Expenses

Track what your stack costs without leaving your project management tool. Almirant's expense module allows you to record, categorize, and analyze all costs associated with your projects: from SaaS subscriptions and hosting services to AI API costs and vendor invoices.

Why manage expenses in a PM tool

Tech teams handle multiple costs that directly impact projects:

• AI costs: OpenAI, Anthropic APIs, ML models in production
• Infrastructure: AWS, GCP, Vercel, hosting, managed databases
• SaaS subscriptions: GitHub, Figma, Slack, development tools
• External services: CDNs, email services, analytics
• Vendors: freelancers, consultants, professional services

Having visibility into these costs alongside the team's work enables better product decisions and prioritization with complete information.

What is an expense

An expense is a record of a cost associated with your organization or project. Each expense has the following fields:

Field	Required	Description	Example
Title	Yes	Descriptive name of the expense	"OpenAI API - March 2024"
Amount	Yes	Expense amount	450.00
Currency	Yes	ISO currency code	EUR, USD, GBP
Category	No	Expense category	"Infrastructure > Cloud"
Date	Yes	Expense date	2024-03-15
Vendor	No	Vendor or service name	"OpenAI"
Description	No	Additional expense details	"GPT-4 API usage for feature X"
Project	No	Project to charge	"Mobile App v2"
Paid by	No	User who made the payment	"John Smith"

Expense statuses

Expenses go through different statuses according to your organization's approval flow:

Status	Description
draft	Draft pending completion
pending_approval	Submitted for approval
approved	Approved, pending payment
rejected	Rejected by approver
paid	Paid and completed
void	Voided (not counted)

Creating an expense

1. Access Expenses from the main menu
2. Click New expense
3. Complete the required fields (title, amount, currency, date)
4. Optionally, select category, project, and attach the invoice
5. Save as draft or submit for approval

Hierarchical categories

Expenses are organized in tree-structured categories, allowing for as granular detail as you need:

Expenses
├── Infrastructure
│   ├── Cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure)
│   ├── Hosting (Vercel, Railway)
│   └── Databases
├── SaaS
│   ├── Development (GitHub, GitLab)
│   ├── Design (Figma, Adobe)
│   └── Communication (Slack, Notion)
├── AI and ML
│   ├── APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic)
│   └── Custom models
├── Marketing
│   ├── Advertising
│   └── Tools
└── Professional services
    ├── Consulting
    └── Freelancers

Creating a category

1. In expense settings, access Categories
2. Click New category
3. Enter name, icon, and color
4. Optionally, select a parent category

Categories have an order field to control their position and can be deactivated with isActive = false without deleting associated expenses.

Recurring expenses

For costs that repeat periodically (subscriptions, monthly services), you can configure recurring expenses:

Field	Description	Example
Title	Recurring expense name	"Vercel Pro"
Vendor	Service or company	"Vercel"
Amount	Amount per period	20.00
Currency	Expense currency	USD
Recurrence	Expense frequency	monthly
Anchor date	Reference date	2024-01-01
Next renewal	Automatically calculated	2024-04-01
Alert days before	Days in advance to notify	7

Available recurrences

Recurrence	Description
weekly	Weekly
monthly	Monthly
quarterly	Quarterly
yearly	Yearly

Active recurring expenses automatically show the next renewal date and can generate configurable alerts.

Multi-currency support

Almirant supports multiple currencies with automatic conversion to EUR for aggregations:

Currency	Code
Euro	EUR
US Dollar	USD
British Pound	GBP
Swiss Franc	CHF
Japanese Yen	JPY
Canadian Dollar	CAD
Australian Dollar	AUD
Mexican Peso	MXN
Brazilian Real	BRL
Chilean Peso	CLP
Colombian Peso	COP
Argentine Peso	ARS

Each expense stores:

• amount: Amount in original currency
• currency: ISO currency code
• amountEur: Amount converted to EUR
• exchangeRate: Applied exchange rate

Aggregations and reports are calculated on amountEur to compare expenses in different currencies.

Invoices and attachments

Each expense can have an attached invoice. Almirant stores:

Field	Description
invoiceFileName	File name
invoiceUrl	S3 document URL
invoiceFileSize	Size in bytes
invoiceMimeType	MIME type (application/pdf, image/png, etc.)
invoiceProcessingStatus	Processing status

Invoice processing statuses

Status	Description
pending	Pending processing
processing	Being processed (OCR/AI)
processed	Successfully processed
failed	Processing error

Automatic processing can extract data from the invoice via OCR to auto-fill expense fields.

Dashboard and aggregations

The main expense view includes a dashboard with key metrics:

Available metrics

Metric	Description
Total	Total sum of expenses (in EUR)
By person	Breakdown by paying user
By category	Distribution by categories
By month	Time evolution
Recent	Latest recorded expenses

Filters

You can filter expenses by:

• Date range
• Category (including subcategories)
• Project
• Status
• Vendor
• Paying user

For developers

For Developers

MCP tools

Tool	Description	Main parameters
create_expense	Creates a new expense	title, amount, currency, expenseDate, categoryId, projectId
get_expense	Gets an expense by ID	expenseId
list_expenses	Lists expenses with filters	projectId, categoryId, status, dateFrom, dateTo
get_expense_summary	Gets aggregations	projectId, dateFrom, dateTo
list_expense_categories	Lists categories	includeInactive
list_recurring_expenses	Lists recurring expenses	isActive

Example: Create an expense

Tool: create_expense
Parameters:
  title: "AWS EC2 - March 2024"
  amount: 234.50
  currency: "USD"
  expenseDate: "2024-03-31"
  categoryId: "category-uuid-cloud"
  projectId: "project-uuid"
  vendor: "Amazon Web Services"

Example: Get expense summary

Tool: get_expense_summary
Parameters:
  projectId: "project-uuid"
  dateFrom: "2024-01-01"
  dateTo: "2024-03-31"

Returns:

• Total expenses in the period (in EUR)
• Breakdown by category
• Breakdown by person
• Monthly evolution
• Recent expenses

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Related: Projects | Knowledge base