Home / Expense Control / Expense Policies

Implement expense policies to gain more control

Create spending policies and associate them with branches, departments, teams, or employees. Work toward your specific expense goals by designing policies that suit your business.

Create multiple policies

Zoho Expense allows you to add multiple policies for different departments, cost centers, and branches. You can also assign policies to your expenses, trips, and advance payments.

Screenshot of multiple policies in Zoho Expense

Add general rules

Create general rules to set maximum expense amount limits, define when receipts or expense descriptions are necessary, manage uncategorized expenses, and more. These rules will be applied to all expense categories.

Screenshot showing expense rules in Zoho Expense

Apply category-level limits

Select the expense categories that you want to associate with a policy, and ensure that employees that fall under that policy can only create expenses under those selected categories. Cap the maximum amount employees can spend for each expense category as well.

Configure mileage rates

Define and enforce different mileage rates for each of your business departments. Add your organization's vehicles used and specify mileage rates for them. Monitor and change these rates according to your needs.

Zoho Expense screen for different mileage rates

Define per diem rates

Create per diem rates based on location and split them based on expense types as well. Zoho Expense also lets you configure per diem rates based on travel hours. Set a per diem rate percentage and apply it to an employee's travel hours.

Detect duplicates automatically

Zoho Expense's policy engine detects duplicate expense entries right after they are created. The system then gives you the option to delete the duplicate entry or keep both. Duplicates are detected based on date, amount, and currency.

Zoho Expense report screen showcasing the duplicate expenses

Upload your travel policy

Having a dedicated policy for travel is important for any organization. Making sure employees have ready access to it is more important. Upload your travel policy to Zoho Expense and it will be displayed on the dashboard for all the applicable employees.

Select travel preferences

Zoho Expense lets travel teams add the ticket and accommodation options for travel. Allow employees to choose from the options and automatically create expenses for these bookings. These automated bookings can be set up to be sent for approval as well. Restrict users from changing their preferred option once they choose.

Testimonials

One of my responsibilities is to oversee the AP function, and expense reporting is by far one of the most tedious aspects. Zoho Expense helps alleviate a bit of that headache with their online and mobile app platforms that allow users to upload and submit information electronically. Moreover, Zoho Expense has the capability to export their information in far more detailed fashions than other desktop and mobile applications including AMEX and Citi. I also like the approver and reminder functionality the app enables for the management team.

Brittany Cisneros

AVP Finance, Impact Floors of Texas LP

I believe, the most convenient feature for our employees is the easy-to-use mobile version of the tool. You click a picture of the bill you just spent on, select the relevant expense head and hit submit. Additionally, scanned copies of bills/ receipts, expenses, approvals, comments are now available in one report which forms the basis for any reimbursement claim posted to our accounting software.

Janani

Director of Finance, Exotel

In the past, I spent a ton of time chasing down our company credit card users because they often did not provide me with the receipt or even notation of their spending, so when the statement came, I had no idea which budget areas to pay the invoice from. Now, they each have a Zoho Expense account to track their spending in, and since getting the receipts into the account is so easy, and they can see their own bank feeds, it is working tickety-boo!

Becky Retzlaff

Financial Manager, Lakeside Lutheran High School

Not just for all business teams, Zoho has helped the accounting team as well. Expense related reports are all available at one place. A remarkable thing about the Zoho experience, is the constant support they give us, for every little query. Zoho has made life easier for us.

Hector Beverages Paperboat

Expense reporting has been so easy after we started using Zoho Expense. The efficiency of expense reporting and reimbursement has improved multifold.

Razorpay

Zoho expense is a good tool. It is helping us to manage expense records in a seamless manner. In our line of business where international business travel is routine, Zoho Expense has helped us to create a paperless and fully traceable process. It is great value for money and extremely user-friendly!

