Recommended Setup Before Using Expenses

The Expenses module in ZevBit is designed to be flexible, which means you can start using it at any time—even without completing every setup step in advance.

However, there are a few recommended preparations that will help you work faster, stay organized, and get the most accurate results from your expense tracking.

These are not strict requirements, but following them will improve your overall experience.

Expenses are meant to help you compare:

What you estimated vs what you actually spent

Because of this, it is recommended to:

The Expenses module allows users to track real-time project costs and allocate those expenses to the respective projects. All recorded expenses are reflected both within the project details and in the Job Costing module, enabling users to compare estimated costs with actual spending. This provides a clear understanding of the project’s financial status, including total expenses, budget performance, and overall profitability.

That said, this is not mandatory.

It is possible to add expenses that are not yet associated with a specific project. This feature allows builders to proactively set and save prices from their vendors and

subcontractors as "Not Allocated" in the system before a project begins.

Learn how to create a project and estimate here.

You can set up your vendors in advance by going to:

Settings → Catalog → Vendors

You can set up your subcontractors in advance by going to:

Teams → Subcontractors

When adding an expense, you can also:

This means you don’t need to leave the Expenses workflow to manage vendors.

If you plan to use Allocate by Line Item, your estimate should be structured carefully.

When creating your estimate:

Example:

Instead of one general line like:

You should structure it like:

You can only allocate expenses to line items that already exist in your estimate; if an item is not included, it cannot be tracked at the task level and must be allocated to the overall project instead.