Managing team expenses shouldn't mean being buried in paper receipts or getting lost in spreadsheets. We've updated our Expenses tool to make your life simpler and keep your finance team happy.

We've made tracking, sending, and approving expenses easy to use. With a fresh design and mobile-friendly uploads, it’s now much faster to manage spending on the go.

This guide covers everything from the initial setup to seeing the big picture on your dashboard.

Expenses: Interactive Walkthrough Video (with sound)

Click here to view the full Expenses walkthrough series including The Employee Experience

💡 Top tip: Want a step-by-step guide to share with your team? Send them our Employee Expenses Guide. It walks them through exactly how to claim back out-of-pocket costs, log company card spend, and track mileage using their computer or phone.

To turn on the module, simply head to Configure > Plan and billing > Change plan > Expenses > +

You don’t have to change a thing to get started, but taking a moment to check your settings will help everything run smoothly for your team. If you’re an Admin or HR

user, you can find these by heading to Configure > Settings > Account > Picklists.

We’ve already included some common types such as Travel, Meals and Entertainment, and Training, but you can add as many of your own categories as you need. When you add a category, you can give it a quick Shortcode so it’s easy to track on your expense reports. If you want to keep a closer eye on the budget, you can also add a Daily spending limit to each category.

It’s easy to create specific rates for things like cars, or vans. Giving each rate a clear name helps your team know exactly what to choose when they’re sending a claim. You can also tick a box to show which rates are current so your list stays tidy.

Employees can see their spending by clicking My Expenses on the left-hand menu.

There’s also a handy summary tile under My Profile > MY EXPENSES that shows users their total expense amount in draft (unclaimed), how many claims they've submitted, and any that have been rejected.

The dashboard shows four key stats:

You’ll also find graphs for Your monthly spending and Your spend this month to help you stay on top of your budget.

Using filters

The Your expense claims section lists all your personal claims. You can find specific records using the search bar or filter the list by status, such as draft, submitted, or approved.

Employees can only submit claims in the specific currency set on their profile, which is managed by an HR user or their line manager.

However, if they have historical claims in more than one currency, they’ll see a currency filter dropdown at the top of the screen. This lets them filter the dashboard to show only the claims for that specific currency (for example, showing just GBP claims, or just Euros claims). The dashboard figures won't convert between currencies; instead, the list will filter down to show the exact totals for the selected currency. When opening the dashboard, it will always default to the profile's current currency view.

If you're out and about, the People Portal mobile app makes it easy to check your expenses on the go. Just head to More > HR > Expenses to see your personal spending screen.

At the top, you'll see an expenses summary showing your Draft, Underway, and Completed claims. Below that, the My expenses section lets you look back over your history. Tapping on any of these headings will take you straight to those specific claims so you can review them in a flash.

Here's what each expenses status means:

Within a claim itself the "Pending" status will be shown against unsubmitted Expense items.
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💡 Top tip: To help your people smoothly build, scan, and send their claims for approval, you can share our Employee Expenses Guide directly with them for a step-by-step walkthrough.

To start a new claim, head to the top-right of the my expenses dashboard and click Create expense claim.

Give your claim a clear name in the pop-up box, like "June expenses". This helps you group your items together. You’ll then see the claim details screen where you can add your items. If you ever need to rename the overall claim, just click the Edit claim button in the top left-hand corner.

Click Add an expense and select one of these three options:

These two options use the same form.

You can drag your receipt into the upload a receipt box or click it to choose a file from your computer. We accept PDF, PNG, JPG, and GIF files up to 10MB. If you don't have a receipt, you can still move forward without one.

Once your receipt is uploaded, a scan your receipt box appears giving you two choices:

💡 Top tip: If you use the scanner after you’ve already typed in some info, the scan will replace what you’ve written, so it’s usually best to scan first.

Add the expense date and a brief description, then make sure you pick an expense category from the menu. If you tick Includes VAT, you’ll see a percentage rate.

If you change this percentage, the VAT amount will update automatically.

Tick the Chargeable to client box and add the customer name if you need to bill the cost to a customer. When you're finished, click Add expense to save it.

Mileage claims look a little different. Start with the Trip details:

Whichever method you choose, you can also add a Description of the trip, if the expense associated with a Project, mark if the expense is Chargeable to client, and upload a photo of a fuel receipt to back up your claim.

Once you're happy with all the details, just click Add expense or Back should you wish to make any changes.

