Online expense reports

The employee photographs the receipt as they pay, the app fills in the expense report, and approval and settlement start on their own — no Excel forms emailed around at month end.

Paper or spreadsheet expense reports always produce the same three problems: receipts lost before month end, amounts keyed in wrong, and a pile that reaches accounting two weeks late. 4expenses moves the expense report into the employee’s phone: they photograph the receipt right after paying, the app extracts the supplier, date, amount and VAT, and the expense lands on the right project or cost centre. The report follows the approval flow you configured, and once approved the amount to reimburse is already calculated. Finance sees spending as it happens, not at close.

Created on the phone in seconds: photograph the receipt, the rest of the fields fill themselves in.
Configurable expense categories (travel, accommodation, meals, entertainment, supplies, fuel).
Allocation to cost centre, project, client or department, with per-employee defaults.
Expense policy enforced at creation: category caps, over-limit warnings, mandatory fields.
Automatic duplicate detection when the same receipt is uploaded twice.
Foreign-currency expenses converted at the BNR rate of the document date.
Full per-employee history: what was spent, approved, reimbursed and when.
Multiple attachments on one report: fiscal receipt, invoice, contract, proof of payment.

What an expense report must contain to be a valid document

Legea contabilității nr. 82/1991 (the Romanian Accounting Act) requires every economic and financial operation to be recorded in a supporting document at the moment it takes place. For an expense paid by an employee, that means the primary document (fiscal receipt, invoice, transport ticket) plus the expense report that accompanies it, drawn up in line with OMFP nr. 2634/2015. 4expenses builds the report with all the required elements - date, type of expense, amount, VAT, the person who paid, the business purpose - and keeps the image of the primary document permanently attached, so the report cannot exist without its supporting evidence.

Expense policies enforced before the spend, not after

Most disputes over expense claims happen because the rule only becomes visible at rejection time. In 4expenses, policies are applied the moment the report is created: if the meal cap is exceeded, the employee sees the warning right away and can add a justification; if a category strictly requires a company invoice, the report cannot be submitted with a receipt alone. You can set different caps by role, department or country of travel, and exceptions remain possible - but they become explicit, approved by a named person, and fully traceable.

Deductibility starts with a correctly completed report

An expense is deductible for corporate income tax purposes only if it is incurred for the purpose of the economic activity (art. 25 of the Codul fiscal / Legea nr. 227/2015, the Romanian Fiscal Code), and some categories have rules of their own: entertainment expenses are capped, while fuel for vehicles not used exclusively for business has deductible VAT limited to 50% (art. 298 of the Codul fiscal). Because 4expenses asks for the category, the purpose and the project allocation up front, the accountant receives a report from which the tax treatment follows directly - not an ambiguous line that has to be clarified over e-mail.

Closing the month without hunting for receipts

Because reports come in continuously rather than on the last day, finance can track spend in real time and send automatic reminders to employees with receipts still missing. At close, instead of collecting envelopes, you export the approved batch straight into accounting. The measurable effect: the month's expenses are known within the first few days after close, not once the last claim physically reaches the office.

Legal references

Legea nr. 82/1991 — Romanian Accounting Act, art. 6 (supporting document requirement)
OMFP nr. 2634/2015 — statutory financial-accounting documents (expense report, travel order)
Legea nr. 227/2015 — Romanian Fiscal Code, art. 25 (deductible expenses), art. 298 (VAT on vehicles)
Regulation (EU) 2016/679 — GDPR (personal data contained in uploaded documents)

Frequently asked questions

Is a photographed fiscal receipt enough as a supporting document?

For small expenses, a fiscal receipt can serve as a supporting document if it carries the required elements and is accompanied by an expense report. To deduct VAT you need an invoice issued to the company. 4expenses lets you configure, per category, whether a receipt is enough or an invoice is mandatory, and the report cannot be submitted without the required document.

Do I still have to keep the paper receipt after photographing it?

Yes - archiving financial and accounting documents remains a company obligation, and thermal receipts fade. Recommended practice is to keep the original in line with your archiving policy and use the image in 4expenses as the working document and as proof of its content at the time of upload.

How are expenses in foreign currency handled?

The report keeps the currency and the original amount, and conversion is done at the BNR exchange rate of the document date, exactly as accounting regulation requires. At any moment you can see both the foreign-currency amount and the RON equivalent used for booking.

What happens if an employee uploads the same receipt twice?

The application compares the supplier, date and amount extracted by OCR and flags the report as a possible duplicate before approval. The approver sees both reports side by side and decides, so the same expense is never reimbursed twice.

Can employees without a company phone use the application?

Yes. A report can also be created in the browser, on any device, and the document can be uploaded as a file (PDF or image) received by e-mail from the supplier.

Related resources

Receipt scanning with OCR →Photograph the receipt or invoice and the app reads the supplier, date, total, VAT and tax ID — no typing and no transcription errors.Expense budgets and approval flows →Set limits by department, project and category, define who approves and up to what amount, and watch budget consumption in real time as expenses come in.Accounting export →The approved expense batch goes to accounting with everything the accountant needs: accounts, VAT by rate, cost centres, partners and the supporting documents attached.

Leave spreadsheet expense reports behind

Start with one small team, watch a full month of expenses collected from phones, then roll it out company-wide.

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