Creating Users

All persons with billable expenses must have a user account in order to submit an expense on their behalf. They may never sign in to ExpenseLocker, but they must have an active account in order to upload and submit an expense on their behalf.

To manage your users, select "Firm Admin" from the top navigation bar.

To add a user, select the "Add User" button.

On the next page, you'll be prompted to provide account credentials for the given user. Username and password are required.

It is important that the user's first name and last name match what you expect to import an expense under. Take consideration of the way the user normally formats their name, if its hyphenated, or if they use a nickname.

We strongly recommend generating a random password for the user. If you never intend for the user to log in, you do not need to retain this, and you can reset the password in the future if you need to grant the user access.

Active means the user can log in, create expenses, and have expenses created on their behalf.

"Is admin" means the user will have access to the "Firm Admin" & "Firm Receipts" tab in ExpenseLocker, which will allow the user to manage other users, upload and submit expenses on behalf of other users, and submit expenses on behalf of your firm.

ExpenseLocker does not email the user their account details, so you'll need to communicate the email and password to the user directly if you wish them to log in.

Reset a User's Password

To reset a user's password, navigate to "Firm Admin" and select "Set Password" next to the user you want to update the password for.

ExpenseLocker does not email the user their new password, so you'll need to communicate the password to the user directly.

Creating a New Expense

To create a new expense on behalf of a user, you'll need to navigate to "Firm Receipts", "Search" and select "Add Receipt".

To create a new expense under your own account, navigate to "My Receipts", "Search" and select "Add Receipt".

All fields are required.

Note: If you are submitting an expense within your own account, you will not see the "user" dropdown.

Select the user (if applicable), project (DepoProvera), the category of the expense, the date of the receipt, the business paid, the amount, and an invoice number. If the receipt doesn't have an invoice/order number, you may enter a random unique identifier here for your firm's reference.

You must provide a description to justify the expense. For DepoProvera, you should also (until further notice) provide an "Authorized By" line identifying your firm chair/cochair that authorized your expense.

You must upload a copy of the receipt. ExpenseLocker supports various image formats and PDFs for expense proof. If you upload a PDF, a snapshot of the first page will be displayed as the receipt image.

Don't see the "Image" button? You can click on the "Image" text to upload an image, or return to the search page and drag and drop your receipt onto the record. See "Drag and Drop Uploading" below.

Common Rejection Reason: Your description must be descriptive. If you have any questions on how descriptive your expense reporting should be, contact Sansom CPA for assistance.

Editing an Existing Entry

To edit an expense for another user, select "Firm Receipts", "Search" to jump to the search page.

To edit an expense for your own account, select "My Receipts", "Search" to jump to your search page.

To edit an entry, select "edit" on the expense you want to modify. You can only edit entries that are not submitted or are rejected. Note the "status" column. If there is no status, it is not submitted. If you need to make changes to already submitted entries, see the "Unsubmitting Expenses" entry below.

If there are any missing fields on the record, you'll see a red warning at the top of the page letting you know what fields are missing.

You must select "Save" to save your edits.

Note: You can also individually submit entries from this page using the "Save & Submit Expense" button.

Individually Submitting/Unsubmitting Expenses

When you select a specific entry, you'll see a "Save & Submit Expense" or "Unsubmit Expense" button, depending on it's submission status.

Note: If you need to unsubmit an entry to make changes, please make sure you are not editing entries for past submission periods. If you need to edit an entry for an already submitted period, you must reach out to Sansom CPA for preapproval prior to making changes. Attempting to edit entries for a period that has already passed may result in rejections due to passed deadlines.

Viewing the Audit Trail

ExpenseLocker records all changes to an entry over time. You can view the audit log for a specific entry below the receipt image when you select an entry. Here, you'll see status changes, including who submitted/unsubmitted an entry, and any rejection/accepted notes when an entry is rejected by a special master.

Searching Your Expenses

When you navigate to a search page, you'll see a number of available filters you can search by.

To filter by a category, you must first select a project (Depo-Provera).

Users, Project, and Categories are all autocomplete search fields. You can begin typing the term you want to search for and select it once it appears to filter for that record.

Completion Filter

The "Complete" filter allows you to quickly filter your entries for incomplete expenses. Incomplete expenses are entries that are missing one or more required fields. If an entry is missing a required field, you cannot submit it, and attempting to submit will result in an automatic rejection by ExpenseLocker.

Additionally, when reviewing your search results, any yellow highlighted rows indicate expense records that are missing required information to submit.

Bulk Submitting/Resubmitting/Unsubmitting Expense Entries

To bulk update your expense receipts, you must be a firm administrator viewing the "Firm Receipts" page. 

There are two ways to bulk submit entries: from the search filters, and using the "Batch Update" button with the ExpenseLocker entry IDs (entry IDs explained in reporting below).

Bulk Submitting via Search

To bulk submit your current search terms, select the checkbox at the top left of your search results, next to the "ID" column. If you have multiple pages of entries, you'll see a yellow bar appear that says "Selected 50 results - Select all ### results". You must select the "click here" button to select all of the search results. The yellow bar will change to "Unselect all ### results".

Next, choose "Action" next to the sum total and choose "Submit/Resubmit Selected". You will get a popup asking you to agree to the submission per applicable court orders and certify your submissions accuracy. Once you agree, you'll get one final confirmation dialog asking you to submit the selected records.

Once you select "OK", the page will refresh and let you know how many receipts were submitted/resubmitted for consideration.

