Expense Management Overview

What is 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
• Tracking expense data
• 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. The employee uploads a receipt through Slack, Teams, the mobile app or the web app.
2. Extraction. Light's AI reads the receipt and pulls out the merchant, date, totals, tax and line items.
3. Categorization. Light assigns a spending category, and the category sets the 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 need no 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). Every expense starts from an uploaded receipt. Light's AI reads it and fills in the details, and the employee checks and edits them.

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. Any rule you want enforced goes 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 submit an out-of-pocket expense through any of these channels. Corporate card transactions need no submission (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. Open the link, check the details and submit the expense in Light.

Microsoft Teams

1. Share the receipt in a Teams channel or direct message.
2. The Light bot extracts the details and replies with a link.
3. Open the link, check the details and submit the expense in Light.

Mobile app

1. Open the Light app and tap Add expense.
2. Add the receipt: Take photo, Browse files, or Browse photos.
3. Check the Amount, Category, Date and Description that Light fills in from the receipt, and edit them if needed.
4. Tap Submit in the header, then confirm in the Submit expenses? dialog.
5. Follow the status under the Submitted tab.

Web app

1. Open Expenses in the Light app.
2. Upload the receipt. Light's AI fills in the details.
3. Check and edit the details, then submit.

Every channel feeds the same review and approval process, so employees can pick whichever fits how they already work.

# 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. You can add a virtual card to a mobile wallet from the Add to wallet dialog in the web app. Apple Pay is available, and Google Pay is available for selected companies. Adding it to a wallet keeps it the same virtual card.

Card transactions appear automatically under Cards in the Light app. The employee attaches the receipt to the transaction. The company's card account settles the payment directly, so the transaction skips submission and reimbursement. Finance categorizes and posts these transactions to the ledger the same way it would any other expense.

Email receipts for card transactions

Each company has its own receipts address, in the form your-company@receipts.light.inc. Forward a receipt there and Light matches it to the card transaction it belongs to. This address is for card receipts, so out-of-pocket expenses go through one of the channels in Submitting expenses.

# 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.

Auto-approval needs a published expense workflow for your company. To add your own approval steps, add them to the approval flow for reimbursement bills.

Where expenses appear

Employees follow their expenses by tab:

• Web app, on the Expenses page: Draft, Processing, Paid and Rejected.
• Mobile app: Drafts and Submitted.

Reimbursement request status

• Web app: the reimbursement shows the status of its bill, such as In review, Approved or Paid.
• Mobile app: the reimbursement shows Submitted, Rejected or Cancelled, and Paid once the bill is paid.

Admins work through reimbursements on the Reimbursements page, under the Inbox, Approving, Scheduled, Paid and Discarded tabs.

# Policies and compliance review

A policy in Light is a written document. 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 applies the limits and restrictions written into the policy. Submissions that fail the check are flagged for manual review, which gives a person the final say on borderline cases.

# Reimbursement

When employees request reimbursement

Employees request reimbursement when they paid out of pocket, a card wasn't available, or they fronted an advance. Each reimbursement request becomes a bill that goes through your approval flow and is then paid.

When a card settles instead

Card transactions stay out of the reimbursement process. Payment comes directly from the company's card account, so there's nothing to reimburse. The employee's one task is attaching the receipt.

# Tracking expense data

Employees follow their expenses in the Draft, Processing, Paid and Rejected tabs on the Expenses page. See Expense Reports and Analytics.

For broader reporting, admins can export reimbursement data as CSV from the menu on the Reimbursements page, or build a custom report against the ledger. See Exporting Reports and Custom Reports.

# 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.
• Repeat merchants: when an employee spends with a merchant again, Light copies the coding from the last expense with that merchant.
• Cost centers: expenses allocate to the appropriate cost center.
• Reporting: expense data feeds into your financial statements and management reports.

# Related articles

• Submitting expenses via Slack
• Submitting expenses via Teams
• Mobile receipt capture
• Expense Policies
• Expense approval workflows
• Reimbursement Workflow

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