Expense Categories and Reporting in Pulse

Expense categories tell Pulse what kind of cost each expense represents. They drive the chart breakdown on the Expenses page and the cost analysis in the Company Analysis dashboard.

Default categories

When your organisation first uses the Expenses module, Pulse creates eleven default categories:

1. Cost of Goods
2. Fuel and Transport
3. Rent and Utilities
4. Marketing and Advertising
5. Salaries and Wages
6. Professional Services
7. Office Supplies
8. Insurance
9. Maintenance and Repairs
10. Travel and Accommodation
11. Other

These default categories can be renamed and recoloured, but they cannot be deleted. They exist so you have a working category structure from day one.

Custom categories

You can add your own categories from the Expense Categories settings area. Each category gets a name, a colour, and an icon. Choose colours that make your chart breakdown easy to read at a glance.

A custom category that already has expenses assigned to it cannot be deleted. Pulse will tell you to reassign the expenses to another category first.

How categories appear in reports

At the top of the Expenses list page, a colour-coded bar chart shows each category's share of the total spend for the selected date range. The "Top Category" summary card highlights whichever category has the highest total. This gives you a fast view of where money is concentrated before reading the full list.

Filtering and searching expenses

The list view supports filters by date range (defaults to the current month), keyword search on description, category, and supplier. Up to 100 results load per page.

Expenses from purchase order receipts

When you mark a purchase order as received (fully or partially) in the Purchase Orders module, Pulse offers an option to create an expense record for that delivery. If you check this option and choose a category, Pulse creates the expense automatically with the PO details pre-filled. This is the main automated pathway that keeps purchasing and expenses connected without double entry.

Category colour snapshots

Each expense stores the category colour at the time it was saved. If you later change a category's colour, existing expense records keep the original colour until they are opened and resaved. This is worth knowing if you use a custom colour scheme and rebrand your categories.