Recording an expense note and the employee reimbursement in SamBooks
10 min read
How to record a receipt, a petty-cash outlay or an employee expense note in SamBooks, and how the employee reimbursement gets settled.
What this is for
An expense note is for expenses that are not electronically invoiced: receipts, tolls, fuel or business-lunch slips, petty cash, or an expense an employee paid for out of pocket and needs reimbursing. It is a single-header document (no line items) that you post with the VAT figures you declare yourself, since no electronic document tells SamBooks what they are.
Before you start
- You need the Manager or Administrative role: they are the ones who both create and post — there is no separate approver role, and neither Logistics nor Viewer can create or post one (Viewer can only read).
- There is no linked employee record: on the “employee expense note” type, the beneficiary is just the name you type into a text field, not a linked record.
- The cost account (category) cannot be assigned by hand from any screen: Sam proposes it automatically, or you ask for it explicitly in chat.
- There is no way to attach a receipt and have it read by OCR from the manual form: the only way to get SamBooks to read a receipt is to attach it to Sam in chat.
- If your company is on the flat-rate scheme (RF19), the whole purchase cycle — and so expense notes too — is unavailable.
Step by step
1. Open “Expense notes”
From the left menu open Expense notes. Note: the page itself and its tab are still titled “Receipts and till slips” — an older name left over from before the sidebar rename, but it is the same feature. Columns: Date, Merchant, Type, Doc. no., Total, Journal (badge “To be posted” if not yet accounted for, no badge once posted). Filters: Type, Document period, Merchant, Journal (All/To post/Posted). If there is nothing yet you will see “No receipts” / “No receipts match the selected filters. Ask Sam to record one.”
2. Press “New expense note” and choose the type
At the top right, press New expense note: the dialog “Record a receipt, a petty-cash outlay or an employee expense note.” opens with a Type field offering three values:
- Receipt (selected by default) — a receipt carrying your company's VAT number, typical of fuel, tolls, small purchases.
- Petty cash — a cash outlay with no invoice behind it.
- Employee expense note — an expense the employee paid for in advance, to be reimbursed.
The three do not differ in the form itself (the fields are identical) but in what happens at posting: only the employee type creates a reimbursement due date (see below).
3. Fill in the fields
- Merchant (required) — who issued the receipt.
- Document date (required, defaults to today).
- Document number (optional).
- Total (€) (required, must be greater than zero).
- Payment method (optional, free text — not a list of codes; write, for example, “card” or “cash”).
- Taxable amount (€), VAT (€), VAT rate (%) (all optional: leave them blank if the receipt does not show VAT clearly).
- VAT deductibility (%) (optional): the field shows a “100” placeholder, but it is only a visual hint, not a value already entered — if you leave it blank, SamBooks still applies 100% deductibility at posting time, exactly as if you had typed 100.
If the merchant is missing you will see “Enter the merchant's name.”; if the date is missing, “Select the document date.”; if the total is zero or blank, “Enter a total greater than zero.” Press Create expense note: on success you will see “Expense note created.” and SamBooks takes you straight to the detail of the note you just created; on failure, “Could not create the expense note.”
4. The note's detail: four tabs
Opening an expense note gives you four tabs — Details, Categorization, Journal entry, AI history:
- Details — the data you entered when creating it.
- Categorization — shows the cost account if Sam has already proposed one (“Cost account proposed by Sam”, with the account code, any OIC category code and the date). Until you ask Sam, this tab stays empty: the message literally reads “This receipt has not been categorised yet. Ask Sam to assign a cost account.” — there is no screen anywhere in the product to pick the account by hand for an expense note (not at creation, not anywhere else); if you never assign one, posting still goes ahead using a generic cost account.
- Journal entry — see step 5.
- AI history — see “If something goes wrong”.
5. Post to the journal
On the Journal entry tab, until the note is posted you will read “No linked journal entry. This expense note has not been posted to the journal yet. Post it with the button below.” and the Post to journal button. Press it: on success the message is “Expense note posted to the journal.” (press it twice and you will get “This expense note was already posted to the journal.” — the action is idempotent, it never duplicates the entry); on failure, “Could not post the expense note to the journal.” Once posted, the same tab shows the linked entry (number, description, date, total) with an Open entry link and an Undo posting button, which reverses the posting (see “Editing, deleting or reversing an expense note”).
What posting produces, by type
In every case an entry is created with the cost on the debit side (on the categorised account, or on a generic one if none was ever assigned) plus input VAT for the deductible share only — the non-deductible share stays on the cost side. What changes is the credit side:
- Receipt and Petty cash → credit Cash (or Bank, if the payment method points to a card/transfer). No due date is created: it is already come out of your own pocket.
