Importing expenses
If you have recorded project costs outside EMDESK, for example in your accounting system, you can import them into Expenses. Each row becomes one expense for an activity, a participant and a cost category. The general rules for files, mapping and error files are described in Importing into EMDESK.
💡 Note:
- You need Manage rights to Expenses and at least Read rights to the activities and participants in the file (see Roles and access rights).
- Expenses can only be imported while reporting is on and the active version is selected.
- Activities, participants and cost categories must already exist. For personnel costs, the participants also need personnel cost rates that are enabled for expenses.
Contents
Columns of the file
These columns are required:
| Date | The date of the expense, e.g. 2026-07-14. |
| Activity | The project or activity: ID, short name or name, e.g. Task 1.1 or WP 3. |
| Participant | ID, short name or name, e.g. P1, AUR or Aurelian University. |
| Cost Category | The name of a cost category of your workspace, e.g. Personnel, Travel or Equipment. |
| Amount | The costs in the currency of the workspace, e.g. 820.50. For personnel costs you can enter the effort instead and set the Unit, e.g. 64 with unit PH. |
| Personnel Cost Rate Name | Personnel costs: the name of a personnel cost rate of this participant, e.g. Senior researcher. The rate must be enabled for expenses and valid on the date of the expense. All other cost categories: leave empty. This column must be in the file; it cannot be replaced by a default value. |
These columns are optional:
| Unit | Personnel costs only: PM (person-months), PD (person-days) or PH (person-hours) if the amount is an effort. EMDESK then calculates the costs from the personnel cost rate. If empty, the amount is taken as costs and EMDESK calculates the effort. Leave empty for all other cost categories. |
| End Date (optional) | The end of the period the expense covers, e.g. 2026-07-31. |
| Description | The description of the expense. |
| No overheads | yes, true, 1 or x: no indirect costs are calculated for this expense. Anything else, or empty: indirect costs are calculated. |
| Not eligible | yes, true, 1 or x: the expense is not eligible for funding. Anything else, or empty: it is eligible. |
| Tags | Tags, separated by commas, e.g. meeting,receipt. |
Imported expenses are in the currency of the workspace and are not assigned to a report. You can assign them to a report afterwards, for example with bulk editing.
Importing
- Open Expenses, click the arrow next to Add Expense at the top right and select Import.
- If your workspace contains several projects, choose the project and click Next.
- Click Select or drop file and choose your file.
- Check the mapping: columns with matching headers are mapped automatically (green). Map other columns with the dropdown on the right; columns without a property are not imported.
- Click Import now. If a required column is missing, click Next first and enter a default value for it, e.g. the same date for all rows.
When the import is finished, the Expenses table shows only the expenses you just imported, with the message Import completed. Remove the filter to see all expenses again; later you can find the import with the Imported on filter. If some rows could not be imported, EMDESK downloads an error file with the wrong values marked red; see Result and error file.
Read further how to import activities and events, participants, personnel cost rates and budget.