Expenses

Approve reimbursements, confirm recurring expenses and total spending for any dates.

A reimbursable expense is one the business owes back to the person who paid it. Expense reports group them for an admin to approve, and Mark reimbursed records when the money was paid back. Recurring expenses make a draft on each date for you to confirm; Reports totals spending by category, project, merchant and contact, and expenses can be exported as a CSV file or with their receipts.

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Reimbursable expenses

Set an expense's Reimbursable to Yes when the business owes it to the person who paid. Reimbursements shows, for each currency, the total still outstanding and the total already reimbursed, and lists the expense reports.

A single expense can be settled without a report by setting its Reimbursement status to reimbursed: today's date will be recorded, and can be changed, with an optional reference. A reimbursable expense with a contact can be billed to the client on an invoice instead, and then cannot go on a report.

Expense reports

An expense report holds one person's reimbursable expenses in one currency. A draft or rejected report can be deleted, and its expenses are kept.

  1. Create

    + New expense report takes a title and the expenses to include: reimbursable expenses that are not on another report, not reimbursed and not on an invoice. Expenses can be added and removed until it is submitted.

  2. Submit

    Submit report submits it for approval, and it is listed first on the admins' Reimbursements page. While it is submitted, the report and its expenses cannot be changed.

  3. Approve or reject

    An admin approves the report, or rejects it with an optional reason that the person who submitted it will see. A rejected report can be changed and submitted again.

  4. Mark reimbursed

    After approval, an admin enters the date the money was paid and an optional reference, and every expense on the report will become reimbursed. Magpie records the payment; it does not send money.

Who approves reports

A member sees their own reports, and an admin sees every report in the team. Only admins approve, reject or mark a report reimbursed; in Personal, you do all of it. A report's page has a History section with who created, submitted, approved, rejected or reimbursed it, and each expense on it records the same.

When the team keeps its books in Accounting, a reimbursable expense is owed in Reimbursements owed until it is marked reimbursed, and is then paid from Bank or the account chosen in Accounting's Settings.

Recurring expenses

Recurring lists expenses that repeat, such as subscriptions or rent, with an estimated monthly total for each currency. A rule has a merchant, an amount and currency, how often it repeats (weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly) and a first date, and can have a category, payment method, project, contact and whether it is reimbursable.

A draft on each date
When a rule falls due, a draft expense with its details will be listed at the top of Recurring and under Needs attention on Overview. A draft is not counted in lists, totals, reports, exports or invoices.
Confirm or Discard
Change what differs this time, such as the amount of a utility bill, then Confirm makes the draft an expense. Discard deletes it.
Pause, Resume and Delete
Pause stops a rule creating drafts and keeps its date; Resume starts it again. Delete stops it for good and keeps the drafts it already made. Only the person who set up a rule changes it, and an admin sees the team's rules.

Totals by category, project, merchant and contact

Reports totals expenses for This month, Last month, This quarter, This year, any date or custom dates. Years and quarters are calendar ones; Expenses does not use a financial year.

Each currency separately
The total and the number of expenses in each currency. Amounts in different currencies are not converted or added together.
Grouped totals
Totals by category, project, merchant and contact, such as what was spent on Travel last month. On a team, admins also see totals by person.
Reimbursable
For each currency, how much reimbursable spending is outstanding and how much was reimbursed.
What is counted
Confirmed expenses with an amount: drafts from recurring rules and receipts waiting in Receipt Inbox are left out. A member's report covers their own expenses, and an admin's covers the team's.

Export as CSV or with the receipts

Export CSV
On All Expenses or Reports, downloads the expenses that match the filters or dates as a CSV file: date, merchant, description, category, amount, tax, currency, payment method, project, client, reimbursement details, receipt file name, tags and notes, and the person for a team admin.
Export receipts
On All Expenses, downloads a ZIP with expenses.csv and a receipts folder, each file named by date, merchant and amount, such as 2026-09-29-printworks-42.18.pdf. When there are too many receipts for one ZIP, the page says so; choose a shorter date range.

Put your first expense on a report.

Create a Magpie account, open Expenses and record an expense, then set Reimbursable to Yes and add it to an expense report under Reimbursements.

Create account