Submitting an Expense — Employee Guide
For anyone who spends money on the company's behalf. Short version: photograph the receipt, check what Arcvue read off it, say what the money was for, and submit the report. Every required field on the form is required for a reason, and this guide gives the reason for each one.
For: everyone who incurs a business expense · Time: ~10 minutes · You'll need: the Arcvue mobile app, and the receipt.
How to access
Open the Arcvue mobile app and tap Expense in the bottom tab bar. Capture, coding and submission are all on the phone, and Parts 1 to 8 describe the phone. If your role includes the Expenses page on the web, the same report can be filed at a desk; see Filing one from the web.
New to Arcvue? Start with Your First Day — Signing In.
Part 1 — The fastest path
Tap "Snap receipt", photograph the receipt, tap "Use this", fill in the required fields, save.
That is the whole flow. The rest of this guide explains what each step is doing and what to do when something is not straightforward.
The first time you tap Snap receipt, the app asks for camera access. Tap Continue to allow it. If you have previously refused, the button becomes Open Settings and you grant it there. Not now backs out — you can still add an expense by hand.
The camera screen has one button: Take photo — it reads Snap a receipt until camera access has been granted. After the photo you can tap Retake if it is blurry or cropped. Do retake it: Arcvue reads the receipt, and a clean photograph is the difference between three fields filled in for you and three fields you type.
Adding a line by hand instead? That screen asks I have a receipt for this expense. Turn it on and Snap a receipt takes you to the same camera; leave it off and the form asks you why there is no receipt — see If there is no receipt.
Part 2 — What Arcvue reads off the receipt
When the photo uploads, Arcvue extracts what it can and shows you what it found before anything is saved:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Merchant | who you paid |
| Amount | the total it read |
| Date | the date on the receipt |
| Itemized | the receipt lists individual items, not just a total |
| Alcohol flag | the receipt appears to include alcohol |
Tap Use this and those values carry into the expense form, already filled in. Always read them before tapping. Extraction is good and it is not perfect — a faded total or a handwritten tip is exactly where it struggles, and you are the one who knows what you actually spent.
If the reading failed or was skipped, nothing is lost. Continue into the form and type the fields yourself.
Why the alcohol flag exists
Alcohol is an unallowable cost on government contracts. Flagging it at capture means it can be coded correctly rather than discovered later in an audit. If the flag is wrong, correct it in the form — and if it is right, leave it. Getting this wrong is not a rounding error; unallowable costs claimed against a contract are a finding.
Part 3 — The expense form
Reached automatically from Use this, or directly with Add expense manually at the bottom of the Expense tab. Use the manual route for cash, for mileage-free travel incidentals, or for anything with no receipt to photograph.
The form asks for five things, in this order:
-
Category — pick the kind of expense. The list is:
Airfare Lodging Meals Rental car Parking Gas / fuel Conference / registration fee Training Entertainment Office supplies Internet Other Pick the closest one; the category groups the expense for reporting and it is not what determines who pays for it. Entertainment is worth recognizing rather than avoiding — entertainment costs are unallowable on government contracts, and categorizing one honestly is what keeps it out of a claimed cost. Use Other only when nothing else fits, and lean on the business purpose to say what it was.
-
Charge to — required. What the money was spent on: a contract, or an indirect pool. This is the single most consequential field on the form; see Part 4.
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Amount ($) — the amount you spent.
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Merchant — who you paid.
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Business purpose — required. See Part 4.
Two more blocks appear only when they apply, and both are explained in Part 4:
- no receipt — the form asks why, and your answer becomes the record of the expense. Mileage never asks, because the trip record substantiates it.
- a meal — the form asks how many people ate, who they were, and what the business purpose was. This block appears for every business meal, including one paid on a company card.
Tap Save expense when it is complete. If anything required is still missing, the form tells you what before it will save.
If you have no signal
The expense is saved on your device and sent automatically when you are back online. You will see "Saved offline" telling you exactly that. Do not re-enter it — it is stored, and re-entering creates a duplicate somebody has to find and remove.
Part 4 — The required fields, and why
These are the ones the form will not let you skip, and they are not paperwork. Two are always required. Two more apply depending on what you bought.
Charge to
Every dollar the company spends has to land somewhere: against a specific contract, or in an indirect pool. That coding drives what gets billed to a customer, what goes into an indirect rate, and what shows up in a job report.
If you are unsure which contract, ask before you guess. A wrong charge code is not a typo — it either bills a customer for something that is not theirs, or buries a billable cost where nobody will invoice it. Both are worse than a delayed expense report.
You will only be offered the contracts and pools you are authorized to charge. If the one you need is not in the list, that is an authorization question for your timekeeping administrator, not something to work around by choosing something close.
Business purpose
The field says it plainly: "What was this for? Appears on the expense line for the reviewer."
If you use a screen reader, this field announces itself as Expense description. The heading above it and the gray prompt inside it read almost the same, so the spoken name is the one that tells them apart.
Write it for someone who was not there. "Client dinner, quarterly program review" is a business purpose. "Dinner" is not, and neither is "travel" or "supplies". On a government contract this text is the evidence that a cost was incurred for the contract's benefit, and it is read by your approver now and possibly by an auditor much later.
