Introducing Lightyear Expenses - How to Enable & Expense Settings
Introducing Lightyear Expenses
Check out this video for an overview of Lightyear's Expenses process. Get started in 6 simple steps today!
With Lightyear's Expenses feature you can upload expenses, create expenses and reports, send reports for approval and export reports into your accountancy software in a few quick and easy clicks.
Here you'll find out how to enable Expenses within your Lightyear account and we'll go through each setting to customise your workflow based on your needs.
Once you have enabled Expenses, read these guides to get set up:
4. Approvals
Activating Expenses
Head over to your Company Settings and scroll down to the Expenses option and select Yes
In the bottom right, click Update Settings 
to save your changes.
A new Expenses tab will appear along the top of your screen, and in the left hand navigation menu you'll see a section for Expenses.
Settings
Approval by Value
Within the General tab, scroll down to the Expenses Approval Workflow section and you'll find the Approval by Value option.
Set this to Yes if you would like to send Approval Tasks to users based on the value of a Report e.g. over £100 go to Joe Bloggs, over £200 go to Jane Doe, etc.
Once set to Yes, you will see additional options for Auto Trigger Approval and adding your Conditional Rules.
For full details on how Approval by Value works in Lightyear, click here.
Auto Approve
Within the Expenses tab and under Send Approval Task Customisation, you can enable Auto Approve by switching the setting to Yes.
When enabled, any Report that has been approved by all Approval Tasks will automatically move into the Approved status, meaning you will not have to move the Report between statuses manually.
If you prefer to have more control over the status of the Report, keep Auto Approve as No. Any Reports within the Pending Approval status will remain as so until an Expense Admin clicks the Approve button manually.
Expense Document Settings
If you require your Expenses to have receipts/supporting documents added before progressing through the workflow, you can choose when this will be enforced.
Under the Expenses tab scroll to Expense Document Settings and you'll find a dropdown menu with the following options:
- Don't Require an Image - Reports can be sent through the whole workflow without an attached document in Panel 3
- Draft - The Report can't progress past the Draft status, i.e. cannot be Submitted, without an attached document in Panel 3
- Approved - The Report can't go further than the Approved status, i.e. cannot be Exported, Submitted or Reimbursed, without an attached document in Panel 3
- Scheduled - The Report can't go further than the Scheduled status, i.e. cannot be Exported or Reimbursed, without an attached document in Panel 3
- Reimbursed - The Report can't go further than the Reimbursed status, i.e. cannot be Exported or Closed, without an attached document in Panel 3
Report Exports
Have full control over what status your Reports can be exported to your Accountancy Software.
In the Expenses tab scroll to Exporting a Report and you'll find a dropdown menu with the following options;
- Approved
- Scheduled
- Reimbursed
Auto-Close Reports
Once a Report has been Reimbursed, you can set the Report to auto close after a set number of days.
Within Expenses, go to the Auto-Close Reports section.
If you would like full control over when a Report changes to the Closed status, you can keep this set to No.
If you would like Reimbursed Reports to automatically update to Closed after a set number of days, change this to Yes. You will see an additional field for number of days.
Setting this to 0 days will automatically Close the Report once the Reimbursement Date passes i.e. if your Reimbursement Date is for 1st May 2024, the Report will update to Closed on 1st May 2024.
Setting this to any day over 1 day will automatically Close the Report once the set number of days pass the Reimbursement Date i.e. if you set the days to 5 and your Reimbursement Date is for 1st May 2024, the Report will update to Closed on 5th May 2024.
Report Customisation
If you would like your Company Logo to appear on the Report PDF generated by Lightyear, you can add it from the Expenses tab and under Form Customisation.
Either drag and drop your image, or click the Select an Image 
button.
The logo file must be under 2MB and formatted as jpeg, png, tiff or gif.
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