9 Best Expense Report Templates to Track Your Spendings

Keeping track of expenses is crucial for both individuals and organizations to manage their finances efficiently. However, creating expense reports from scratch can be time-consuming and challenging. This is where expense report templates come in handy.

Expense report templates provide ready-made forms to record your expenses, making the whole process quicker and easier. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the best expense report templates to help you monitor your spendings like a pro.

Overview of Expense Report Templates

Before jumping into the top templates, let‘s first understand what expense reports are and how templates can make the tracking process simpler for you.

What are Expense Reports?

An expense report is a document that provides a detailed summary of costs incurred over a period. It typically includes information like:

• Date of purchase
• Description of the item/service
• Amount spent
• Category (travel, office supplies, etc.)
• Payment method
• Attached receipts

Maintaining expense reports is important for:

• Individuals – To track household expenses and ensure they don‘t overspend their income. It helps make informed decisions to save money.

• Employees – To keep a record of work-related expenses made from their own pocket, which can be reimbursed by the employer.

• Businesses – To monitor employee spending and find areas to cut costs. Detailed reports are also needed for accounting, audits, and taxation.

Benefits of Using Expense Report Templates

While expense reports are extremely useful, building them from scratch can be tedious and inefficient. This is where using pre-made templates comes in handy.

Benefits of using expense report templates:

• Save time – Templates come with ready-made tables and fields, removing the hassle of creating reports from zero.

• Uniform structure – Maintain consistency in your reports instead of random formats.

• Proper categorization – Templates have pre-defined categories that help you accurately classify expenses.

• Easy customization – Easily make changes like adding company logo or modifying categories.

• Aid analysis – Standard reports make it easier to analyze spending patterns.

• Multiple formats – Available in Excel, Google Sheets, Word and other formats.

• Simple usage – User-friendly design allows even non-finance people to create reports easily.

In a nutshell, pre-built expense report templates can make tracking expenses a breeze for both personal use and business teams. Now let‘s look at some of the best options available online.

1. HubSpot

HubSpot offers a free customizable expense report template ideal for businesses to monitor team spending.

Key features:

• Available formats – Excel, Google Sheets, Word, PDF

• Employee details section – Name, department, designation

• Expenditure fields – Date, description, category, payment method, amount

• Automatic total calculation

• Additional fields for approvals, reimbursement amount, notes

This template provides a clear overview of employee expenses during a defined period. Companies can add custom fields and branding elements with minimum effort. The automatic totaling also minimizes manual work.

Overall, this is one of the best expense report templates for business teams thanks to its professional structure and easy customization options.

2. FreshBooks

FreshBooks offers an easy-to-use Excel template to track business expenses. It’s ideal for entrepreneurs, freelancers and other small business owners.

Key features:

• Pre-filled business details – Name, address, email

• Client name field

• Common categories included – Hotel, transportation, meals

• Tax amount and total amount columns

• Notes section

This template provides a simple structure for recording key details on business expenditures. Small business owners can use it to track expenses made for a client project, work trip or other purposes.

The pre-defined categories also make it easy to classify expenses. Overall, it‘s a fuss-free template focused on simplicity and ease-of-use.

3. WPS Template

The WPS expense report template available in Excel format helps you analyze expense trends over time.

Key features:

• 12 months expenditure fields

• Common categories – Rent, insurance, office supplies

• Graphical representation of monthly spends

• Additional tables for further data

This template lets you track expenses incurred under different categories each month in a yearly calendar view. You can total up the monthly numbers and use the graphs to identify spending patterns.

The visual graphs make it easy to spot months with unusually high or low expenses. This data can help you create better budgets and spending plans.

4. Zoho Expense Report

Zoho offers a simple, customizable expense report template. You can download it in Excel format.

Key features:

• Adjustable fields and columns

• Common pre-filled columns – Date, description, category, amount

• Options to add logo, company name

• Can expand number of rows as needed

This free template from Zoho provides a basic structure to record daily expenses. The pre-filled columns cover the essential fields, while other elements can be removed or added as required.

For instance, you can modify the categories or add columns for payment mode, tax amount, approvals etc. If you need a straightforward, no-frills expense report, this template will come handy.

5. Smartsheet

Smartsheet offers multiple expense report templates in Excel tailored to different business needs.

Key features:

• Weekly, monthly and yearly reports

• Basic, advanced and tracker templates

• Customizable categories and descriptions

• Warnings to attach receipts

• Signature fields for approval

• Detailed itemization section

Smartsheet provides a variety of expense report formats depending on the frequency and depth of data required. You can pick weekly, monthly or annual templates for simple reporting.

There are also advanced templates with room for detailed itemization, approvals and receipts. The tracker template helps audit employee spending. Overall, these templates help streamline the reporting process.

6. Spendesk

Spendesk provides an employee expense report template in Excel and Google Sheets formats.

