Expenses

Expenses

Expenses are the business costs that are not stock: subscription renewals, software tools, prep and shipping services, packaging, equipment, vendor invoices, anything you pay for that you don't resell. Seller Oracle pulls these out of your emails automatically, the same way it reads your purchase confirmations, so the costs land in your records without you keying them in.

An expense is a purchase like an order, filed under a category other than Stock. The Expenses list holds every purchase in those categories: the ones read from expense emails, and orders from a shop, such as a box supplier, filed under one. Change an expense's category to Stock and it moves to the Orders list. Change an order's category from Stock to another one and it moves here. See Categories.

The Expenses list

Expenses are shown 50 per page, newest first: one read from an expense email by the day you paid, and an order by the day you ordered. The list has the same two views as the Orders list, and the one you pick under Appearance in Settings is used on both.

The Journey view

Each row shows what the expense was for, its number and date, the vendor and the total, then its steps in a line. A subscription, a service or anything else you paid for rather than had delivered shows Paid and Invoice, and so does packaging or equipment that came in as an expense email. Packaging or equipment that came in as an order shows Ordered, Dispatched, Delivered and Invoice, as on the Orders list. Every row keeps the same columns, so Paid sits under Ordered and every Invoice lines up. Click or tap a circle to change that step.

The list opens on the Active tab, which holds expenses with a step still to do. Complete holds expenses where every step is done, and All shows every expense. Tick the boxes beside expenses to mark them delivered or mark their invoice not required in one go. An expense without the step is left as it was, and the message says so. View only members see the steps but can't change them.

The Classic view

Each row shows:

• Description: the expense's items, or for one with none, such as a subscription, what its email said it was for. A Recurring badge under it marks a charge Seller Oracle read as a subscription that repeats. This is Seller Oracle's read of the email, not a rule you set.
• Reference: the vendor's invoice number, or "No number" when the email gave none, or an order's order number. The date sits under it.
• Vendor: who you paid, with the expense's category under the name.
• Total: the charge in the vendor's currency. For a foreign-currency expense, a home-currency figure appears next to it (see Foreign-currency amounts).
• Invoice: the invoice tracking status. Click it to change it.
• Status: the expense's status, which reads Paid for a charge. Click it to change it.

Click any row to open the expense's page (see Expense page).

Filtering and search

The filter bar above the list narrows it. Filters combine, so you can stack a vendor, a category and a search term at once.

• Status tabs: after Active, Complete and All in the Journey view (or All in the Classic view), every status sits under More, along with a Hidden tab for expenses you have hidden (see Hiding an expense). Each tab shows a live count.
• Vendors: pick one or more vendors. Each one shows how many expenses it has, and you can search the list of vendors.
• Category: show one category, such as Software and subscriptions, or Not set for the expenses waiting for you to pick one.
• Invoice: filter by invoice tracking status.
• Reviews: show the expenses that need review, or those that have been resolved (see Needs review).
• Refunds: show the expenses with no refund, part refunded or fully refunded.
• Search: matches the description, the invoice or order number, the vendor's name and item names.

Use Clear to reset the filters and the search box.

Download invoices, at the top of the list, opens Invoice downloads, where you can download one ZIP of the invoice files saved on your orders and expenses for a period you pick. An expense read from an expense email goes by the day you paid there, and one that came in as an order by the day you ordered. View only members don't see it.

Foreign-currency amounts

When an expense is in a currency other than your home currency, the Total column shows a second, smaller figure in your home currency, for example €29.99 ~£25.42.

The tilde matters. A figure like ~£25.42 is an estimate, converted from the daily exchange rate. Once you enter the real amount your bank charged on the expense's page, or a card export sets it, the tilde disappears and the number is the settled amount. So a tilde means "approximate, from the rate", and no tilde means "this is the actual amount you paid".

While the figure is an estimate, the expense also waits in the Action Centre's Confirm amounts, unless it was moved over from the old Expenses list. This is the same as for orders, covered in full under multi-currency.

Expense page

Click an expense to open its page. It is the same page as an order's (see Order detail), with a few differences for a charge read from an expense email:

• The line under the vendor's name says when you paid, for example "Paid Sat 3 Oct 2026". There is no item list, just the payment.
• Paperwork and notes shows the expense's Description and Payment date after its Category.
• Its number is the vendor's invoice number, which can't be changed.
• Its Journey has Paid in place of Ordered, with a New expense line and the amount under it.

An order filed under a category other than Stock keeps its items, its order number and its delivery steps.

Edit expense, at the top, opens Edit order for the expense, and Hide beside it hides the expense (see Hiding an expense). The expense's emails, what the AI read from each, its History and Report an issue work as they do on an order: see The Journey, How the AI read this order and History. For a foreign-currency expense, Settled in GBP (or your own home currency) in Payment is where you type what your bank charged (see Payment).

An old link to an expense, from before the Expenses list changed, still opens its page.

Hiding an expense

Not everything that lands in expenses belongs there. To take one off the list, click the crossed-out eye on its row, Hide on its page, or Hide on its row in the Action Centre's Needs review, then pick why. On a phone, open the expense and tap Hide.

• Not an expense: it isn't a charge, such as a login code or a marketing email.
• Duplicate: the same charge was recorded twice. Hide the extra copy and keep the other one.
• Personal: a real charge, but not a business cost.
• Other: any other reason.

Hiding is never a delete. The expense drops off the list and stops counting in your spend and analytics. Hiding it from the list or the Action Centre shows a message with Undo. The Hidden tab, under More, holds every expense you have hidden, with why, who hid it and when. To bring one back, click the eye on its row, or open it and click Unhide. View only members can't hide or unhide.

On an expense read from an expense email, Not an expense and Personal also teach Seller Oracle to skip later expense emails for the same charge. It treats an email as the same charge when it comes from the same domain (the part of the address after the @), has the same subject once numbers, punctuation and capitals are ignored, and is for the same amount in the same currency. An email that shows no currency counts as being in your home currency, the one its expense would be recorded in. Duplicate and Other don't do this, so next month's renewal is still recorded. Unhiding the expense undoes it.

One case works differently. If an expense email is reclassified as something else, the expense it made is hidden for you, and the Hidden tab says "Hidden when its email was reclassified". It has no Unhide, because what the email was reclassified as now counts in its place. Its row and its page link to the email instead, for everyone except View only members. Reclassify that email back to Expense and the expense comes back on its own.

Needs review

Seller Oracle reads your emails with AI. Most extractions are clean, but some are not, and the app tells you when it is unsure rather than letting a wrong number sit silently in your records.

When a read looks off, the expense is flagged for review. A red Review badge appears next to its number on the list, and a Needs review line under the heading of its page says what to check, for example "This may be a personal purchase rather than a business expense. If it is, hide it as Personal." Check it against the email, fix anything that is wrong, then click Mark reviewed. The line goes, and the Review badge comes off the expense in the list.

Some reasons are about expenses alone:

• The amount isn't in the email or an attached PDF, or looks worked out rather than read from it.
• It may be a personal purchase rather than a business expense.
• It may be a copy of another expense from the same vendor for the same amount, paid within two days.
• It may be the same purchase as an order already recorded: an order its email was linked to, or one for the same amount from the same shop within 3 days or sent within 15 minutes of its email.
• The email reads like stock you bought to resell, so its category is left as Not set until you pick one.

To work through every flagged order and expense in one list, open Needs review in the Action Centre, where each expense is tagged Expense, or use the Reviews filter here. Resolved expenses stay in your records and can be found again with the Resolved option in the same filter. For every reason and how to settle it, see Accuracy and review.