Import expenses from Excel
If you have many expenses, for example a year of bills from another system, import them from an Excel file instead of adding each expense by hand. The page can also load two months of a pharmacy's expenses as sample data.
Go to Expenses section › Import Expenses. You need permission to add expenses; to save them as Approved you also need the Expenses approve permission.
Steps
- Click Download Template. The file has two sheets:
- Expenses: empty, with the column names in the first row. Fill this one. The Supplier, PaidThrough, LedgerCode, LedgerName and Currency columns offer your names in drop-downs.
- Sample: two months of a small pharmacy's expenses, to see how the rows are filled and to copy from.
- Fill one row per expense line on the Expenses sheet. Don't rename the column names in the first row.
- Choose the Project (used for the expense and all its lines; to split an expense between projects, edit its lines afterwards) and Save expenses as: Approved (the default: posted to the ledger straight away, like Save as Approve) or Draft (saved, not posted; approve them later from the expense list).
- Upload the file (
.xlsx, up to 5 MB and 5000 rows). Every row is checked straight away and shows Ready or the problems found, for exampleSupplier: Active supplier not found. (Zagros Pharma). Nothing is saved yet. - When every row is ready, click Import. All expenses are saved together. If anything fails, nothing is saved.
If a row needs a supplier, account, currency or financial year that doesn't exist yet, add it in the app, then click Check again. You don't need to upload the file again. To fix anything else, correct the file and upload it again.
How lines become expenses
Rows with the same ExpenseNo are one expense, for example rows E1, E1 and then E2. The ExpenseNo only groups the lines in your file: each expense gets its real expense number automatically, in date order, in the same format as an expense entered by hand.
The expense's Date, DueDate, Supplier, ManualVendorName, PaidThrough, Note, Currency and ExchangeRate are taken from its first line that has them. You can repeat them on every line or leave them empty on the other lines, but they must not differ.
Columns
| Column | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ExpenseNo | Yes | Groups the lines of one expense |
| Date | Yes | Year-month-day, for example 2026-01-31 (an Excel date cell also works). Must be inside an open financial year and month |
| DueDate | No | Empty = a month after the date. Can't be before the date |
| Supplier | No | An active supplier's name or code. Empty = the default supplier from the Company settings |
| ManualVendorName | No | Empty = the supplier's name |
| PaidThrough | No | A liabilities account (code or name), as on the expense page. Empty = Accounts Payable, so the expense is paid later from Expense Payments Made |
| Note | No | The expense's note, up to 450 characters |
| LedgerCode | Yes, or LedgerName | The expense account of the line, from the chart of accounts |
| LedgerName | Yes, or LedgerCode | The account's name. A shared account such as Rent Expense\| مصاريف الإيجار can also be written Rent Expense. When both are filled, the code is used |
| Amount | Yes | Above 0 |
| LineNote | No | Description of the line, up to 450 characters |
| Currency | No | Only when multi-currency is on. Empty = your base currency. One currency per expense |
| ExchangeRate | No | Only for a foreign currency. Empty = the latest rate entered for that currency |
Only child accounts take entries: a parent account (one that has sub-accounts) is refused. Line accounts must be Expenses accounts and PaidThrough must be a Liabilities account.
Type amounts with a dot for decimals (1500.50).
What it posts
Approved expenses post the same entries as the expense page: Dr each line's expense account, Cr the PaidThrough account. Expenses on Accounts Payable count in the supplier's balance and show in Expense Payments Made to be paid.
Checks
- Closed period: a date in a closed financial year or a closed month is refused.
- Plan: the import is blocked when your expenses plus the expenses in the file would be more than your plan allows.
Imported expenses don't ask the budget question that the expense page asks. Check the budget report after a large import.
Sample data
Load sample data shows the sample expenses in the preview: two months of a small pharmacy, for example the shop rent, the neighbourhood generator subscription, internet for the POS, prescription labels and printed bags, refrigerator maintenance, medicine delivery, the POS software licence, electricity and water bills (on Accrued Expenses), accounting and licence fees, insurance, night security, card machine fees and staff meals. Several expenses have more than one line. The amounts are in Iraqi dinars.
Load sample data is on free plans (Demo and Training) only. On a paid plan the button is hidden; the template's Sample sheet is still there to copy rows from.
The sample uses the suppliers of the Import suppliers sample (the building owner, the generator service, the internet provider ...). Import those suppliers first; a sample supplier your company doesn't have is left empty, so the default supplier from the Company settings is used instead.
If your base currency is not IQD, the sample amounts are in IQD when multi-currency is on and IQD is one of your currencies. Otherwise they are in your base currency, divided by 1000.
The sample expenses are real expenses in your books. Import them only in a company you use for practice, or delete them afterwards from the expense list.