Expenses — Find Boxes Knowledge Base

What Is an Expense?

An expense is a single spending record: a name, a price, an optional category, an optional PO number, notes, and an optional file attachment for the receipt or invoice.

Project-linked or standalone An expense can optionally belong to one project. Expenses added from a project's Expenses tab are tied to that project. Expenses added from the general Expenses page are never tied to a project — there's no option to attach one there, so use a project's own Expenses tab for job-specific spending.

Project Expenses

Every project has its own Expenses tab, scoped to that project only.

Click Add Expense to reveal the entry form: name, PO, price, category, notes, and an optional file upload.
Each expense is shown as a card with who submitted it and when, its category, price, and notes.
See Notes opens a separate internal notes thread for that expense (distinct from the expense's own notes field) — see Expense Notes below.
See Order Status shows any procurement records (the project's Orders/wishlist entries) that were generated from this expense.
If a file is attached, a download link appears. If that file is a PDF, an AI Order Creator link also appears — see the AI Invoice Scanning callout below.
Toggle Newest first / Oldest first to change the sort order.
Two stat tiles show the Number of Expenses and Total Expenses (sum of price) for the project.
Export the project's expenses as a CSV (expense name, PO, notes, and price) from the download icon next to the sort toggle.

AI Invoice Scanning Attach a PDF invoice to a project expense and Find Boxes can scan it in the background to propose purchase line items. Review, edit, remove, or approve them individually (or all at once) from the AI Order Creator link. Approved lines are created as new procurement records on the project — visible from that expense's See Order Status link and from the project's Orders tab. See Projects for the full workflow.

General Expenses

The general Expenses page (top-level nav) lists spending across your whole org — every project's expenses plus any standalone expenses that aren't attached to a project. It's the place to log spending that isn't tied to a specific job (shop supplies, a software subscription, and so on).

Defaults to showing the current calendar year (January 1 through December 31); enter a custom start and end date to change the range.
Filter by category, and — if you're allowed to see everyone's expenses — by team member.
Search by expense name, PO number, project name, or notes.
Sort Newest first / Oldest first, same as the project view.
The same two stat tiles (Number of Expenses, Total Expenses) reflect whatever filters are currently applied.
Export the currently filtered expenses as a CSV, including name, price, notes, date added, project name (or "none"), category, and who submitted it.

Who Can See Which Expenses

By default, a regular team member only sees the expenses they personally submitted — both on a project's Expenses tab and on the general Expenses page. Org admins, the org owner, and admins of a given project always see every expense on it.

Org-wide setting An org admin can change this for everyone from Settings > Permissions & Controls: turning off "Only admins and project admins can see all expenses" lets every team member see every expense across all projects and the general Expenses page.

Deleting an Expense

An expense can be deleted by the person who submitted it, or by an org admin/the org owner.

Restricting deletion to admins An org admin can further restrict who may delete expenses from Settings > Permissions & Controls. Note that the setting is labeled "Only admins can delete inventory items" — despite the name, it also governs expense deletion.

Expense Categories

Categories group expenses for reporting (e.g. "Travel," "Catering," "Rentals").

Manage the org-wide category list from Settings > Expense Categories.
Any org member can add a new category. Only org admins and the org owner can remove one.
Categories are shared across every project and the general Expenses page — there's no per-project category list.

Expense Notes

Each expense has its own internal notes thread, separate from the expense's own notes field — open it from the See Notes link on any expense.

Any org member can add a note to an expense, optionally with a file attachment.
A note can be removed by whoever posted it, or by an org admin/the org owner.
Notes are internal only — they are never shown to clients.