All your saved items will appear in a list on the claim details screen. From here, you can easily Edit or Delete items if you need to make any changes by clicking on the three dots.

Once you’re happy that everything is correct, scroll to the top of the screen and click submit.

(You can also change the 'Claim name' from here by using the Edit claim button, or remove the expenses entirely using the red Delete button.)

Once you’ve hit submit, your claim will head over to your manager or expense approver for review.

You don't need to guess what's happening behind the scenes, either, Breathe will automatically send you an email notification the moment your claim is approved or rejected, so you're always kept completely in the loop.

To create a new claim on your phone, head to More > HR > Expenses where you'll be taken to your My expense summary screen. From there, tap the blue Create expense claim button at the bottom of the screen to go to the Add expense screen.

The app follows the exact same simple flow as the desktop version: you create an overall claim container, add individual expenses to it, and then submit it for approval.

Once you've tapped Create expense claim, give it a clear name (like "June expenses"). If you already have an open draft claim and just want to add more items to it instead, simply tap into that existing claim to open your Expense claim summary screen and select Add expenses.

Once you are inside your claim, follow these quick steps for each item:

You can keep adding as many individual items to this claim as you need. Once you are completely satisfied with all the expense items inside your claim, simply tap Submit claim to send the whole bundle off to your manager for review.

When an employee sends a claim, the system automatically sends an email to their approver. You’ll also see a notification on your dashboard To-Do list on the desktop/browser version of Breathe.

What happens when an employee hits 'submit' depends entirely on your Breathe plan size and how your account permissions are configured.

To keep things running smoothly, Breathe looks at approvals through a specific chain of command. Here is exactly how an expense claim travels through the system:

When an employee submits an expense, it will route to:

💡 Good to know: HR and Admin users have ultimate visibility. An HR or Admin user can always view, access, and approve any expense claim across the entire business at any time, regardless of whether the employee has an assigned Line Manager or Expense Approver.

When an employee submits an expense on a higher tier, it will route to:

💡 Good to know: The Finance User permission is a dedicated role exclusively available on the Regular plan and above. A Finance or Admin user can always access, view, and approve any expense claim across the company at any time, regardless of whether the employee has an assigned Line Manager or Expense Approver.

If you want a specific person to sign off on an employee's expenses (instead of their standard line manager), you can set this up on their profile.

On all plans, a Line Manager will have a view of their team's expenses, as well as the ability to manage or delete them if those permissions are enabled.

Line manager permissions are set universally for your whole account under your main settings, rather than customizing them on a list per individual manager.

To configure these, navigate to: Configure > Settings > Permissions and approvals > Change what Line managers can see and do.

Scroll down to the bottom of the list to find Expenses, choose the level of access you'd like to grant, and click the green Update button to save.

Here is what each permission setting means:

Click Expenses under your dashboard to-do list. The expenses to approve list shows the total amount of the claim and what is payable to the employee. Click View to open the details. Here, you also have the option to view all expenses or pay all expenses.

When selecting view, the screen shows the history of the claim, including who sent it and when. You can also see if it was rejected or sent back before.

From this screen, you have two quick ways to review and approve individual line items:

(Looking to approve multiple expenses all at once? Check out our Bulk approving claims section below!)

To approve multiple claims at once, go to the employee’s claim and find the Expense items section towards the bottom of the screen.

Select the top checkbox to choose all expense items, or tick only the ones you want to update.

Then open Bulk actions and select Approve expenses.

You can also delete expenses from here.

To download an individual claim report showing the full details of the claim, open the Claim details screen and click the Download report button.

You can reject a whole claim or just a few specific items.

To reject a claim in it's entirety, click the red Reject claim button.

Alternatively, click on an expense item from the Expense items list on the lower part of the screen, and within the sidebar, click Reject at the bottom.

A pop-up will appear prompting you to add some details.

Type a clear reason into the box and click Confirm rejection.

The system won’t notify the employee until you click that final button.

Once it’s rejected, the employee can see your reason, edit the expenses to make any changes, and send it back for approval.

You can mark one or more approved claims as paid in two ways.

Note: Only approved claims can be marked as paid.

First, from the Expenses tab in the dashboard To-Do list, click Pay all expenses.

Alternatively, open the Claim details screen by clicking on the expense from the Expense claims list on the company expenses dashboard, then click the blue Mark as paid button in the top-right corner.

💡 Please note that Breathe does not make payments. Once your employee has been reimbursed, or you have started the reimbursement process, you should mark the claim as paid.

