Rules help you control and manage expenses, ensuring compliance with your company’s policies. Whether you want to set limits on spending, require receipts, or prevent self-approvals, rules give you the flexibility to tailor expense management to your needs.

Rules are available for Control workspaces only. You must be a Workspace Admin to complete this process.

Enable rules

1. Click your profile image or icon in the bottom menu.
2. Scroll down and click Workspaces in the left menu.
3. Select the workspace you want to enable rules for.
4. Click More features in the left menu.
5. Under the Manage section, enable the Rules toggle.

Configure workspace expense rules

Once Rules are enabled, you can customize individual expense settings:

1. Click Rules in the left menu.
2. Under Expenses, configure the following:

• Receipt required amount: Specify when receipts are required. Accepts decimal values.
• Max expense amount: Set a spending limit per expense. Accepts decimal values.
• Max expense age (days): Define how old an expense can be. Accepts whole numbers only.
• Billable default: Set expenses as billable or non-billable by default.
• eReceipts: Enable eReceipts for most USD credit transactions. This is available when the Default currency set in the Overview is set to USD.

Configure Prohibited Expense Rule

To flag restricted expense types for manual review:

1. Go to Settings > Workspaces > click Workspace Name > Rules > Expenses.
2. Scroll to the Prohibited expenses section.
3. Toggle on the feature, then select the types of restricted items to flag:
   • Alcohol
   • Gambling
   • Tobacco
   • Hotel incidentals
   • Adult entertainment
4. If an uploaded receipt contains any of the flagged items, the expense will be marked for manual review.

Note: Prohibited expense violations appear in both New Expensify and Expensify Classic. However, a Workspace Admin must enable the rules in New Expensify for them to take effect.

Configure expense report rules

1. Click Rules in the left menu.
2. Under Expense Reports, configure the following:

• Custom report names: Create default titles for reports.
• Prevent self-approvals: Stop users from approving their own reports.
• Auto-approve compliant reports: Automatically approve reports below a set amount and set a random report audit percentage.
• Auto-pay approved reports: Automatically pay reports below a specific threshold when approved.

Configure category rules

1. Go to Categories in the left menu within workspace settings
2. Select a category to open its details.
3. Under Category Rules, configure the following:

• Enable category: Make the category visible to workspace members when creating or submitting expenses
• Require description: Make descriptions mandatory for certain categories.
• Approver: Assign a specific approver per category.
• Default tax rate: Set a default tax rate for each category.
• Max amount: Define spending limits by category.
• Require receipts over: Specify when receipts are required for category expenses.

Configure tag rules

1. Go to Tags in the left menu within workspace settings.
2. Select a tag to open its details.
3. Under Tag Rules, configure the following:

• Tag approver: Assign approvers for specific tags.

Manage default categories and billable expenses

• Default Categories: Auto-categorize expenses based on the Merchant Category Code (MCC). Set in Categories under the Settings option on the top right of the page for credit card transactions and receipts.
• Billable Expenses: Set in Tags under the Settings option on the top right of the page to require tagging always or just when an expense is flagged as billable.