Expense tracker template
Log, categorize, and approve expenses in one place to track reimbursements, budgets, and pending expenses.
KEY FEATURES
Project Management
Project Planning
What is an expense tracker template?
An expense tracker template manages spending by providing a consistent structure for submitting, reviewing, and approving expenses. It eliminates the need to build tracking systems from scratch every time you need to monitor costs.
The template includes pre-built fields for expense details, approval workflows, and reporting capabilities, so you focus on actually managing your budget instead of setting up infrastructure. Teams use it to maintain spending visibility, speed up reimbursement cycles, and make better financial decisions based on real data.
Who should use an expense tracker template?
Finance teams can use expense management templates to standardize how expenses are submitted and approved across the organization. Project managers can use them to track project-specific costs against budgets, allowing for better decision-making about resource allocation. At the same time, department leads find them useful for monitoring operational spending and identifying cost-saving opportunities without micromanaging every purchase.
Anyone who manages budgets, handles reimbursements, or oversees operational spending will find value in structured expense trackers. The template creates accountability by documenting who spent what and why, making it easier to spot trends and adjust spending patterns.
What does the expense tracker template include?
Workflows
Workflows map each expense from initial submission through review, approval, and final payment. See exactly where every expense sits in the process, which prevents items from getting lost or forgotten.
Customize your workflow transitions to match your approval hierarchy, or add automation to route expenses to the right approver based on amount or category. Speed up reviews and keep money moving instead of sitting in approval limbo.
Lists
Lists give you a clear view of all expenses organized by status, category, or any other criteria that matter to your team. Filter the list to quickly find pending reimbursements, identify high-value items that need extra review, or review all expenses from a specific department.
This view is particularly useful during project planning when you need to understand spending patterns and adjust your approach accordingly.
Reports
Reports allow you to visualize total spend, break down expenses by category, and track how long approvals are taking. These insights are crucial for forecasting future budgets and making adjustments when spending trends shift.
Additionally, use the report data to identify which categories consistently go over budget or which approval steps create bottlenecks. This visibility supports better strategic planning and helps teams adapt their spending approach based on actual results rather than guesswork.
Scrum board
The Scrum board offers a visual way to track expense requests as they move through different stages of your approval process. Set up columns like To Review, Approved, and Paid to keep everything organized and easy to scan at a glance.
This view works well for teams practicing iterative planning, where you need to quickly assess what’s been approved, what’s pending, and what still needs attention. The visual layout makes it simple to spot expenses that have been stuck in one stage for too long.
How to get started with the expense tracker template
- 1
Choose a project type that fits your workflow
Select the right project type based on how your team operates. A team-managed project gives you a flexible setup and control, which works well if your expense tracking needs are straightforward and contained within a single team.
A company-managed project makes more sense when you need cross-department collaboration or want to maintain consistent processes across multiple teams. Consider your project scope and how many people will need access to expense data before deciding.
- 2
Create issue types for tracking expenses
Add issue types for each kind of expense you need to track. You might create an Expense Request issue type for regular purchases and a Reimbursement type for out-of-pocket spending.
Include custom fields for amount, category, date, and any other details you need to capture.
Use the list view in Jira to track and organize these expenses within your project. Jira’s built-in features support budget management and cost tracking, letting you set spending limits and get alerts when categories approach their thresholds.
- 3
Configure workflows for approvals
Build approval paths that move expenses through statuses like Submitted → Under Review → Approved → Paid. Use Jira workflows to map out this process and ensure expenses follow the right approval chain based on your organization’s requirements.
You can create different paths for small versus large expenses, or route certain categories to specific approvers who have expertise in those areas. This structure keeps your basic expense tracker template consistent while allowing flexibility where you need it.
- 4
Customize Scrum boards and reports for clearer insights
Set up your Scrum board to display expenses in a way that makes sense for your team’s review process. Use the board to plan expense reviews, visualize pending approvals, and track items that need follow-up.
Configure reports to show total spend, pending approval counts, and category breakdowns so you have the financial tracking data you need for project management decisions. These reports provide insights to assess project health and understand where expenses are trending higher than expected.
- 5
Share with team members and adjust as necessary
Invite the appropriate team members and set permissions to control who can view, edit, or approve expense data. Start with a core group and expand access as the template proves useful.
Create an action plan for reviewing and updating the template regularly, ideally following a project timeline that aligns with your budget cycles. Adjust fields, workflows, and reports to reflect how your team actually works rather than forcing everyone to adapt to a rigid system.