Key features:

• Commonly used categories included

• Multiple tables for different expenses

• Details section – date, description, amount

• Auto-totaling of amounts

• Reimbursement amount calculation

This template is designed to help employees track work-related expenses made out-of-pocket for reimbursement. The predefined fields and calculation formulas minimize the effort required.

Sections are also provided to capture expenses across common categories like travel, meals and lodging separately. Overall, a great pick for employees looking for reimbursement.

7. Signeasy

Signeasy provides a Microsoft Word expense report template for small businesses to track team spends.

Key features:

• Table with date, description, category, amount fields

• Additional notes column

• Custom categories can be added

• Calculated totals

• Downloadable Word, Excel and Sheets formats

This simple template offers a structured table to log all employee expenses. The major fields are included, while you can also add custom categories relevant to your business.

With the ability to export and use the template directly in Word, Excel or Google Sheets, it offers flexibility to small business owners. Signeasy also has receipt scanning apps to further simplify expense tracking.

8. Divvy

Divvy‘s expense report template allows employees to track spending and request reimbursements.

Key features:

• Employee details section

• Itemized expenditure list

• Purpose and place details

• Total amount and reimbursement request

• Notes field

This template by Divvy focuses on itemizing every expense made by employees across categories like travel, meals and lodging.

Employees can use it to compile all work-related spending for reimbursement along with descriptions and totals. The itemized view also allows managers to understand each expense before approval.

9. Klippa

Klippa‘s template helps employees track and report travel expenses in Word and Excel formats.

Key features:

• Separate tables for flight, hotel, local travel, food and other costs

• Detailed descriptions and receipt fields

• Taxable expenses marked

• Total business and personal expenses

This travel-specific expense report template lets you record all trip-related costs incurred under common travel categories. Employees can use it to capture expenses in detail along with descriptions, receipts and totals.

The split view of business and personal spends also simplifies expense claims and reimbursements after business trips.

Key Takeaways

• Expense report templates available online can simplify spend tracking for individuals and organizations.

• Pre-built templates help save time and effort compared to creating reports from scratch.

• Leading providers like HubSpot, Zoho, FreshBooks and Smartsheet offer free customizable templates.

• Templates come in Excel, Google Sheets, Word and other formats with easy export options.

• They contain fields for date, description, category, amount and notes to capture all essential spend details.

• Some templates also include graphs, totals, reimbursement fields and approval sections for deeper analysis.

• Organizations can choose industry-specific templates like for travel expenses to better suit their needs.

How to Create the Perfect Expense Report Template

While plenty of tools provide ready-made expense report templates, you may prefer to create one fully customized to your needs.

Here are some tips to create the perfect expense report template:

1. Include common fields

Make sure to include columns for date, description, category, amount paid, payment method, and attached receipts. These standard fields capture all the key details.

2. Add relevant categories

The category column should contain the spending areas relevant to you. For personal use, categories can be food, household, entertainment, self-care etc. Business templates can have categories like marketing, software, travel, office supplies.

3. Use color coding

Use colors, bold fonts, or highlights to distinguish different types of expenses within the sheet. This improves readability.

4. Include graphs and charts

Add graphs that automatically display spending distribution across categories. Visual representations make it easier to analyze reports.

5. Enable calculations

Use formulas that automatically calculate totals, percentages, reimbursement amounts etc. This eliminates manual work.

6. Add approval fields

For business reports, include fields for manager comments, approvals, signatures to establish proper approval flows.

7. Customize frequently

Continuously modify the template based on changing needs. Add or remove columns and categories periodically.

Top Tools for Creating Expense Reports

Manually building expense reports in Excel or Word can be tedious. For convenience, you can use dedicated expense tracking tools that help streamline the entire process.

Here are some popular expense reporting tools:

• Expensify – Offers easy reporting and approvals along with integrated receipt scanning. Has mobile app. Ideal for businesses.

• Receipt Bank – Records receipts and expenses to auto-create reports. Syncs to accounting software. Additional reconciliation and auditing features.

• Pleo – Captures real-time expenses from corporate cards for transparent reporting. Integrates with Slack, Xero, QuickBooks.

• Spendee – User-friendly personal finance app to track spending. Offers detailed reports and budgeting tools.

• Concur – Owned by SAP, Concur is an all-in-one T&E platform providing intuitive reporting and integrations.

Get Started With Expense Reporting

Tracking expenses regularly is critical for making smart financial decisions. However, the process becomes much simpler when you use pre-designed expense report templates.

This guide covers the top expense report templates offered by various providers to help streamline your spending monitoring. Try out the different templates and pick the one suiting your needs best. Or use the tips shared to create your own custom template.

Accurate reports will provide greater visibility into where your money goes. Over time, the data can even help identify wasteful expenditures to cut down. The key is consistency in maintaining expense reports, be it through simple spreadsheets or automated tools.

So download one of these templates today and supercharge your expense tracking! Let us know in the comments below if you found this guide helpful.