A report with no business purpose shows a yellow ⚠ No business purpose warning on its card in the list, because it will not survive review as it stands.
If there is no receipt
A receipt is required for every expense. There is no dollar amount below which one stops being required, and a small purchase is not exempt.
When you have no receipt, the form asks "Why isn't there a receipt?" and that is a required field. Write what actually happened — "vendor's card reader was down, paid cash, no printed slip" or "receipt blew off the table". The placeholder suggests the shape: "Lost it, vendor gave none, paid cash at a market stall…".
Your answer becomes the record of the expense. That is the whole point of the field. On a government contract a cost has to be substantiated, and when there is no document to substantiate it, a specific contemporaneous explanation from the person who spent the money is what stands in its place. "Lost" on its own explains nothing and will come back to you.
The question does not appear for mileage. A tracked drive carries its own trip record, and that record is the substantiation.
If it was a meal
Meals need more than a receipt, and they need it whoever paid. Select Meals as the category and a Meal details block appears asking three things:
- How many people ate? — the headcount, including you.
- Who attended? — one row per person, with Add another person to add a row and the ✕ beside a row to remove it. It is a list rather than one text box on purpose: names get typed with commas in them, and a list keeps the count honest.
- Business purpose — why this was a business expense and your relationship to the people above. Not what you ordered.
You may name fewer people than attended — a large group dinner can name the group rather than every head. You may not name more people than you said attended; that is incoherent and the form refuses it, telling you the two numbers it is comparing. If you left someone off, raise the count rather than deleting a name.
This block appears even when the meal went on a company card. The card statement substantiates that the money was spent; it says nothing about who was there or why, and that is the part a meal specifically owes. Federal cost rules want the business purpose and the business relationship of everyone present, and neither of those is on a receipt.
Filing one from the web
The web and the phone file the same report under the same rules. If your role includes the Expenses page, you can do the job at a desk: Labor → Expenses opens on My expenses, and Start a report is the way in — the next section walks it. If you do not see Expenses under Labor, your role files expenses on the phone.
The whole-report form (All reports)
If your role also sees All reports — a controller's view of everyone's reports — that view carries + New Expense Report, a form that files a report with all of its lines at once. It has two levels, and keeping them apart is the one thing worth getting right:
The report carries a Report date and a Business purpose. The business purpose is required and belongs to the whole report — it is the one sentence a reviewer reads first.
Each line is a row in a table with its own Date, Category, Amount, Merchant, Description and Charge to (DCAA). + Add line adds another row, and the running Total beside it is what your reviewer sees first — worth a glance before you submit, because a line typed into the wrong row is easier to spot in the total than in the table.
So Description is per line and Business purpose is per report. They are
not the same field and one does not substitute for the other: the purpose says
why the trip happened, the description says what this particular charge was.
A report whose lines all read the same as its purpose tells a reviewer nothing
they did not already have.
Charge to (DCAA) is the column where each line is charged — to a contract, or to an indirect cost pool. The form will not submit a line without one, and it says so by line number. Part 4 explains what that choice means and why it is worth asking rather than guessing.
Remove line deletes a row you added. Cancel abandons the whole report without saving it.
Create report is what actually files it. Until you click it nothing has been saved — the form is scratch, and closing the tab loses it. While it is working the button reads Creating..., and it stays disabled until that finishes so a second click cannot file the report twice.
Create report creates the report; it does not submit it. The report lands in your list as a draft, and Part 6 covers submitting it for approval. Those are two deliberate steps: you can add lines, fix a charge code or attach a receipt after creating it and before anyone reviews it.
Your expenses on the web
Labor → Expenses opens on My expenses: your own reports, action first. Needs you lists your drafts and any report that came back, each with its month, number, status and total, and a line saying what it still needs: how many expenses still need a receipt or a reason, that everything on it is substantiated and it can be submitted, or why a returned one came back. Click the report's purpose to open its page. Everything submitted, approved, posted or paid is folded under Show in progress and done (N); click it to list them and Hide in progress and done (N) to fold them again. With no reports yet the view says so and offers the one action.
Start a report opens a short form: the Month the report covers (this month unless you change it), What this report is for, and The first expense, entered with the same fields and the same checks as any expense you add later. Start draft report is available once everything the first expense needs is there; Cancel keeps nothing. This starts a draft for the month; keep adding expenses as they happen, and nothing is sent for approval until you submit. The new draft opens on its own page.
A controller sees the same view and a switch to All reports, the list of everyone's reports described in the controller's guide.
Your report page (web)
Every report has its own page. From Labor → Expenses, open a report and click Open the report page at the top of its panel. The page is built for the person who filed the report.
The header says what the report is: its business purpose, its number, the month it covers, its status and its total.
While the report is a draft, a banner above the lines says what still needs you before you submit — how many expenses still need a receipt or a reason there is none, and how many have no contract or cost pool to charge — or that everything this report needs to be submitted is here. The verdict is Arcvue's own, the same one Submit applies, so the banner and the refusal never disagree. It advises; it does not stop you.
