A printable expense report, and how to fill one in properly.

What a good expense report contains

An expense report is a claim, not just a list — the person approving it needs enough on the page to say yes without having to ask a follow-up question. At minimum that means a defined reporting period, who is claiming, the company being billed, and one line per expense with a date, vendor, category, description and amount.

Past that minimum, a few fields do most of the work of making a report trustworthy:

• Category. Travel, meals, lodging, transport, supplies, software, equipment, professional fees — a consistent set of categories is what lets someone later answer "how much did we spend on X" without reading every line.
• Tax, broken out separately. If the amount includes tax that can be reclaimed, note the tax amount or rate on the line itself rather than folding it into the total — it's much harder to reconstruct later.
• Reimbursable and billable flags. See the FAQ below — these are two different questions about the same expense, and a report that doesn't separate them can't produce a correct billable subtotal for a client invoice.
• Payment method. Company card, personal card, cash, bank transfer — this matters because it changes who's actually owed the reimbursement.
• Mileage and per-diem, as their own sub-totals. These are calculated (distance × rate, days × daily rate) rather than receipted, so they read more clearly as a separate block than mixed into the itemized lines.
• Any advance already received. If the company fronted money before the trip, subtract it from what's owed — otherwise the report overstates the claim.
• An approval trail. Submitted-by, approved-by, and a date for each, even if it's just a signature line on a printed page.

Which receipts do I actually need to keep

Keep the original receipt or invoice for anything you intend to claim — not just a bank or card statement line. A statement confirms that money moved; it doesn't show what was purchased or whether tax was charged, both of which an approver or a tax authority may reasonably ask about later.

• Itemized, not just the card slip. For lodging especially, the folio (room rate, taxes, any incidentals) tells a very different story than the total the card machine printed.
• Digital is fine. A clear photo or scan holds up as well as the paper original in most policies — the point is that it exists and is legible, not the medium.
• Small amounts vary by policy. Some employers and tax authorities set a minimum below which a receipt isn't strictly required. Because that threshold isn't universal, the safer default is to keep everything and let the approver decide what's needed — a missing receipt is a far more common reason a claim gets kicked back than an unnecessary one.
• Mileage and per diem don't need a purchase receipt — they're calculated from distance or days, not a transaction — but keep whatever supports the distance or the dates (an itinerary, a calendar invite) if your policy asks for it.

Reimbursable vs. billable, explained properly

Reimbursable answers "who paid, and who owes it back to them?" If an employee or contractor paid out of pocket, the company owes that amount back — that's the reimbursement.

Billable answers a completely different question: "should this cost ultimately be passed on to a client or charged against a specific project?" It has nothing to do with who fronted the money.

Because they answer different questions, an expense can land in any combination:

• Reimbursable and billable — you paid for a client dinner out of pocket; the company owes you the money back, and that same amount gets invoiced to the client.
• Reimbursable only — a personal travel cost the company covers but doesn't pass on to anyone.
• Billable only — a cost paid directly by company card that still needs to be tracked against a project or re-billed to a client.
• Neither — an internal cost with nothing to reimburse and nowhere to bill it.

A report that tracks both flags separately, per line, produces two honest subtotals instead of one number that quietly conflates them.

The printable template

Print this page (or save it as a PDF) for a clean, ruled expense report you can fill in by hand — the layout below is what prints; everything else on this page is hidden on the printed copy.

Use your browser's Print (or Print to PDF) command — the page layout above is print-ready as-is.

Questions