Zoho Expense is Zoho's expense management application, enabling employees to record and submit business expenses from their mobile or desktop, and allowing finance teams and managers to review, approve, and reimburse those expenses efficiently. As part of Zoho One, Zoho Expense connects directly with your accounting and HR tools within the same platform.
Zoho Expense allows employees to capture receipts by photographing them with a mobile device, with OCR technology reading and populating the expense details automatically. Expenses are grouped into reports that are submitted for manager approval through a configurable workflow. The system supports per diem rates, corporate card reconciliation, mileage tracking, and project or department cost allocation. Once approved, expenses flow directly to finance for reimbursement processing.
Administrators enable Zoho Expense for users through the Zoho One Admin Panel. Employees access it through the Zoho One app launcher on web or mobile without a separate sign-in. Conditional assignment rules can provision Zoho Expense automatically for all active employees, ensuring everyone who needs to submit expenses has access from day one.
Approved expense reports in Zoho Expense can be pushed automatically into Zoho Books as bills or journal entries, keeping your accounting records accurate without manual re-entry. This integration means the finance team always has an up-to-date view of employee spending and can reconcile expense transactions against the correct accounts and cost centres in Books.
When Zoho People is used for HR management, Zoho Expense can reference employee data such as reporting lines and department information to route expense approvals correctly. New employees added to Zoho People can be provisioned in Zoho Expense automatically through Zoho One's centralised user management, ensuring they are ready to submit expenses from their first day.
Zoho Expense supports multi-level approval workflows so that expenses above a certain value or from specific categories can be routed to additional approvers before reaching finance. Expense policies can be configured to flag or automatically reject expenses that exceed limits, fall outside permitted categories, or are submitted without a receipt. This reduces the risk of policy violations and simplifies the audit process.
Zoho Expense supports HMRC-approved mileage rates for vehicle expense claims in the UK. Employees can log journeys by distance and vehicle type, and the system calculates the reimbursable amount automatically. Per diem rates can be configured for different countries and journey durations to handle subsistence expenses consistently.