Expenses in Zoho Billing : Overview

The Expenses module in Zoho Billing helps you track and manage business costs, from mileage and utility bills to rent and supplies, all recorded in one place.

Types of expenses

Zoho Billing supports two types of expenses: a Regular Expense for general costs such as rent, bills or supplies, and a Mileage Expense calculated from the distance travelled for business purposes.

Why track expenses

Tracking expenses supports better budgeting and forecasting, more accurate profit calculations, simpler tax filing, and clearer visibility of your operating costs.

Expense categories

Go to Expenses > Categories. Assigning categories helps you see where money is being spent, build useful expense reports, and filter expenses efficiently. Use the default categories or create your own to match your business.

How to create a new expense

1. Go to Expenses and click + New.
2. Select the expense date and enter the amount.
3. Choose or create a category, and optionally add a vendor.
4. Attach any receipts.
5. Mark as Billable if it should be reimbursed by a customer.
6. For a mileage expense, enter the distance or let the system calculate it, then add a purpose and category.
7. Attach supporting documents and click Save.

Expense preferences

Go to Settings > Preferences > Expenses to set a default mileage rate, rounding preferences, which fields appear on the expense form, and whether billable expenses are enabled.

Custom fields for expenses

Go to Settings > Preferences > Expenses > Field Customization, click + New Custom Field, set a label, type and default value, choose where it should appear, and click Save. Useful for recording internal codes or department tags.

Recurring expenses

Go to Expenses > + New > Make Recurring for costs such as monthly rent, subscriptions or utility bills. Set the frequency, start date and end date to generate them automatically.

Billing an expense to a customer

Mark the expense as billable and assign the customer, then go to Invoices > + New and link the expense so it appears as an invoice item.

Reports, listing and Autoscan

Under Reports > Expenses, generate reports such as Expenses by Category, Expenses by Customer, Recurring Expense Summary and Unbilled Expenses. From the main Expenses list, filter, search, sort and export your expenses, or customise the visible columns.

Autoscan, under Expenses > Autoscan, reads an uploaded receipt image or PDF and creates a new expense with the extracted amount, vendor and date for you to review and confirm, saving manual entry.

Other actions

From the Expenses module you can also mark an expense as non-billable, convert a billable expense to an invoice, export selected expenses, duplicate an expense, attach files, and void or delete entries.