Expense Categories

Expense Categories are what an employee classifies a submitted expense as (Accommodation, Food and beverages, Study costs, and so on). Each category defines how expenses in it get posted — GL or bank account, VAT/tax treatment, and an optional project-task mapping.

Category fields

Field	Description
Code	Unique identifier.
Name	Display name shown to employees.
Description	Longer explanation, if Name alone isn't enough.
Attachment Mandatory	Whether a receipt attachment is required before an expense in this category can be submitted.
Visible	Whether the category can still be selected.

Project mapping

If expenses in this category should automatically create project ledger/planning entries (rather than just a general reimbursement), fill in:

Field	Description
Project Task No.	The project task expenses post against.
Project Task Description	Read-only, shown for context once a task is picked.
Project Line Type	Standard Business Central Project Line Type (Budget / Both Budget and Billable / Billable) — determines whether the expense is invoiced to the customer.
Project Surcharge %	A markup applied on top of the expense amount. Only enabled when Project Line Type is Billable or Both Budget and Billable — a purely-budget line has nothing to bill a surcharge on.

Category Postings

A single category can fan out into multiple Postings — named sub-splits that each target a different account. This is where the actual accounting happens; the category itself is just the employee-facing grouping.

Field	Description
Posting Code	Unique within the category.
Description	Display name for this posting.
Visible	Whether it can still be selected.
VAT %	Shown for VAT-based localizations.
Currency Code	Optional override; defaults to local currency (set on Expense Setup) if left blank.
Currency Symbol	Only editable once a Currency Code is set.
Account Type	G/L Account, Bank Account, or Employee (post via BC's built-in employee ledger balancing instead of a G/L/Bank account).
Account No.	The target account — its lookup depends on Account Type.
Gen. Bus. Posting Group / Gen. Prod. Posting Group	Standard BC posting group fields, used together with Account Type/No. to determine the final G/L accounts.
VAT Bus. Posting Group / VAT Prod. Posting Group	Shown for VAT-based localizations, alongside VAT % above.
Tax Liable / Tax Area Code / Tax Group Code	Shown instead of the VAT fields for Sales-Tax-based localizations (e.g. US). Which set of fields appears is determined automatically by your company's localization — you won't see both.

Categories vs. Postings — which to use

Keep the category list itself focused on what's meaningful to employees submitting expenses — group by the kind of cost, e.g. Meals, Travel Expenses (hotels, taxis), Hardware (computers, peripherals). Employees only ever choose a category; they don't need to think about accounting.

Reach for a new Posting within a category, instead of a whole new category, whenever the same kind of expense needs different accounting treatment depending on circumstances an employee doesn't need to be bothered with — most commonly a different VAT rate, a different country, or a different currency. Those differences typically mean different G/L accounts and posting groups behind the scenes, which is exactly what Postings exist to isolate — split by accounting requirement, not by how the expense looks to the person submitting it.