Record an Expense in Simple Tracking
Record business money out without assigning it to a bank or credit-card account.
Applies to
- Bookkeeping setup: Simple Tracking
- Roles: Workspace Owner; Accountant with transaction-edit permission
- Business structure: Sole Proprietor
Before you begin
Confirm that Settings > Business Profile > Bookkeeping Setup is set to Simple Tracking. Have the transaction date, total paid, and Category ready.
Steps
- Open Expenses.
- Select Add Expense.
- Enter the Date.
- Choose the Category that describes the accounting purpose of the expense.
- Enter the total in Spent CAD. Enter a positive amount.
- If GST/HST tracking is enabled, choose Tax and review Tax Amount CAD.
- Optionally add a Contact, Tags, Note, or receipt attachment.
- Select Save Expense.
The saved transaction appears in Expenses and in applicable reports. Simple Tracking does not ask for Pay From and saves no payment account.
Use Expenses on a phone
- Add Expense appears beside the page title.
- Search and Filters appear above the transaction cards.
- Each card shows the Category, amount, memo or description, date, and available payment information.
- Select a card to open its details and edit the fields available for that transaction.
- The phone list initially shows 20 Expenses. Select Load More to show the next 20.
- Swipe an Expense card to the left to check its deletion state. Eligible manual Expenses reveal an active Delete action; protected bank-posted, matched, or reconciled records reveal the same action in a disabled state.
Important rules
- Category determines the accounting account; it does not change the transaction from Expense to Income.
- Inactive, system-calculated, non-posting, or disabled Business Activity Categories cannot receive a new transaction.
- When GST/HST tracking is disabled, new transactions use Out of Scope treatment with no tax amount.
- A Rental Property Category may require a property assignment when Residential Long-term Rental is enabled.
- Money is stored as a positive amount; xBoox uses the Expense transaction type to represent money out.
- xBoox stores money to the nearest cent. If an entered amount has more than two decimal places, xBoox rounds it to the nearest cent when saving.
- A transaction Note may contain up to 2,000 characters.
Add a receipt or paid invoice
On a phone, select the circular Receipt Capture button between Expense and Income in the bottom navigation. On desktop, open Expenses and select Expense Capture in the upper-right corner. Use it to photograph a receipt or paid invoice, review OCR-recognized values and a Category suggestion, and post the Expense. Unpaid bills are not supported. You may still use the attachment control in Expense detail for a PDF, JPEG, PNG, or WEBP that does not need OCR. See Capture and Post a Receipt or Paid Invoice in Simple Tracking.
Troubleshooting
Pay From is visible
The Workspace is using Bank Account-Based Tracking. Follow the banking-setup Expense article instead.
A Category is unavailable
Check that the Category is active, accepts posting, and belongs to an enabled Business Activity.
The expense cannot be deleted
Bank-posted, matched, or reconciled transactions have additional protection. A bank-posted Expense must be undone from Bank Transactions; a reconciled transaction requires reopening its reconciliation first.