Time & Expenses Module

Expense Tracking for Consulting Firms

The consultant records what they spent and attaches the receipt. The approver decides what it bills at. Every approved expense lands on the project it belongs to, so it shows up in that project's cost and margin rather than surfacing as a surprise on the invoice.

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Recording a cost and pricing it are two different jobs

Most expense tools collapse these into one step. The person who spent the money is asked, at the moment of entry, whether it is billable and what it should be charged at. That is the wrong person to ask. They are usually tired, usually travelling, and they have no particular view on whether this client's contract absorbs a fifteen percent uplift on travel.

So the answer gets guessed, and the guess is either conservative, which quietly gives away margin, or optimistic, which produces an awkward conversation when the invoice arrives. Neither shows up as a problem you can point at. They show up as a slow drift in recoverable costs that nobody attributes to the entry screen.

SUNAGO Matrix splits the two. Submission is a factual act: this is the amount, this is the date, this is the project, here is the receipt. Approval is the commercial act: is this billable, and at what markup. The consultant reports, the firm decides.

A worked example: one trip, three expenses

A two-day client workshop, submitted by the consultant who travelled, reviewed by an admin the following week. Figures illustrative, in your company's currency.

ExpenseSubmittedBillableMarkup at approvalBilled on
Flights, booked late850.00Yes15%977.50
Printed workshop materials240.00Yes0%240.00
Team dinner310.00Non/aAbsorbed
Total1,400.00--1,217.50 recovered

Three expenses, three different commercial answers, all decided by the person who knows the contract. The flights carry an uplift because they were booked at short notice at the client's request. The materials go on at cost because that is what was agreed. The dinner is a cost of doing business and the firm absorbs it, so the markup control is not offered at all.

The important number is the last one. Of 1,400 spent, 1,217.50 is recovered and 310 is not, and both halves are attached to the project. A firm that only tracks what it recharges never sees the second number, which is precisely the one that explains why a project with healthy hours still came in soft.

What the expenses side of the module covers

Included in the one plan, sharing an approval flow with timesheets.

Receipts on the record

Attach a receipt to the expense itself, replace it or remove it while the entry is still open. The evidence stays with the transaction rather than in somebody's inbox.

Markup at approval

The reviewer sets a markup percentage per expense and sees the marked-up total before committing. Different costs on the same trip can carry different uplifts.

Submit, approve or reject

Outstanding expenses sit in a review queue and processed ones are kept separately, so what still needs a decision is never mixed in with what is already settled.

Booked to project and activity

Every expense carries a project and an activity type alongside the amount, date and description, which is what lets it reach the right project's cost rather than a general overhead pot.

Billable or absorbed

The reviewer confirms whether an expense is recharged or carried by the firm. Both are recorded against the project, so absorbed costs are visible rather than invisible.

Into project finance

Expenses appear as their own category in the project finance drill-down, in both spend to date and Forecast at Completion, separate from labour, materials and external services.

An expense that is not on a project is a cost the margin never sees

In a lot of firms expenses live in the accounting system and projects live somewhere else. The month closes, the numbers reconcile at company level, and everybody is satisfied. What nobody can answer is which engagement consumed the travel, and therefore which engagement was actually worth running.

Because every expense here is booked to a project and an activity type, project cost includes it automatically. The finance drill-down keeps expenses as their own line rather than folding them into a total, so when a margin looks wrong you can see whether it was labour, materials, external services or 4,000 of unrecovered travel.

That completeness is what makes a project margin trustworthy. A figure built on labour alone is not wrong so much as partial, and partial is the harder problem, because it looks exactly like a real number right up until the invoice. Project cost tracking covers how the rest of that picture is assembled.

Expenses are approved in the same flow as timesheets, and both land in the project figures that KPI reporting reads. What a complete cost picture does to the margin is the subject of project profitability tracking.

Connected to the rest of delivery

Timesheets

Time and expenses share one approval flow, so a single review covers the week.

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Project Cost Tracking

Approved expenses join labour and materials in project cost and Forecast at Completion.

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Project Management

Expenses consume the project budget they were booked against, alongside everything else.

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Expense tracking: common questions

Markup, receipts, approval and where an expense ends up.

Who decides what an expense is billed at?
The person approving it, not the person who spent the money. A consultant submits what they actually paid, with the receipt attached. At review, an admin sets the markup percentage and confirms whether the expense is billable at all. That split is deliberate: the submitter should not be making a commercial decision about the client relationship at eleven at night in an airport, and the approver should not be reconstructing what was actually spent.
How does expense markup work?
It is a percentage applied at approval. An expense of 850 approved with a 15 percent markup bills at 977.50, and the review screen shows the marked-up total before you commit to it. Markup is per expense rather than a global rule, so a flight booked at short notice and a set of printed materials do not have to carry the same uplift. The control is disabled on anything marked non-billable, because a markup on a cost you are absorbing yourself is meaningless.
Are receipts attached to the expense?
Yes, as an upload on the expense itself, and they can be replaced or removed while the expense is still being edited. The receipt stays with the record rather than in an email thread, which matters at the point a client queries a line on an invoice six weeks later and you need to produce the evidence rather than the recollection.
What happens to an expense after it is approved?
It lands on the project it was booked against and becomes part of that project's cost. Project finance shows expenses as their own category, both in what has been spent to date and in the Forecast at Completion, so the drill-down separates them from labour, materials and external services rather than lumping everything into one figure. An expense nobody attached to a project is a cost the project's margin never sees.
Can an expense be rejected?
Yes. An expense is submitted, then approved or rejected, and the reviewer works from a queue of what is outstanding with the processed ones kept separately. Rejection is a normal part of the flow rather than an edge case, and it is a great deal cheaper than discovering a mis-coded cost after it has already been billed on to a client.
Is expense tracking an add-on?
No. There is one plan at EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly with every module included, so expenses come with the timesheets, projects, resourcing, CRM and reporting rather than as a tier upgrade. Expenses and time also share the same approval flow, so one review covers both.

Recover what you should, and see what you did not

EUR 3 per seat per month billed yearly, every module included, free onboarding and data transfer. 14-day trial, no credit card required.

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