Each line shows its date; its category, merchant and description; what it is charged to (the contract's name or the pool's, or needs a charge when it has neither); its amount; its receipt (✓ receipt, needs receipt or reason, or the reason you gave); its Per diem ceiling where one applies (a lodging night or a meal day, with a warning mark when the amount is over it); and its allowability.
On a draft, Add expense above the lines opens the expense form; the last column, Actions, holds Edit and Remove for each line (a mileage line is edited on the Mileage tab, where its trips live); and the page's footer holds Submit for approval and Delete draft:
- Add expense asks for the Date, the Amount, the Category, what it is Charged to, the Merchant, What it was for, and the Receipt or, under No receipt? Say why, the reason there is none. A meal also asks How many attended, Who attended (one name per line) and the Business purpose of the meal. Lodging or meals filed against a government per-diem ceiling ask Where (the published rate area, searched by city or county), and a stay asks its Check-in and Check-out and any Lodging tax; a meals-and-incidentals day asks which Meals somebody else provided and whether it was the First or last day of the trip. The ceiling itself is looked up by Arcvue from those facts when the expense is saved. A category that is unallowable on government contracts says so as you pick it; the expense is recorded as unallowable and your reimbursement is not affected. The list under the form, Before you can save, names what is still missing, and Add expense at the bottom becomes available when it is empty. A receipt picked with the expense is attached as the expense is saved. Cancel closes the form and keeps nothing.
- Edit opens the same form filled in; Save changes restates the expense and the report's total follows.
- + Receipt attaches a receipt to that line.
- Remove takes an expense off the report. It asks first. The receipt you attached stays on the report, and mileage rolled into the line goes back to the Mileage tab. The last expense cannot be removed — delete the draft instead.
- Submit for approval asks first, then sends every expense on the report to your approver. Nothing is sent until you confirm with Submit.
- Delete draft asks first, then discards the report and its expenses. Receipts you attached are kept as documents.
Once submitted, the page is the record: read-only, with the History of every action taken on it — who submitted it, who approved it, and any correction a controller made and why. A returned report shows the reason it came back.
Expenses at the top left takes you back to the list.
Part 5 — Your reports list
The Expense tab lists your own reports, newest activity first. Each card shows the report number, its status, the date, the business purpose and the total.
| Status | What it means | Whose move |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | started, not submitted | yours |
| Rejected | sent back to you | yours |
| Submitted | with your approver | theirs |
| Approved | approved, not yet posted | nobody's — in flight |
| Posted | in the books | done |
| Paid | reimbursed to you | done |
Only Draft and Rejected are shown by default, because those are the two that need you. Everything else collapses behind Submitted & completed (N) — tap it to expand. If you have nothing to act on but do have past reports, the list says "Nothing in progress" rather than looking empty.
A card may also warn ⚠ N lines missing receipts. Fix that before submitting.
Pull down on the list to refresh it.
Part 6 — Submitting a report
Tap a report to open it. You will see its total, its status and its lines.
- Add another line to this report — put several expenses from the same trip on one report rather than submitting each separately.
- Submit for approval — sends it to your approver. For an expense report that is finance: an administrator or a finance lead approves it, not the supervisor who approves your timesheet.
Arcvue checks the report for submission-readiness first. If something is missing — a business purpose, a receipt or the reason there is none, the attendees on a meal — it tells you what, before you submit. You can choose Submit anyway, and sometimes that is the right call and you know why. It is your name on it either way, and the gap does not disappear; it moves to your approver's screen.
If it comes back
A Rejected report reappears at the top of your list, where Draft reports live. Open it and read the reason. A returned report is closed — it cannot be edited or submitted again — so start a new report with the corrections. The receipts you attached are kept as documents.
Part 7 — Mileage is a different thing
Track mileage at the bottom of the Expense tab starts GPS mileage capture, which is its own flow with its own rules — a per-mile rate rather than a receipt, and drives that need classifying as business or personal.
It has its own guide. Do not enter mileage as a manual expense line with a dollar amount; it will be reimbursed at the wrong basis and it will not carry the trip record that substantiates it.
Part 8 — When something looks wrong
"Couldn't load your expense reports." A connection problem. Pull down to refresh.
A banner saying your password has to be changed, with Change password. Your login is still on a password someone else chose — the one in your invitation email, for example — and until you choose your own, every tab declines to load. Press Change password on the banner and set yours; it is not a connection problem, and pulling to refresh will not clear it.
A notice that your account is not linked to an employee record. Your login works, but it is not connected to a personnel record, so Arcvue cannot record whose expense this is. Ask your Arcvue administrator to link your account. Signing out and back in will not help.
The charge code you need is not in the list. You are not authorized for it. Ask your timekeeping administrator — do not pick the nearest one.
Arcvue read the wrong amount off the receipt. Type over it. The extracted values are a starting point, not a record.
Related
- Mileage — GPS tracking, classifying drives, and the per-mile basis.
- Timekeeping — hours, certification and charge codes.
- Using the Arcvue Mobile App — the phone, tab by tab, and offline behavior.
- Your First Day — Signing In — the invitation email, two-factor, and installing the app.