How to Track Business Expenses?
Every cost your business absorbs — fuel for deliveries, repair bills, office supplies, insurance premiums — belongs in Rentablez Expense Tracking. Recording expenses alongside your revenue gives you an accurate picture of what the business actually earns, not just what it invoices.
Why Track Expenses Here?
- True profitability — pair spending with revenue so the Summary and Financial Reports show real profit, not just billings.
- Traceability — link an expense to the exact asset or order it belongs to, so costs sit next to the work that caused them.
- Reporting — filter by category, date, asset, or order and export the result to CSV for month-end reviews or your accountant.
Expenses and Financial Reports are part of the Accounting & Financials module. If you don’t see the Expenses menu, your organization isn’t subscribed to that module yet. Adding, editing, or deleting an expense also requires the expense.write permission.
How It Works
Add each expense as it happens — category, date, amount, and an optional description. Rentablez keeps a running list sorted by most recent first, scoped to your current branch (location). Use the filters to pull up expenses by category, date range, asset, or order whenever you need a report or a month-end review.
Spent Money on Something? — Add an Expense
Click Add Expense in the top right to open the form.
Fill in the fields:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Category | Start typing to search. Not there yet? Create it inline without leaving the form. |
| Date | The date the expense occurred. Defaults to today. |
| Amount | Entered in your organization’s currency. Up to 8 digits before the decimal and 2 after. |
| Description | Optional — vendor name, invoice number, or any detail that makes the expense identifiable later (up to 256 characters). |
Click Add to save it.
To manage your full category list, go to Expense Categories.
Link the Expense to an Asset or Order
Two optional fields let you tie a cost to the thing that caused it:
- Link to Asset — search by asset name or tag and pick the specific stock unit (for example, a tire replacement on one trailer).
- Link to Order — search by order number to attribute the cost to a particular rental (for example, extra fuel for a delivery).
Linked expenses show an Asset or Order chip in the list’s Reference column, and you can later filter the list by asset tag or order number.
Repair and service costs for a maintenance-type category are tracked in the Maintenance module, so the Link to Asset field is disabled for those categories. Log the parts and labor against the maintenance job instead.
Attach an Expense to a Security Deposit
When you link an expense to an order that has collected a security deposit, an Attach to option appears. Choose Security Deposit to deduct the expense from that order’s refundable hold — useful for recovering damage or cleaning costs from the deposit rather than billing the customer separately.
The form shows the available refundable hold and won’t let you attach more than what remains. If the linked order has no collected deposit (or nothing left to deduct), the option stays disabled.
An Invoice (next billing) option is reserved for charging costs onto a recurring lease’s next invoice. It is still being rolled out — treat None and Security Deposit as the working choices for now.
Made a Mistake? — Edit or Delete
Click the pencil icon on a row to reopen the expense form. Change any field and click Save.
To remove an expense, click the trash icon on the row and confirm. The record is deleted permanently.
Expenses that came from the Maintenance module carry a (maintenance) tag and have no edit or delete actions here — manage them from the maintenance job they belong to.
Looking for Something Specific? — Search and Filter
Click Filters to open the filter panel. You can narrow the list by:
- Search Expenses — matches the description text
- Category — pick one or more categories
- Asset Tag — costs linked to a specific asset
- Order Number — costs linked to a specific order
- Start Date / End Date — a date range for month-end reviews or checking a vendor’s total charges
Active category and date-range filters appear as chips above the table; remove a chip or use Clear All to return to the full list.
Export Your Expenses
Click Export in the header to download the current list — with all active filters applied — as a CSV file. Handy for handing spending to your accountant or reconciling against bank statements.
See the Bigger Picture — Summary
Click Summary to open the Financial Summary sidebar without leaving the list. It has two tabs:
- Charts — headline KPI cards plus an expense-by-category donut.
- P&L Report — a period profit-and-loss table.
Pick a time range at the top (this month, last month, quarter, year, or a custom range) and the sidebar updates. For the full breakdown — Profit & Loss, Cash Flow, Receivables, and more — head to the Financial Reports suite.
You’re All Set!
Keep adding expenses as they happen and Rentablez builds your financial picture over time. Reading the Summary tabs is covered in detail in the Expense Summary guide.