# Expense Preferences

The Expenses tab decides who can approve an expense and holds its custom fields. The account you code an expense to is the only category there is.

The tab has two jobs: naming who may approve a submitted expense, and holding the expense custom fields. The rest of this article covers where the things people expect to find here actually are.

![Finance Settings with Purchases selected in the left rail and the Expenses tab open, alongside tabs for Vendors, Purchase Orders, Purchase Receives, Bills, Vendor Payments and Vendor Credits. An Approvers section warns that no employee can approve expenses yet and lists Eleanor Whitfield with an Approver switch turned off and an empty limit reading No limit. Below it, a Custom Fields Usage counter reads 0 of 135 above an empty state offering a Custom Field button.](https://www.neuracrm.com/help/expenses/expense-preferences.png)

*Until someone is switched on as an approver, submitted expenses have nowhere to go.*

## Settings

Go to **Settings > Finance > Expenses**. The tab has two sections: **Approvers** and custom fields.

### Approvers

Every active employee is listed with an **Approver** switch and a limit. Turn the switch on for each person allowed to approve a submitted expense, then press **Save**.

The limit is the largest expense that person may approve. Leave it blank for no ceiling. An expense above an approver's limit is refused, so a limit of 0 blocks everything that person is asked to approve.

> **Warning:**
>
> **Nobody can approve until you say so**
>
> A new workspace starts with every Approver switch off. Submitted expenses then cannot be approved by anyone, and the page shows a warning until at least one person is switched on.

### Custom fields

Add a custom field for anything the expense record does not model: a project code, a trip reference, the person who incurred it. Lists beat free text, because a text field fills with three spellings of the same word within a month.

## The controls people look for here

| Expected setting | What actually happens |
| --- | --- |
| Default expense account | Not a setting. Every expense picks its account on the form, and a bill line with no account falls back to Purchase Adjustments. |
| Default paid-through account | Not a setting. Paid Through is chosen each time, and it is required. |
| Require a receipt | Does not exist. Attaching the receipt is a habit the product does not enforce. |
| Default markup | Real, but not here. Default markup percentage is a workspace-wide setting, and it is not scoped to expenses. |
| Expense categories | There is no separate category list. The expense account is the category, chosen straight from your accounts chart. |

> **Note:**
>
> **The account is the category**
>
> There is no friendly label sitting in front of your chart of accounts, so the chart is what people pick from when they enter an expense. That makes account names worth writing for the person entering the expense rather than for the accountant reading it later.