🕰️ Est. Time: 10 minutes
🎯 Goal: Ensure efficient expense handling to improve budgeting and approvals
🔑 Requirements: Access to view and edit jobs
Why create a workflow for third-party costs?
Managing third-party costs effectively prevents overspending and ensures accurate reporting. This guide helps you track, approve, and reconcile expenses and POs with clarity.
How to use this guide
How to use this guide
You’ll likely already have many answers to this guide, but using it as a checklist will ensure you've covered all key scenarios for a more effective approach.
What do the 🔑 and ➕ mean
What do the 🔑 and ➕ mean
The questions below are coded based on their impact on your success:
🔑 Essential for success
➕ Worth considering but not crucial
Documenting your workflow
Documenting your workflow
Once you're aligned, don’t forget to document your processes to ensure clarity and consistency across your team.
Creating and tracking costs
🔑 When should you create an expense vs a purchase order?
Is every third-party cost tracked through a purchase order, or are expenses enough? Does this depend on cost, supplier, or approval? How do you ensure consistency across teams?
Relevant resources
Relevant resources
Creating an expense (2 min read)
Raising a PO (3 min read)
🔑 Do you need to use POs for all third-party costs?
Are there suppliers that require a PO before invoicing? Do some costs, like freelancer fees, need a different process? Should there be a threshold where POs are required?
teams?
Expense statuses
🔑 When should statuses be updated for expenses and POs?
Should statuses reflect approval, invoicing, or payment stages? Who is responsible for keeping them updated? Do certain costs require extra review before moving forward?
Relevant resources
Relevant resources
Updating expense statuses (2 min read)
🔑 What’s the approval process for expenses and POs?
Does every cost need approval, or just those above a set amount? Who approves different types of costs? Should approvals be tracked or automated?
Tracking budgets
🔑 When should the “Date Required” be set, and what does it represent?
Should this reflect the expected delivery date of a service/product? Is it tied to a supplier invoice due date or another milestone? How does this impact reporting or cash flow planning?
🔑 Do you need to track budgets for third-party costs?
Should budgets be tracked at the job, phase, or service level? Who monitors if costs are exceeding budgeted amounts? Should budget vs actuals be reported regularly?
Relevant resources
Relevant resources
Budget tracking best practices (10 min watch)
Handling supplier invoices
🔑 Do you need a process for matching supplier invoices to POs?
Should invoices always match the PO, or are variations allowed? How should discrepancies be handled? Who is responsible for reconciling invoices?
🔑 When should you use markup % on costs?
Should markup apply to all third-party costs or only specific ones? Is markup included in quotes upfront, or added later? How do you track profitability on marked-up costs?
Relevant resources
Relevant resources
Applying markups in Streamtime (2 min read)
🔑 How do you track expenses that are approved but not yet received?
Should there be a dedicated status for these? Who is responsible for following up on missing items? Do you need reminders or automated notifications?
🔑 When should costs be sent to Xero – when approved, received, or paid?
Should Xero sync happen at approval, receipt, or payment stage? Who ensures data is accurate before syncing? Should this process be automated?
Relevant resources
Relevant resources
Syncing Streamtime with Xero (3 min read)
Key insights
🔑 What saved views do you need for tracking third-party costs?
Should views be filtered by cost type, status, or supplier? Do project managers need their own dashboards? What insights will help improve cost efficiency?
Relevant resources
Relevant resources
Creating and saving custom list views (8 min read)
Kanban boards to help visualise flows (5 min read)