults to paid by business
The default follows the page, not the receipt. If you habitually upload from Business Expenses, personal expenses started there will be marked as business-paid and will never make it onto a reimbursement report. Check the toggle when the receipt is your own.

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Getting it wrong, and fixing it

Changing the flag is safe while the expense is still yours to edit. Once the expense is on a submitted expense report, it is locked with the rest of the report. Recall the report, change the flag, and submit again. See Recall a report.
A personal expense marked as business-paid is the more costly mistake of the two. It will not be flagged as missing anything, it will not block any report, and it will quietly never be reimbursed. If you are owed money for an expense you cannot find on a report, check whether it was marked as paid by the business.

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Where each type appears

Both types live in your Expenses list. Business-paid expenses also flow into Business Expenses, where finance reviews and codes them. Which of the two you can see depends on your role. Members see only their own expenses. Finance Team, Finance Admin, and Administrator can see Business Expenses. See Roles & permissions.

Add an expense

Set who paid at upload time

Business Expenses

Where business-paid expenses are reviewed