Help Center / Expense Management

Expense Management Overview

What's this page about: How expense capture, AI extraction, approval, reimbursement, and card settlement work in Light, and how expense data flows into your accounting records. Read this first if you're setting up expense management, training employees on submission, or configuring approval and policy review.

On this page

  • What is expense management
  • Key concepts
  • Submitting expenses
  • Corporate cards
  • Approval workflow and expense states
  • Policies and compliance review
  • Reimbursement
  • Spend analytics
  • How expenses post to accounting
  • Related articles

Expense management in Light covers every business expense an employee incurs, whether it's paid on a corporate card or out of pocket. Light captures the receipt, extracts the details, checks it against policy, routes it for approval, and posts it to your GL, so Finance spends its time on exceptions instead of data entry.

What is expense management

An expense moves through six stages, from the moment an employee spends money to the moment it lands in your books:

  1. Capture. Employee submits a receipt through Slack, Teams, email, the mobile app, or the Light app.
  2. Extraction. Light's AI reads the receipt and pulls out the merchant, date, amount, and line items.
  3. Categorisation. Light assigns a spending category and GL account.
  4. Policy review. Light checks the submission against your written expense policy.
  5. Approval. Compliant expenses auto-approve. Anything flagged routes to a review inbox for a person to check.
  6. Settlement. Finance reimburses the employee, or the transaction settles against the corporate card account.

Corporate card spend and out-of-pocket spend both flow through this process, but they settle differently. Card transactions don't need a reimbursement request. See Corporate cards.

Key concepts

Expense: a single business transaction, such as a flight, hotel stay, meal, or supply purchase. Expenses that need reimbursement are grouped into a reimbursement request and approved as a unit.

Receipt: the supporting document for an expense (a photo, email confirmation, or PDF). Light's AI reads the receipt automatically so employees don't type in the details by hand. A receipt is optional, you can submit an expense with just the amount, category, date, and description filled in.

Spending category: the classification Light assigns to an expense (Travel, Meals, Office Supplies, and so on). Categories map to GL accounts, so this is also how the expense gets coded for accounting.

Policy: a written document that describes what your company will and won't reimburse (spending limits, ineligible purchases, pre-approval rules, and so on). Light's AI reads the policy and reviews each submission against it. A policy in Light isn't a set of toggles or configured limits. It's a document, so any rule you want enforced needs to be written into the policy text itself. See Policies and compliance review.

Corporate card: a card Light issues directly to an employee, either physical or virtual. See Corporate cards.

Submitting expenses

Employees can submit an out-of-pocket expense through any of these channels. Corporate card transactions don't need to be submitted at all (see Corporate cards).

Slack

  1. Post or forward the receipt in Slack.
  2. The Light bot extracts the details and replies with a link to review them.
  3. Confirm the details and approve, without leaving Slack.

Microsoft Teams

  1. Share the receipt in a Teams channel or direct message.
  2. The Light bot extracts the details automatically.
  3. Review and approve in Teams.

Email

  1. Forward the receipt to your company's expense inbox (for example, expenses@yourcompany.com).
  2. Light captures the email and attachment and sends a confirmation link.
  3. Review the extracted details and confirm.

Mobile app

  1. Open the Light app and tap Add expense.
  2. Optionally attach a receipt: Take photo, Browse files, or Browse photos. A receipt isn't required to submit.
  3. Fill in the amount, category, date, and description. If you attached a receipt, Light pre-fills these from the extracted data for you to check.
  4. Tap Submit in the header and confirm.
  5. Track the status from the app.

Web app

  1. Open the Light app.
  2. Upload the receipt and enter the details manually.

Any channel works. Employees can pick whichever fits how they already work, and every channel feeds the same review and approval process.

Corporate cards

Light issues two forms of corporate card:

  • Physical card: issued to the employee for in-person and online purchases.
  • Virtual card: issued instantly for online and contactless payments. A virtual card can also be added to Apple Pay or Google Pay for contactless use. This is a wallet added to the virtual card, not a separate card type.

Card transactions appear automatically under Cards in the Light app. The employee attaches the receipt to the transaction. There's no expense to submit and no reimbursement request involved, since the company's card account settles the payment directly. Finance categorises and posts these transactions to the ledger the same way it would any other expense.

Approval workflow and expense states

Once an employee submits a receipt, Light runs it through AI extraction and a policy review, then routes it based on the result:

  1. Employee submits a receipt.
  2. Light extracts the expense details and assigns a category.
  3. Light checks the submission against your expense policy.
  4. If the submission is compliant, Light approves it automatically.
  5. If the submission is flagged, it routes to a review inbox for a person to check and decide.

This flow is configurable. Your organisation can add its own approval steps on top of the default.

Expense states

An expense moves through these states as it's processed:

  • CREATED: receipt uploaded, AI extraction in progress.
  • IN_DRAFT: employee is reviewing the extracted details.
  • SUBMITTED_FOR_REVIEW: submitted as part of a reimbursement request, awaiting approval.
  • CANCELLED: withdrawn by the employee.

Reimbursement request states

Once expenses are grouped into a reimbursement request, the request itself moves through:

  • IN_PROGRESS
  • SUCCEEDED
  • FAILED
  • REJECTED
  • RESET

Policies and compliance review

A policy in Light is a written document, not a set of configured limits. You write down what's reimbursable and what isn't (spending limits, ineligible categories, pre-approval requirements, documentation rules, approved or restricted vendors), and Light's AI reads that document and checks every submission against it.

This matters for how you set up compliance: to enforce a rule, put it in the policy text. Light won't apply a limit or restriction that isn't written into the policy. Submissions that fail the check get flagged for manual review rather than rejected automatically. This gives a person the final say on borderline cases.

Reimbursement

When employees request reimbursement

Employees typically request reimbursement when they paid out of pocket, a card wasn't available, or they fronted an advance. Finance processes these on a regular schedule, for example weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, depending on your company's settings.

When a card settles instead

Card transactions never enter the reimbursement pipeline. Payment comes directly from the company's card account, so there's nothing to reimburse. The employee's only task is attaching the receipt.

Spend analytics

Light gives Finance visibility into spending, broken down by:

  • Employee: who is spending the most.
  • Category: which categories account for the largest spend.
  • Merchant: where employees spend most often.
  • Department: spending by cost centre.
  • Trends: month-over-month or year-over-year comparisons.
  • Policy exceptions: where submissions are being flagged for review.

Use these views to spot cost-saving opportunities and see whether your written policy is working the way you intended.

How expenses post to accounting

Once approved, an expense flows into your accounting records automatically:

  • GL posting: the expense posts to the GL account tied to its spending category.
  • Vendor records: recurring merchants link to a vendor record, so spend history builds up against a consistent vendor.
  • Cost centres: expenses allocate to the appropriate cost centre.
  • Reporting: expense data feeds into your financial statements and management reports.

Also searched as: Expense reporting, expense tracking, corporate card management, employee reimbursement, receipt scanning app, T&E management, expense approval software, virtual corporate cards, expense policy enforcement, Slack expense bot, GL coding for expenses.

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