An expense report connects business purchases with their evidence and the person who reviews them. A useful report also makes clear which amounts were paid by the company and which may need to be reimbursed to an employee.
Download the free expense report in Excel, or open the printable expense report. Both are in English and include expense lines, evidence references and review fields. The Excel workbook calculates reporting amounts and approved employee-paid totals from your inputs. The browser form uses manually entered totals.
Set the scope before adding expenses
Give the report an identifier, a reporting period and one legal entity. Add the employee or owner, team or project and reviewer. If costs belong to different entities, use separate reports and cross-reference any shared purchase.
Choose a reporting currency. Keep each transaction's original currency and amount as well. The report has room for both; it should never disguise a currency conversion as an original purchase amount.
Add one expense per line
For each purchase, enter the date, merchant and business purpose. Mark who paid: the company or the employee. Then add the original amount and currency, the amount in the reporting currency and the evidence reference.
Use a receipt filename or document reference that the reviewer can find. Keep the files together in the company's approved record system. A report that says “receipt attached” is difficult to review if there is no reliable connection to the right document.
| Field | What the reviewer needs to understand |
|---|
| Date and merchant | Which purchase the line represents |
| Business purpose | Why the cost belongs to the business |
| Paid by | Whether the company already paid or an employee may be owed money |
| Original amount and currency | What the receipt or supplier record shows |
| Reporting amount and rate source | How the expense enters the report's common currency |
| Evidence reference | Where to find the receipt and supporting context |
| Decision | Approved, pending, declined or more evidence needed |
Reconcile the report without paying an expense twice
Total only amounts expressed in the chosen reporting currency. Separate company-paid expenses from employee-paid expenses. The amount due to an employee depends on the approved employee-paid costs, less applicable advances or amounts already reimbursed.
An expense paid with a company card can still need a receipt and review. It should not automatically become an employee reimbursement. Similarly, an employee payment is not automatically approved just because it appears in the report.
The Excel workbook converts each line using the reporting-currency rate you enter and totals the resulting amounts. It separately totals approved employee-paid expenses and subtracts the advance or earlier reimbursement you enter. A rate of 1 applies when the original and reporting currencies are the same. Missing rates leave the affected amounts incomplete, so resolve the workbook's missing-input count before relying on the totals.
The printable form includes spaces for manually checked totals. Neither version selects exchange rates, determines tax treatment or approves expenses. Check the inputs and review decision before paying or booking the report.
Resolve exceptions on the same record
Ask for a duplicate when a receipt is missing. If it cannot be recovered, attach a missing receipt declaration and leave the line pending until it has been reviewed. A business meal form adds guest and purpose details to a restaurant receipt.
For refunds, duplicate claims, personal items or split payments, describe the adjustment and link the related transaction. Preserve the original amount and evidence so someone else can follow the change.
Adapt the report to the relevant country
This is a general operational form. Reimbursement rules, allowable costs, invoice requirements and tax treatment depend on the business and jurisdiction. Have the relevant finance owner define those rules in the expense policy.
For a specifically Dutch or German workflow, Rally also has the Dutch declaratieformulier and German travel-expense template. Their country-specific guidance should be used only in the relevant context.
Let the report become the output of a daily process
Collecting everything at the end of the month makes people reconstruct purchases. Try the receipt scanner for the extraction step. Rally's WhatsApp agent helps employees provide receipts and context as they go. AutoMatch connects evidence with transactions, while the platform agent helps teams work through the wider expense workflow and its outstanding tasks.
People review incomplete records and accounting decisions before using the supported accounting outputs. The same process can serve a one-person business or a team with several reviewers. Explore Rally expense management, or see how AI agents fit into the process.