Ms. Sushama Telang

COO, Sarla Advantech Pvt. Ltd

Ensure 100% expense policy compliance

Other Features

Receipt Management

Managing receipts shouldn't have to be tedious. With features that allow you to autoscan receipts, forward them automatically, import in bulk, or even import from other cloud applications, Zoho Expense ensures that no receipt goes untracked. The best part? Receipts are digitally stored in your Zoho Expense account, so you never have to worry about losing paper copies.

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Expense Management

Manage expenses more efficiently with Zoho Expense. We support multiple methods for uploading expenses, no matter the currency. They can be itemized, split, added as per diem allowances, or consolidated under one expense type. As an admin, edit the expense creation forms to suit your organization's requirements and choose what fields employees must fill in while submitting expenses.

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Mileage Tracking

Tracking business mileage is an important part of managing your organizational spending. Zoho Expense offers 100% accuracy when it comes to mileage tracking. Add mileage expenses through 4 different methods using your Android, iPhone, or even Apple Watch.

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Corporate Card Reconciliation

Connect your corporate cards to Zoho Expense and speed up the reconciliation process. Associate cards with specific employees and fetch card feeds instantly. Weed out any personal spending, and then automatically match and reconcile your business expenses. Our dashboard also gives you a complete reconciliation overview for your convenience.

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Direct Feed Integration

If you're worried about the safety of using third-party channels to import corporate card feeds into Zoho Expense, we're here to reassure you. With Direct Feed Integration (DFI), you can fetch corporate card feeds directly from Visa, Mastercard, and Amex (American Express), eliminating the need for a middleman.

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Expense Report Management

Make expense reporting for employees a cinch. They can create expense reports with all the important details they need. Apply cash advances, download expense report PDFs, and streamline the reporting process with report types.

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Expense Report Automation

Tired of creating reports manually? Or maybe you keep forgetting to add your expenses and submit the report online? With expense report automation, you can put the whole process on autopilot. Zoho Expense will automatically add expenses to a report and submit it for you.

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Trips

Provide ticket options, set up approval for trips and ticket costs, manage itineraries, handle expenses, and make the travel and expense management process easier with Zoho Expense.

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Purchase requests

Use Zoho Expense to manage your purchase requests and make your ordering process easy and problem-free.

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Simplified Approvals

If you're from an organization that follows a linear, hierarchical approval flow for your expense reporting, you can set up default approvals using Zoho Expense. You can configure out-of-office approvers and reminders for approvals as well.

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Custom Approvals

Every organization's approval requirements may vary. If you want a custom, non-linear, or multi-stage approval flow, Zoho Expense has you covered. Design multiple complex approval flows and ensure that all transactions are overseen by the proper set of people before being approved.

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Expense Auditing

Stay notified about policy violations or possible duplicate entries, run audit trail reports, detect fraudulent behavior, ensure expenses have digital records, and back up data instantly. Zoho Expense makes sure you are audit-ready for the tax season.

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Compliance

Zoho Expense is GDPR compliant and ISO certified. In addition to a global edition, Zoho Expense has 8 dedicated editions for the US, the UK, India, Canada, Australia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Never worry about local compliance laws again.

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Reimbursement

Process expense reimbursements in a faster, more efficient manner. Sync settlements with payroll and ERP software. Make employees happier with quicker expense reimbursements, delivered directly to their accounts.

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Expense Rules

Set up limit rules based on fixed amounts, expense count, mileage limit and more. Choose to warn or entirely block employees from submitting expense reports when a rule is broken. Set up daily, monthly, or yearly expense limits, or place a rule for a custom duration as well.

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Budgets

Create budgets for expense categories or expense types and put a lid on the spending. Warn or block employees from creating an expense when it exceeds the budget. Get analytics on the actual spending vs the budget initially set and stay on top of your spending.

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Automation

Historically, expense reporting has been a manual process predominantly. But, with amazing automation features from Zoho Expense, you don't have to carry out mundane expense reporting tasks anymore.

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Collaboration

Quit sending back and forth emails about expense reports. Collaborate with employees contextually and without delay.

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Customization

Set up custom components, customize what employees see when they use Zoho Expense, and personalize your expense management process.

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