An expense is a running cost of the business that the sales channel does not take from your balance: a subscription, packaging, software, an accountant's fee. Each one reduces net profit; your net proceeds are unchanged. A fee the channel took from the balance is an adjustment, not an expense.
Recording an expense
- Category
- Your business country's categories, each with the line it reports under on your tax return (the self-employment page SA103F's box and the Making Tax Digital field, for the UK), or one you type, which reports as other business expenses. No category holds goods for resale: those are stock.
- Supplier
- Who you paid. It also offers the account's people, so a fee paid to someone shows on their page under Fees paid.
- Payment method
- Which of your own cards or bank accounts paid it.
- Files
- The receipt, where your plan includes files.
On a VAT-registered store, an expense's VAT is left out of the books' figures from the day you registered, since it is reclaimed, and counts toward the VAT summary's box 4.
Repeating expenses
An expense can repeat every month, every quarter or every year. Each copy is added on its day, copied from the latest one, so editing the latest carries forward. If a copy cannot be added (a Lock date, a plan limit), the expense says why and offers Skip next date. Stopping it keeps the expenses it added.
Splitting a cost across stores
A cost several stores share, such as one software subscription, can be split across them: each store holds its part as an ordinary expense, the parts adding up to the bill to the penny, written all together or not at all. A split stays among stores kept in one currency and never repeats.
A sales channel's fee paid by card
A channel's subscription or listing fee your card or bank paid is an expense in the channel's subscription and listing fees category. It reports under selling fees, not expenses, and leaves the balance untouched.
Common questions
Why does Profit and loss show a different expenses total?
Profit and loss's categories leave out a channel's fees paid by card, which it counts among the selling fees, and show expenses net of VAT on a registered store.
Related: Adjustments, Profit and loss.
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