Expense Report Tracking (Q Mac)

Question

Hi,
 New to Quicken and trying to figure it out. 
 I submit expenses to my employer for reimbursement. 
 I current have "Actions" setup for Expense, Submitted, Approved, Check Received, and Check Cleared.
 I figured this would let me track my reimbursement from start to finish. I'm running into the an efficiency issue. I can't bulk change the Action column so I have to change each transaction individually. 
 How do other people track expenses like this? Any advise would be great. 
 The only column that isn't really available to me is the Categories column. My employer wants that dictated as "Business Trip: Meals", etc.
 Thank You

jacobs · Answer

Here's the way I do this...* I created a Business Expenses account in Quicken as an asset account, because it's money owed to me.
* When I spent money in cash or on a credit card, I didn't use a category; I used a Transfer to the Business Expenses account, increasing the balance of what's owed to me. 
* When I receive a reimbursement from work and deposit it in my checking account, that is recorded as a Transfer to the Business Expenses account, reducing the balance of what's owed to me. 
* Each time I enter a reimbursement check, I reconcile the Business Expenses account, checking off the expenses which were paid.
* The balance of the Business Expenses account always shows what I've spent but have not yet been reimbursed for. The unreconciled transactions in the account are the ones which have not been reimbursed.

I don't do this, but you could click the Clr checkbox (blue check mark) for each expense transaction you have submitted to your employer, so you can easily see which expenses have been submitted and which haven't yet been submitted. You can click the checkboxes without opening each transaction for editing.

This won't create a great report for your employer, but it's good for you keeping track of your pending and past business expenses. Most employers need you to complete a reimbursement form and/or submit a copy of the receipt for each expense. You can create a report of just unreconciled and uncleared transactions if you need the list to submit to your employer. Or you could export that report to a spreadsheet if you need to add any additional information for your employer.