Reimbursable Expenses: What Counts, How to Track Them, How to Bill Them
You paid for the flight, the stock photo licence, the courier. Getting it back is not a memory problem — it is a record-keeping problem, and it is solvable in one workflow.
60-day free trial · No credit card
Quick answer: What are reimbursable expenses?
A reimbursable expense is a cost you pay out of pocket on someone else's behalf — a client's or an employer's — and expect to be paid back for. The test is not what the thing is but who it was for: a flight taken for a specific client engagement is reimbursable, while the accounting software you would run either way is your own overhead. Getting paid back reliably needs three records: the receipt, a link tying it to the right client or project, and an invoice or expense report that itemises it. ExpenseBot is expense management software that tracks reimbursable client expenses from the receipts already in your Gmail, tags each one to a client, and turns the resulting report into an itemised Google Docs invoice — all in a Google Sheet you own.
Last updated 2026-08-14
What counts as a reimbursable expense
The line that matters is whether the cost was incurred for a specific engagement and whether the person paying you back agreed to cover it. Almost every dispute about a reimbursable expense is really a dispute about that second half, which is why the scope belongs in the engagement letter or the contract before the first receipt exists — not in an email exchange after the invoice lands.
| Usually reimbursable | Usually your own overhead |
|---|---|
| Travel taken for the engagement — flights, hotels, taxis, mileage | Your commute, and travel to win the work in the first place |
| Software, stock assets, or licences bought for one project | The tools you run across every client — design suite, accounting software |
| Materials, print runs, samples, shipping and courier costs | General office supplies and your own equipment |
| Ad spend and platform fees placed on the client's behalf | Your own marketing and business development |
| Subcontractor or freelancer costs engaged for the project | Your own salary, insurance, and professional fees |
Two edge cases are worth deciding up front rather than arguing about later. Mileage is a cost you incur without ever receiving a receipt, so it needs its own record — a dated log of the trip, the purpose, and the distance. Partial-use purchases, like a stock licence you will reuse on other work, are genuinely ambiguous; either bill a share or absorb it, but pick one and apply it consistently across clients.
Whether a cost you absorb is deductible on your own return is a separate question from whether a client will pay it back, and it depends on your country and how your business is structured. Confirm with your tax professional. What matters here is that the evidence exists either way.
Employee reimbursement vs billing a client back
The same phrase covers two different situations, and they end in different documents. If you are an employee submitting costs to your employer, the output is an expense report that someone approves and pays through payroll or an expense system. If you are a consultant, freelancer, or agency recovering costs from a client, the output is an invoice — the reimbursable expenses sit as line items alongside, or instead of, your fee.
Employers commonly run reimbursement under what US tax rules call an accountable plan, which sets conditions on business purpose, substantiation, and returning any excess advance. Those conditions change how the payment is treated — ask your accountant how your own arrangement is set up before assuming. Either way, the substantiation half is the same: a dated receipt with the amount, the vendor, and a clear record of what it was for.
ExpenseBot handles both shapes from one set of records, because the underlying work is identical — tag the expense to the right client, project, or trip, then produce either a report or a client invoice from the same tagged set. If you are the employee doing the submitting, employee expense reimbursement is the page built for that side, and a trip expense report covers the per-trip version.
The tracking workflow, step by step
Most reimbursable expenses are lost at capture, not at invoicing. The receipt for the flight arrived in Gmail four months ago; the courier charge only exists as a card line. This is the workflow that closes both gaps, using the interface labels as they appear in the product.
Create a tag for each client
Open Manage Tags and choose Create a Tag with AI, then enter your client names. ExpenseBot creates one tag per client — Client - Acme and so on. Tags are what tie an expense to a client, so this comes first.
Bring the expenses in
New receipts arrive on their own: the monthly subscription scans Gmail daily from the moment you activate. Paper and PDFs you upload — photo, file, or forwarded email. For receipts sitting further back in your inbox, a one-time historical Gmail scan covers the last completed calendar year ($20, included free with the annual plan; the monthly plan does not include historical scanning).
Find the charges with no receipt
Connect the cards you buy on in Card Reconciliation. Transactions with no matching receipt are flagged, which is how a client charge missing its documentation becomes visible instead of quietly un-billed. Ones you never want flagged again can be dismissed.
Assign each expense to a client
Pick the client tag while submitting the receipt, or add it afterward. The tag decides what appears in that client's report — an untagged expense will not be included, which is the single most common reason a real cost never makes it onto an invoice.
Run the tag-scoped report
In My Reports, choose the client tag and the date range, and create the report. If you get the scope wrong, delete it and create it again — deleting a report never deletes or modifies the expenses in your spreadsheet, because a report is a grouping, not the data.
The full step-by-step version of this workflow, including the conversational shortcut, lives in how to track and bill reimbursable client expenses. If the problem you actually have is the receipts your clients owe you, that is the other direction — stop chasing clients for receipts covers the collection side.
Billing them back
The finished report card carries a Bill Client button. It turns the report into a Google Doc invoice with every receipt as its own line item; you set a markup and a tax rate before generating, the PDF goes to the client from your own Gmail, and the editable Doc stays in your Drive. Nothing is re-keyed, because the invoice is built from the same tagged expenses you already captured.
Markup is a commercial decision, not a technical one. Some clients expect passthrough costs at cost and read a markup as padding; others accept a stated handling percentage on materials and subcontractors. The workable version is the one written down before the engagement starts, and shown transparently on the invoice rather than buried in a total.
The mechanics — layout, business details, tax rate, PDF delivery — are covered on bill clients back for expenses and the reimbursable expense invoice. Agencies passing ad spend and production costs through at volume have their own version on the agency page.
Documentation that holds up later
A reimbursable expense gets questioned in two places: by the client at invoice time, and by a tax authority long after. Both want the same thing — the original receipt, the date, the amount, the vendor, and a traceable reason it belonged to that engagement. A line in a spreadsheet with no receipt behind it answers neither.
Everything ExpenseBot captures lands in a categorised Google Sheet in your own Google Drive, with the receipt evidence attached to the row rather than living in a separate folder. You own the file, you can open it without ExpenseBot, and you keep it if you stop paying us. When your accountant wants it in their system instead, reviewed expenses push to QuickBooks Online or Xero, or you share the Sheet directly — accountants use ExpenseBot free.
If you bill internationally, the currency the receipt was issued in and the rate applied at the time both need to survive on the record — a figure that quietly re-converts at today's rate is not evidence of what you actually paid.
Worth stating plainly: ExpenseBot is not a general ledger and does no double-entry bookkeeping, it does not file anything for you, and it does not decide what a client owes. It captures, organises, and documents the spend, then hands a clean set to whoever does. If you want to see the output shape before signing up, the expense tracker template shows the columns.
Stop absorbing costs you meant to bill
Capture receipts from Gmail and your phone, tag them to the client, see which card charges are still missing documentation, and turn the report into an itemised invoice — in a Google Sheet you own, for $10/month with a 60-day free trial.
Start free — no credit card, 60-day trial★ Rated 4.7/5 across 21 verified reviews on G2 and Trustpilot
Frequently asked questions
Can I track reimbursable expenses separately for each client?
Yes — that is what tags are for. Open Manage Tags, choose "Create a Tag with AI", and enter your client names; ExpenseBot creates a tag per client, such as Client - Acme. Apply the tag when you submit a receipt or afterward, then generate a report for that tag and a date range from My Reports. An untagged expense will not appear in the client's report, so tagging is the step that decides what gets billed.
Do I need a separate card for client purchases?
No. A separate card makes reconciliation tidier, but it is not required — the client tag is what separates the expenses, not the payment method. If you do use a shared card, connect it in Card Reconciliation and ExpenseBot flags transactions with no matching receipt, so a client charge missing its documentation is visible rather than forgotten.
I've been creating invoices for a client all year and I know some receipts are missing. Can I catch up?
Partly, and it depends on where the receipts are. Receipts still sitting in your Gmail can be brought in: a one-time historical Gmail scan covers the last completed calendar year ($20, included free with the annual plan — the monthly plan does not include historical scanning, its daily scan starts when you activate). Card Reconciliation then shows you which card charges still have no receipt attached, which is the fastest way to find the real gaps. Anything that was only ever a paper receipt now in a drawer, you photograph.
How do I invoice reimbursable expenses with a markup?
Run the report for the client tag, then use the Bill Client button on the finished report card. Each receipt becomes a line item on a Google Doc invoice; you set a markup and a tax rate before generating, and the PDF goes to the client from your own Gmail while the editable Doc stays in your Drive. Whether to mark up a passthrough cost at all is a commercial decision between you and the client — put it in the engagement letter before the first invoice, not after.
Are expense reimbursements taxable income to me?
It depends on how you are engaged and how the reimbursement is documented — a reimbursement under an employer's accountable plan is treated differently from a passthrough cost a contractor rebills on an invoice, and the answer varies by country. Confirm the treatment for your situation with your tax professional. What ExpenseBot does is keep the evidence in a form that supports whichever answer applies: the original receipt, the client it was tagged to, and the invoice it appeared on.
What is the difference between a reimbursable expense and a billable expense?
In everyday use they overlap, and most tools treat them as the same thing. The useful distinction is intent: a reimbursable expense is a cost you paid on someone else's behalf and expect back at cost, while a billable expense is any cost you pass on to a client, sometimes with a markup, as part of what you charge. Both need the same underlying record — receipt, client, date, amount — which is why one tagging workflow covers both.