Monthly Expense Report Template

How a Monthly Expense Report Template Can Help You

Having your employees, students, coworkers or family fill out monthly expense reports can help you get a better estimate of your budget; it can also assist you with ensuring that you stay within whatever budget you set. It can document the costs of food, transportation, conferences and lodging to guarantee the accurate reimbursement of others. These monthly expense reports also assist you with preparing your taxes or handling detailed audits of your business; you will have precise tax-deductible amounts that can be used to lower your tax payments. Lastly, a weekly or monthly expense report from each of your employees protects you from critical errors with the budget while also keeping track of where your money is spent.

However, constantly creating new spreadsheets or forms for these reports can quickly get tedious and annoying. That’s why you should use a monthly expense report template to make the process much more smooth; instead of creating a new form or spreadsheet every week, you can just give employees a template they’d be able to use every time.

How to Use a Monthly Expense Report Template Spreadsheet

Instead of having to create your own report or template in Excel, Google Sheets or Smartsheet, you can download a monthly expense report template spreadsheet! The template is easy to set-up and use, having sections for the date of payment, the method of payment used, who the payment was given to, a description of the charge, the total amount paid and the subtotal of all purchases, fees and expenses.

To start using this template for your monthly expense reports, simply download the appropriate file for the spreadsheet software (Excel, Smartsheet or Google Sheets) you are using and open it after it is finished downloading. From there, you can add new sections if you need to or simply start sending the ready-to-use report to whoever you’d like. It’s really that simple!

Features Included in This Monthly Expense Report Template Excel

This monthly expense report template excel contains a myriad of features that will enhance the budgets you set and ensure they are followed perfectly. Some of the basic features include tracking where and when each transaction was made, showing what method of payment was used for the transaction and an auto-updating subtotal for all expenses, fees and purchases.

Here are some other features you can expect as well:

• The template is incredibly simple to use and simple to understand; you can start tracking expenses immediately
• Detailed descriptions of expenses
• Easy to customize and add more features as you need to

Tips and Tricks to Perfect Your Template and Ensure Accurate Expense Reports

These templates already work great for keeping a balanced budget in any situation, but here are some tips and tricks that’ll make them even more useful for you.

First, the tip that is the most important, it is advised to add a signature line or other method of approval to the template if it doesn’t already have one. This ensures that each report is run by you and all expenses are verified before the report is submitted; this guarantees that each complete report paints a full and accurate picture of the expenses for that month.

Second, you should have employees send copies of receipts for each expense as well. Keeping these receipts is useful for reporting tax-deductible expenses, so you may want to add a reminder stating “Please attach receipts!” to your template. This also makes it easier to send the receipts alongside the report to the IRS.

Another note for our businesses who are looking to better track their tax deductible expenses, you might want to check what expenses the IRS considers tax deductible. You can view examples and explanations of what purchases you can write off here.

You should also determine if you want to have employees use the report digitally or fill it out pen and paper style. Having them turn it in physically can make tax reporting easier as you’ll already have the report printed and ready to send. However, you should also consider having the reports emailed to you instead as it’ll allow you to easily fix errors, cut down on paper usage and it makes the process easier for employees that are constantly on-the-move. You should consider which method works better for your business or institution and follow accordingly.

Here’s one last trick for you as well. Pairing this expense report template with other logs or templates can let you track reimbursements, mileage and more! You can either create your own or look at some of the other templates that are available for download to fast-track the accounting of your business, school or family to an even greater degree!

Download a Free Monthly Expense Report Template

This monthly expense report template spreadsheet can closely track expenses in both personal and business settings. You’ll be able to closely track purchases that are made by cash, check or card; the template also tracks what kind of transaction was performed, the total amount that was charged, the time period of the expenses and other important details related to expenses and fees. Feel free to download this template now so you can start creating your monthly expense reports for your family, business or school.