Expense Tracker

Submit, approve, and reimburse business expenses without spreadsheet chaos

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Overview

Replace the spreadsheet chaos

Most small and mid-sized teams track expenses the hard way: paper receipts shoved into envelopes, approval chains buried in email threads, policy limits copied into a spreadsheet no one trusts, and a finance queue that nobody is quite sure how to interpret. Employees don't know if their expense was approved. Managers don't know what needs their attention. Finance can't see missing receipts until the month is already closed.

Expense Tracker replaces all of that with one structured workflow: capture → categorize → approve → reimburse — with full visibility at every step, on any device.

What's included

Dashboard

A finance-operations command center. See this month's total spend, pending approvals, missing receipts, policy exceptions, and reimbursements due — all above the fold. Two live charts show monthly spend trend over six months and category spend vs. limits. An alerts panel surfaces overdue approvals and receipt gaps so nothing falls through. A category budget table shows utilization and over-budget flags at a glance.

My Expenses

A filterable list of all expense line items. Filter by status (draft, submitted, approved, rejected, reimbursed, info requested), category, receipt status, or free-text search. Each row shows merchant, amount, status badge, and policy flags. Tap any row to open the full detail page.

Submit Expense — 4-step wizard

A guided mobile-friendly form: Basic Info (title, merchant, date, amount), Categorize (category, employee, department, project), Details (payment method, report grouping, tax, notes, receipt confirmation), and Review (summary + AI Policy Pre-Check). Mileage categories auto-calculate the reimbursable amount from miles driven at the seeded IRS rate. Validation catches missing required fields at each step before proceeding.

Expense Detail

The full record for any expense — details, timeline, approval history, and actions. Approvers can approve, request more information, or reject directly from this page (with a required comment for rejections). A receipt-required banner and policy-exception flag appear automatically when rules are triggered.

Reports

Group expenses into trip or period reports. Each report card is expandable to show all attached line items, totals, and the full approval timeline. Create new reports from a dialog; filter by status.

Approvals

A manager queue of all submitted and info-requested expenses, sorted with policy exceptions first. Filter chips narrow to exceptions only, overdue only, or missing-receipt only. Approve, request info, or reject from the queue card or the detail page — no page navigation required. Summary cards show total queue value and exception/overdue counts at a glance.

Reimbursements

A finance queue showing all reimbursement records by pay period and status. Mark records as processing or paid with one tap. A separate section lists approved-but-not-yet-reimbursed expenses so nothing ages unnoticed.

Policies

A reference page for every active policy rule, grouped by type (receipt threshold, per-expense limit, approval trigger, mileage rate, pre-approval, timeliness, class restriction). A quick-reference banner at the top shows the four most-used rules at a glance. A category limits table lists per-expense caps, monthly caps, receipt minimums, and approval thresholds for every category. Travel and per-diem guidelines are written in plain language for employees to read before submitting.

Admin

A tabbed admin panel covering all reference data: Categories (with per-expense limits, monthly caps, receipt minimums, and mileage flag), Employees (name, email, department, role, manager), Departments (code, monthly budget), Projects (code, department link, active flag), Payment Methods (corporate vs. personal), and Policies (all active rules). Create new categories and employees directly from the tab — no database editor required.

AI workflow — Check Policy

"Check Policy" is an AI-assisted compliance action that appears in two places:

Expense Detail — a sidebar panel on every expense record. Click "Check Policy Compliance" to evaluate the saved expense against your active rules.
Submit Expense — on the Review step, before saving. Run the check against the draft expense while you can still make changes.

In both places, the AI evaluates:

Category limits — whether the amount exceeds the per-expense cap for that category
Receipt requirements — whether a receipt is needed at this amount and whether one is attached
Payment method expectations — whether a corporate card should have been used instead of a personal card
Mileage and travel policy — miles driven, applicable rate, airfare class, hotel nightly cap, and ground transport rules
Seeded policy rules — all active rules in your Policies table, including timeliness, pre-approval requirements, and annual limits

The response is structured into three sections: Policy Status (one-line verdict: compliant or violations found), Issues Found (a bullet list of each specific problem), and Suggested Fix (concrete steps the submitter can take to resolve each issue before the expense is approved or resubmitted).

After the result is shown, users can Copy the output to share it or paste it into a comment, or click Re-check to run a fresh evaluation (useful after making changes). If the Glide organization has used all available AI credits, the panel shows a clear message directing the user to buy extra credits or upgrade their plan in the Glide dashboard — the app never silently fails or freezes.

Who this is for

| Role | How they use it | |------|----------------| | Employees | Submit expenses on mobile, track approval status, see exactly why something was flagged | | Managers | Work an approval queue with policy flags surfaced automatically; no inbox required | | Finance teams | Monitor the reimbursement pipeline, spot missing receipts, see category spend vs. budgets | | Operations managers | Configure categories, policies, departments, and pay periods in the Admin tab | | Founders / office managers | Get a real-time view of company spend without waiting for month-end reports |

Setup guide

This template ships with realistic seed data so you can explore every workflow on day one. To make it your own:

Employees — Open Admin → Employees. Remove the seeded employees and add your team, assigning each person a department and role (employee, manager, finance, or admin). Set the manager field for approval routing.
Departments and projects — In Admin → Depts, update department names and monthly budget amounts. In Admin → Projects, add your active cost-center or project codes and link them to departments.
Categories and limits — In Admin → Categories, adjust per-expense caps, monthly limits, receipt thresholds, and approval minimums to match your policy. Enable the mileage flag and enter your mileage rate for any vehicle-reimbursement category.
Policies — Review the seeded rules in Admin → Policies and the Policies page. Update thresholds, rule types, and the mileage rate to match your company's current policy document.
Pay periods — The Reimbursements page groups by pay period label (e.g. "August 2026"). Update these labels to match your payroll calendar when creating reimbursement records.
Receipt rules — The default receipt threshold is $25. To change it, update the requires_receipt_above value on each category in Admin → Categories and the corresponding policy rule in Admin → Policies.

Once your reference data reflects your real team and rules, the AI Policy Check will evaluate submissions against your actual limits — not the seed data.