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Expenses & Claims

Capture spend, run employee expense claims and custody, route approvals, and push reimbursements straight to payroll.

Updated April 15, 2026

Expenses handles money going out that isn’t a supplier invoice — petty cash, employee out-of-pocket claims, cash custody, and reimbursements. Capture a receipt, route it for approval, and let XO post the accounting and (optionally) pay it back through payroll.

Who this is for: employees submitting claims, managers approving them, and finance closing them out.

Concepts

  • Expense — a direct cost paid by the business (e.g. a card purchase).
  • Expense claim — money an employee spent and wants reimbursed.
  • Custody (advance) — cash handed to an employee to spend, later settled against receipts.
  • Policy — the rules that decide limits, categories, and who approves.

Set up expense policies

  1. Go to XO Books → Expenses → Policies → New policy.
  2. Define categories (travel, meals, fuel…) and per-category limits.
  3. Set the approval cycle and thresholds (e.g. > SAR 5,000 needs a second approver).
  4. Choose the reimbursement method: bank payment or push to payroll.
  5. Assign the policy to employees, departments, or branches.

Submit an expense claim

  1. Open XO Books → Expenses → New claim (or the XO mobile app).
  2. Snap or upload the receipt — OCR pre-fills the merchant, date, amount, and VAT.
  3. Pick the category and add a note.
  4. Add more lines for a multi-receipt trip.
  5. Click Submit to route it through the approval cycle.

📷 Screenshot: mobile claim with a scanned receipt and auto-filled fields.

Approve claims

  1. Approvers see pending items under Expenses → Approvals (and via notification).
  2. Review the receipt, category, and policy compliance — out-of-policy lines are flagged.
  3. Approve, or Return with a comment for correction.

Cash custody (advances)

  1. Issue custody under Expenses → Custody → New — choose the employee and amount; XO posts it to the employee’s custody account.
  2. The employee submits receipts against the custody balance.
  3. Settle the custody — XO reconciles spend vs advance and records any return or top-up.

Reimburse

  • Via bank: select approved claims → Pay → choose the bank account; XO posts the payment.
  • Via payroll: approved claims flagged for payroll appear in the next run in XO People → Payroll as a reimbursement line.

XO always exports the accounting entries for approved claims to the ledger automatically.

Best practices

  • Require a receipt on every line — OCR makes it painless and keeps you VAT-audit ready.
  • Set category limits so most claims auto-clear policy and only exceptions need scrutiny.
  • Reconcile custody monthly so no advances sit open across periods.

Troubleshooting

  • Claim stuck in pending. Check the approval cycle — an approver may be on leave; set a delegate in XO Core → Workflow.
  • VAT not recovered. The receipt must show a valid supplier VAT number; mark non-compliant receipts as VAT-exempt to avoid overstating recoverable input VAT.