- Employee expense note → credit Payables to employees, and a reimbursement due date is created, with the employee's name as beneficiary (free text, not a linked record). The due date joins the open items like any other: you find and close it from Due dates and open items, exactly as you would record a payment to a supplier — there is no separate “reimburse the employee” flow.
The expense note feeds the VAT purchase register just like any other purchase invoice.
Editing, deleting or reversing an expense note
An expense note behaves differently from almost every other document in SamBooks here, and it is worth knowing before you press “Create expense note”:
- It cannot be edited. Once created, none of its fields can be corrected — not from the form (there is no “Edit” dialog), not by asking Sam either. If you got something wrong, the only route is to delete the note (see below) and create a new one.
- It cannot be deleted from the form. There is no “Delete” button, neither in the list nor on the detail page. If the note was created by asking Sam in chat, though, you can undo it from the AI history tab of its detail page: every action Sam performed on that note shows up there with a button to revert it (for the creation, reverting is a soft delete: the note still shows up, but with a “Receipt cancelled” banner and the date). If instead you created it from the manual form, this button does not exist anywhere: that note stays for good.
- The posting can be undone, the expense note stays. On the Journal entry tab of a posted note you will find Undo posting: a confirmation reminds you that the entry is deleted, not reversed (no opposite-sign entry is written) and that any unpaid reimbursement due date is removed along with it. It works for every posting, whether you made it from the button or Sam made it from chat; once undone, the tab goes back to its empty state and you can post it again. Two possible refusals, both explained in the confirmation window itself: if the VAT period has already been settled (the input VAT of that note is already part of a closed VAT settlement) you must first reopen that period's settlement and settle it again afterwards; if the financial year is closed, it has to be reopened. The expense note itself is untouched: it stays, with its data.
Ask Sam
The same operations can be requested from Sam in chat, with the same outcome as the manual path. One difference remains, on creation: an expense note created by Sam can be cancelled (soft-delete) from the AI history tab, one created from the form cannot.
- “Record a €45 receipt for a business lunch with supplier X.” (this is also the suggestion shown on the empty list)
- “Record an employee expense note for Mario Rossi, €120, fuel, to be reimbursed.”
- “Assign the Fuel account to expense note 34.” — the only way to categorise one.
- “Post expense note 34 to the journal.”
- “Undo the journal posting of expense note 34.” — same effect as the Undo posting button, guardrails included.
- You can also attach a photo or PDF of the receipt to Sam: it is the only way anywhere in the product to have a receipt read via OCR — there is no manual equivalent.
If something goes wrong
- The total is not greater than zero: saving is blocked with “Enter a total greater than zero.” — check that you entered a number and did not leave the field at 0.
- The Categorization tab stays empty: that is expected until you ask Sam to assign an account — it is not an error, and the note can still be posted (using a generic account) without one.
- I got something wrong after creating the note: it cannot be edited. If you created it from the form, manual deletion is not possible: the clean way out is to ask Sam to fix it (Sam can revert its own action, but not one done from the form) or leave it and post a correct one separately, noting the difference.
- I want to undo a posting: open the Journal entry tab and press Undo posting. If the window tells you the month or quarter has already been settled, the posting cannot be touched until you reopen that VAT settlement from the VAT menu entry, cancel it and redo it after undoing the expense note posting.
- The employee reimbursement is not showing up anywhere: check that you chose the Employee expense note type (not receipt/petty cash) and that you actually posted the note — the due date is only created at posting, not at creation.
- The “All supplier invoices” link at the top of the detail page: it is an old link that has not been fixed yet (it should point back to “Expense notes”), but it still works as a back button.
Frequently asked questions
How do I record a fuel receipt or a business lunch? From “Expense notes” → “New expense note” → type Receipt (already selected by default), fill in merchant/date/total and press “Create expense note”; then open the “Journal entry” tab and press “Post to journal”.
How do I record and reimburse an expense an employee paid for? Same form, but choose the Employee expense note type. Posting creates a reimbursement due date, which you find and close on the due dates page like any other open item.
Can I upload a photo of the receipt and have it read automatically? Only by attaching it to Sam in chat: there is no dropzone or OCR reading for expense notes in the manual form.
How do I assign a cost account to the expense note? By asking Sam in chat (“assign account X to expense note Y”): there is no way to do it from the form or from the Categorization tab, which only shows what Sam has already proposed.
Can I edit an expense note after creating it? No, no field can be corrected after creation. If you got something wrong, the clean way is to have Sam fix it (if Sam created it) or record a new one.
Can I delete an expense note I created by mistake? Only if it was created by asking Sam: from its “AI history” tab you can revert that action. A note created from the manual form has no way to be deleted.
Why does the Categorization tab tell me to ask Sam? Because that is literally the only way: SamBooks does not offer any screen to assign an expense note's cost account by hand.