If the count doesn't match or it says 0 entries submitted, your expenses are missing required fields. You can filter your expenses by searching for incomplete entries and making the necessary corrections.

WARNING: Your browser will likely provide an option to "block/don't allow" ExpenseLocker to prompt you again. If you check this option, ExpenseLocker will not be able to prompt you for confirmation and will not submit your entries. 

The below image shows TimeLocker - but the "Don't allow" option may appear in ExpenseLocker as well.

Bulk Submitting with Entry IDs

If you want to bulk update specific entries with a given Entry ID (see Reporting below to get Entry IDs from your search results), you can do so by selecting "Batch Update" at the top right of your search results, to the left of the sum total of your filtered expenses.

Here, you'll enter the IDs of the entries you want to submit/resubmit or unsubmit, each ID on a new line. If you copy from Excel, it'll automatically paste each ID in a new line.

You'll then select "Submit/Resubmit" or "Unsubmit", then choose Update, and acknowledge any prompts that appear.

If the updated count doesn't match or it says 0 entries submitted, your expenses are missing required fields. You can filter your search results by searching for incomplete entries and making the necessary corrections.

WARNING: Your browser will likely provide an option to "block/don't allow" ExpenseLocker to prompt you again. If you check this option, ExpenseLocker will not be able to prompt you for confirmation and will not submit your entries. 

Deleting Entries

If you notice duplicate entries, unnecessary entries, or decide you no longer want to contest a rejected entry and wish to delete the entry, you have the option to delete these entries from ExpenseLocker. You may only delete expenses that are not submitted or has been rejected.

Note: If you delete an expense, you cannot recover it.

To delete an entry, you must select the applicable entries from your search results. You can individually check the entries you want to delete, or filter your entries and select all to mass delete. You can also choose "Delete" when editing an expense if you want to individually delete an entry (see Editing an Existing Entry above for a screenshot)

Once you've selected the entry/entries you want to delete, select "Action" and choose "Delete Selected". You'll receive a confirmation dialog asking you to confirm you want to delete the selected entries.

Important Notes on Importing/Common Issues

Saving as a CSV File

ExpenseLocker requires a CSV file in order to upload your expense entries. The bulk import template provided is an Excel (xlsx) file, and cannot be directly uploaded into ExpenseLocker. To upload using the template, you must save the file as a CSV file. If you're using Microsoft Excel, you can review the process to save as a CSV file at Microsoft's Support Site by clicking here.

Fields Must Match Exactly

A common reason imports fail is because the provided name doesn't match a user's details in ExpenseLocker. For example, you may use "J Smith" in your internal expense tracking tool, but entered "John Smith" in ExpenseLocker.

We have provided a template file you can use to bulk import your expense entries. Please note that categories, positions, names, and projects must match exactly what is entered in ExpenseLocker. Any deviation will result in a rejection by ExpenseLocker.

For example, if the category is "1) Depositions" and you enter "Depositions" or "1", ExpenseLocker will reject that row on import as an invalid category.

Bulk Import Expenses

Once you have completed the import spreadsheet, to bulk import your receipts, navigate to "Firm Receipts", "Import".

Make sure you do not select "My Receipts","Import". This will import all entries under your account, not the targeted users.

Next to Upload Import File, choose "Browse..." and select the file you want to import. Once you select the file, your upload will be queued for processing. As a reminder, this is only step one, and you must confirm the import was successful, upload images, and submit your entries in order for your receipts to be reviewed by the special master.

We strongly recommend uploading before the deadline, as any issues that may arise can delay your submission.

It will take a few minutes for a submission to process. You must check the status of your import before attempting to submit.

Note: The "Browse..." button may not appear on some browsers. You can select "Upload Import File" text to upload your imports.

Checking the status of an import

To check the status of an import, navigate to "Firm Receipts", "Import". Here, you'll see a record of all of your past imports. Your most recent import will appear at the bottom of the page.

The important columns are the "Status", "Import Message", "Num Errors" column. When you first import an entry, the status will be "Queued" until the import is processed.

Stuck in Queued/Processing? You may have uploaded an XLSX file. If your import is stuck queued/processing for more than an hour, treat the upload as failed and double check that you uploaded a CSV file. (See "Saving as a CSV" above)

Once the status changes to "Completed", if there are any issues with your upload, "Num Errors" will contain the number of records that failed to import. You can download the Results file by clicking "Results" to obtain the Receipt/Entry IDs and view the errors that occurred during import.

You can make corrections directly within the failed file, delete any successful imports with a Receipt ID,delete the "Receipt ID" and "Message" columns, and upload the corrected spreadsheet.

WARNING: If you make corrections to your original file and re-upload, you may create duplicates. If you intend to make corrections in your original file and reupload your entire original upload attempt, please delete the successful records from your original attempt (if any). See "Searching Your Expenses" above to filter for a specific date range and bulk delete your expenses.

Downloading a CSV of your entries

You can download a CSV of your expenses from the search pages, either from "My Receipts", "Search" or under "Firm Receipts", "Search". These spreadsheets will contain all of the basic fields of your expenses, any accepted notes, rejection note (if applicable), and an entry ID (which is the resource number within ExpenseLocker).

To download a CSV of your search results, select the "Download Results" button on the top left of your search results. This will download a CSV file of your filtered search results, or your entire expense record if you don't add any filters.

You can use the entry ID on the given spreadsheet to perform batch operations, if you want to filter your entries within Excel and choose the records you want to update.