Where you see expenses on your menu depends on your role. While all employees have a My expenses tab for their own claims, those managing the company spending have a broader view.

Admin and HR users (on Micro and Starter plans) or Admin and Finance users (on Regular plans and above) can click Expenses on the left-hand menu to see spending across the whole business.

Line managers and expense approvers can also see this menu, but they’ll only see the claims for the people they look after.

The main screen shows you the number of drafts, what’s been submitted, and the totals for the month. You’ll also find two helpful graphs:

💡 Please note: The data shown on these dashboards and graphs is displayed based on the date the expense claim is submitted, rather than the date the individual expenses took place.

At the top of the company expenses screen, you can use the employee selector to view records for all employees or focus on one employee at a time.

You can also use the currency filter to view claims in one currency at a time.

In the expense claims section further down the page, you can use the status filter to narrow the list by claim status.

If you’re the Admin or a Finance user, you can export receipt data for company audits.

Go to Expenses from the main left-hand menu and click Receipt exports in the top right-hand corner. From here, you can export spreadsheet data for a specific date or download the actual files your team uploaded.

If you need to run more detailed reports on your spending, you can use our standard reporting tools found by navigating to Reports > Expense reports
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For a quick breakdown, here's what each report displays

Take a look at our Expense reports guide to learn more:

A: The cost of the Expenses module depends on your Breathe plan. To view our current pricing, just take a look at this link.

A: To turn on the module, simply head to Configure > Plan and billing > Change plan > Expenses > +. Once you've clicked that, you can start using it straight away. Please keep in mind that if you work with a Breathe Partner, they can switch this module on for you.

A: Yes! You can trial the Expenses module for 14 days before deciding to add it to your plan. You can start your free trial by clicking here.

A: Yes! We have a dedicated Employee guide: How to manage and submit expenses that walks your people through the entire process step-by-step, including how to build claims, upload receipts, and log mileage.

To find claims for a specific employee, go to the company expenses screen and use the employee filter search employees by name and narrow the list.

A: The system needs the 'mileage' type to work out exactly how much your employees are owed based on your rates, so it can't be edited or deleted. However, you can easily customise your own mileage rates by heading to Configure > Settings > Picklists > Mileage types. Once those are set up, your team is good to go.

A: Depending on your company setup, Admin, HR, and Finance users can all review, approve, or reject expense claims to help keep things moving.

A: Expenses need to match the currency set on your profile. If you buy something in a different currency while you're away, just convert the amount into your usual currency before adding it to your claim. It’s a good idea to use the description box to note down the original cost and the exchange rate so your manager can see the details.

A: Yes, you can. If your business doesn't track expenses, an Admin can remove the module from the system. Just head to Configure > Plan & billing and uncheck the box next to Expenses.

A: To keep your data safe and accurate, employees need to submit their own claims from their own account.

A: To keep your company records accurate, employees can only submit claims in the specific currency set on their profile. If this needs to be updated, it must be changed by an HR user (found under Employee profile > Job > Edit > Payment currency). A line manager can also update this in the same way if the account's line manager permissions are set to 'Manage' for 'Profile inc docs'. You can check or change this by heading to Configure > Settings > Permissions and approvals > Change what line managers can see and do, and ticking Manage against Profile.

A: Yes, an expense approver can still make changes to an expense item even after it has been approved. However, once the expense has been marked as paid, it is securely locked in the system for your financial records and can no longer be edited or changed.

A: To help keep claims in line with your company policy, you can set daily spending limits against specific expense categories. When an employee is building a claim, the system will automatically display a policy limit warning on their screen if they go over these thresholds, flagging it before they hit submit.

A: Yes! To make VAT reconciliation as smooth as possible for your finance team, you can bulk download stored receipts alongside your standard expense dashboard metrics and data exports.

A: The system handles notifications automatically at every stage:

When a claim is submitted: The designated approver or line manager automatically receives an email notification and a task on their dashboard to-do list.

When a claim is approved or rejected: The employee instantly receives an email keeping them in the loop. If a claim is rejected, the email will include the clear reason typed by the approver so the employee knows exactly what needs to be fixed.

A: You can view your receipts by clicking on the item within a claim. The receipt will then appear in the "view expense" side window for you to review.

A: to view your own draft claims, head to my expenses from the left-hand menu, then head to your expense claims at the bottom, here you can filter the list by the status, eg; draft, submitted, rejected, approved or completed

A: The difference comes down to who initially paid for the item or service: