How-to Tuesday: Manage your Expenses with Ease

How-To Tuesday 

By now, you are well aware that tax day is right around the corner. What you may not know is that UnitWise provides you with access to so many great accounting features that can help simplify your tax preparation.

You’ve mastered the Mary Kay business, but if the thought of managing your expenses has you feeling like anything less than a pro it’s time to turn to your UnitWise Heroes for help! To help you make the most of these accounting features, and UnitWise as a whole, we’ve started a new series entitled “How-to Tuesday.” This Tuesday we’ll be tackling expenses.

Manage Expenses in UnitWise

To begin, let’s head over to the “Accounts” tab in your UnitWise account. Here, you’ll be able to view your Chart of Accounts, Other Income, Expenses, Banking, Payees, Trip Logs, Payers, and a helpful Video Guide:

All great features, but today let’s focus on Expenses.

Note that you can view a comprehensive list of all of your expense categories under the “Chart of Accounts” tab. From here, you can view transactions and account information for each of your expense accounts, as well as edit and delete these accounts.

If you have never ventured over to the Expenses tab, you may be surprised to find a list of expenses already present within your account.

Your UnitWise account includes the most commonly used business expenses. Though you can edit and view these categories, they cannot be deleted.

Under your “Expenses” tab, you will be greeted with a list of ten of your most recent expense entries. Change this display by heading to the top left corner of your screen. Here, you can choose how many entries are displayed at one time.

You have the ability to filter entries by the last 90 days, 60 days, 30 days or the next 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. This is also located in the top left corner of your screen. 

The “Advanced Search” feature allows you to search for specific expense entries by filtering by category, recurring expenses, payee, split expenses, and more. Also, filter by date for a more refined search.

Create an Expense

There are two options for adding expenses: “Add Expense” and “Bulk Add Expense.” Use “Add Expense” for a more detailed entry and “Bulk Add Expense” when you would like to add multiple entries at once.

When you choose to “Add Expense,” you’ll be prompted to create an expense:

Here, select the payment type, date, and account name. You can also choose to split the entry between accounts, choose a payee, and include a memo.

Remember when we said “Add Expense” allows for a more detailed entry? Right above the “Save” button, you’ll notice a section enabling you to include an attachment. Use this feature to include an attachment, such as a scanned or digital copy of a receipt.

Recurring Expenses can be set using the “Add Expense” feature by choosing how often you would like an expense to repeat.

 
The “Bulk Add Expense” feature is not too different:

You’ll be prompted to choose an account name, date, payment type, and payee. You can also include a memo. Click the “Add Row” button to add more expense entries. Clicking “Save Expenses” will save every expense entry you have entered.

Be sure to add frequent or common payees to your Payee List, to save time when adding expense entries by bulk.

Delete an Expense

We’ve discussed adding expenses, but what happens when you need to delete an expense entry? Note that some expenses cannot be deleted:

Only expense entries with the trash can icon can be deleted.

When you click the trash can you will always be asked to confirm whether you would like to delete an entry or not, so no need to worry about accidentally deleting entries!

Let’s say I decide to delete this Utilities Expense entry. When prompted to confirm, I click “Yes.” This action is permanent.

Once deleted this entry will be automatically removed from my Transaction List, Profit and Loss Details, and Monthly Account reports. Once an expense entry has been deleted, that action will be reflected across your accounting reports every time you run a report.

 
What if you want to delete an entire Expense Category? As stated above, the expense categories automatically included with your UnitWise account, such as Utilities Expense, Lost/Damaged Goods, and Cost of Goods Sold, cannot be deleted.

I created an Expense Category entitled “Marketing Expenses” and added four expense entries.

I am unable to delete the “Marketing Expenses” expense category because of the four expense entries. Rest assured that you cannot delete an expense category from your UnitWise account until you have emptied the category or moved entries to a different category.

Don’t let this tax season bring you down! UnitWise helps you manage your business expenses so that you have more time to focus on promoting your Mary Kay products.

 
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