Expense Tracker
Submit expenses with receipts, route them for approval, and track every reimbursement.
Preview
Overview
What's included
- Submit with receipts: take a photo or attach a PDF, one or more per expense, and submit it for approval from your phone or desktop.
- Approvals: managers approve their team's expenses, reject them, or ask for more information, with a full history on every expense.
- Reimbursements: finance pays approved expenses with a reference number and marks them paid. The employee sees the expense as reimbursed, with the reference.
- Policies: limits by category, receipt rules, and an AI check that explains what breaks a policy.
- Reports and budgets: spending by category and month, budget against actual for each project, and CSV export of expenses and reimbursements.
- Trips and mileage: group expenses into a report and log mileage and tax.
How it works
Submit an expense
Start with the receipt: take a photo or attach a PDF, then add the merchant, date, amount, and category. Mileage is priced from the rate on the Mileage category. Submit it for approval, or save a draft and submit it later from the expense page. Each expense belongs to the person who is signed in.
Approve, ask, or reject
The Approvals page lists the expenses waiting on you, with policy exceptions first, a thumbnail of each receipt, and filters for exceptions, overdue items, and missing receipts. Ask for more information and the employee answers on the expense, then it comes back to you. No one can approve their own expense or report.
History on every expense
Each expense shows who created it, attached receipts, submitted it, asked for information, answered, approved or rejected it, and paid it, with the date and time of each step.
Reimburse
Finance selects approved expenses for one employee, chooses a pay period and payment method, and creates a reimbursement. When the money goes out, finance marks it paid with the payment reference (a transfer ID, payroll run, or check number). The expenses change to Reimbursed.
Project budgets
Each project shows approved and reimbursed spending against its budget, what's still pending approval, and whether it's over budget or will be if the pending expenses are approved.
Dashboard and exports
This month's spend, pending approvals, missing receipts, policy exceptions, and money still owed to employees, with a six-month trend and spending by category. Export expenses (with your filters) and reimbursements to CSV.
Who can do what
Everyone signs in with Glide, and the app adds each person the first time they sign in. Their role decides what they can do:
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Employee | Submit expenses and see their own expenses and reimbursements |
| Manager | Also see and decide expenses and reports from their direct reports |
| Finance | Decide anyone's expenses except their own, create and pay reimbursements, and see every expense |
The app starts with no admins. Right after you install it, the dashboard offers Make me the admin. The first admin also gets the finance role, so they can open every sample expense, approve, and reimburse. Admins set each person's role and manager, add categories and employees, and add other admins. To hand Admin over, add the new admin and step down. The app always keeps at least one admin.
AI policy check
Check Policy Compliance is on the expense page and on the review step of Submit. It reviews the amount against the category limit, whether a receipt is needed and attached, the payment method, mileage and travel rules, and every active rule on your Policies page. It answers in three parts: Policy Status, Issues Found, and Suggested Fix. If your Glide organization runs out of AI credits, the panel says so.
Setup guide
The template comes with a sample company, Corvana, so you can try every step. To make it yours:
- Admin. On the dashboard, select Make me the admin.
- People and roles. Ask your team to sign in once. In Admin, under People and roles, set each person's role and manager. A manager sees the expenses of the people who report to them.
- Departments and projects. Review the sample departments and projects on their Admin tabs.
- Categories and limits. Review each category's per-expense limit, monthly limit, and receipt threshold on the Policies page, and add the categories you need in Admin. The sample Mileage category uses $0.76 per mile; set the rate your company pays.
- Policies. Review the sample rules on the Policies page. The AI policy check reads these rules.
- Sample data. The sample employees, expenses, reports, and reimbursements are there to explore. Remove them before your team starts using the app.
About your data
This template stores employee expense reports and reimbursements. Glide's user data rules allow this kind of information only in private apps on a paid plan.