Expenses and bills

Money going out lives in two places, depending on whose cost it is:

• Expenses — costs incurred delivering a specific project (travel, stock images, a subcontracted deliverable). They live on the project.
• Bills — what your suppliers charge your business (software, subcontractors, services). They live under Business → Bills.

Both feed the margin picture: a project's true profitability includes its expenses and any bills assigned to it, not just the hours.

Project expenses

Record expenses on a project under Financials → Expenses. Each expense carries its amount, category and date, and counts against the project's financials immediately. Where an expense is passed on to the client, it links to the invoice that recharges it — so you can always answer "did we ever bill that?"

A top-level expenses view across all projects is on the roadmap; today, expenses are viewed within each project.

Supplier bills

Business → Bills is the ledger of what you're being charged. Suppliers come from your CRM (companies marked My vendor — see Companies and contacts), and with Xero connected bills can be pulled in from your bookkeeping rather than retyped.

The useful habit: assign a bill to a project where one applies. An assigned bill counts against that project's margin, so a project that looks profitable on hours alone can't hide a £400/month tool bill it depends on. Unassigned bills stay as general business running costs.

Where this shows up

• Project Financials — expenses and assigned bills reduce the project's margin.
• Business — bills roll into your business cost picture alongside your operating costs.
• Reports — profitability reporting reflects both.

Tip: categorise as you go. A year of well-categorised bills makes the "what does running this business actually cost?" question a filter, not a weekend.