Importing expenses

EMDESK allows tracking and reporting of expenses that have occurred by participants on projects and activities in your workspace. Expenses (costs and time) are created and recorded for a project/activity and participant in the "Resources" section.

If you have already tracked your project expenses outside EMDESK, you can import your expenses records into your EMDESK workspace.

Follow the instructions below on how to import expenses records into an EMDESK workspace.

1

To import expenses records, prepare your data file for importing:

• The file must be in the XLSX format, max 2MB, and have only 1 sheet (find more technical file requirements here)
• The XLSX file must contain required columns with the following headers:

Unit	For cost categories of the type "rate": To import costs, enter EUR (or leave it empty) To import personnel effort, enter PH (person-hour), PD (person-day), or PM (person-month) Note: If not set, default is EUR. For the cost categories of the "fix" type: leave empty
Amount	Depending on the unit you choose the amount can be either costs or personnel effort. Enter the amount in the following number formats: 1000,00; 1000.00; or 1.000,00 (if not set, default is 0.00).
Activity	Linked project or activity for an expense record – enter the exact name or ID of the project or activity as defined in the "Workplan" section of your workspace*, e.g. Task 1.1 or Screening and Analysis
Participant	Linked participant for the expense record – enter the exact ID, short name, or name of the participant as defined in the "Participant" section of your workspace*, e.g. P1, BWE, or Wayne Enterprises
Cost Category	Cost category of the expense record – enter the exact short name of the cost category as defined in your workspace* (read here where to find the overview of your workspace cost categories)
Personnel Cost Rate Name	For the cost categories of the "rate" type: enter the exact name of the personnel cost rate of the linked participant (read here where to find participants' personnel cost rates) For the cost categories of the "fix" type: leave empty
Date	Date for the expense record in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD * value must exist in your workspace, imported record is assigned to the first found item with this value

• The XLSX file can also contain additional information in the following optional columns:

End date	The end of the time range for which the expense incurred
Description	Description for the expense record
Not eligible	When the expense record is not eligible for funding enter: TRUE  When the expense record is eligible for funding enter: FALSE
No overheads	When the indirect cost rate shall not be applied enter: TRUE  When the indirect cost rate shall be applied enter: FALSE
Tags	Add tags for the expense record, separating them with comma without space, e.g. tag1,tag2,tag3 * value must exist in your workspace, imported record is assigned to the first found item with this value

This is an example of how your data file may look like:

Note: Any  hidden rows in the excel file will be recognised for the import and if those rows are not supposed to be imported they must be taken out.

Tip: To download a sample excel file, go to the "Resources" section, click the "Expenses" tab and then click the "+ Import" button at the bottom of the section, and then click the "Sample spreadsheet" button:

2

When the file is ready to be imported, click Resources in Home menu to open the "Resources" section.

3

Click the "Expenses" tab and then click  + Import at the bottom, this will open the "Upload your file" dialogue box.

4

Click on the "Select or drop file" area to upload the file from your computer or simply drag and drop the file into this area.   

Note: The import only supports XLSX files.

5

Map column headers from your file to the expenses properties in the appeared window.

• Some of the columns may be already mapped based on their names, these are marked as green:

• To map the other columns, click the dropdown menu on the right and choose the respective property:

Note: Columns that are not mapped will not be imported into the workspace.

6

Click Import now at the bottom of the window.

• If import is completed without any problems, a green message will appear meaning that all records in your file were successfully recognised:
  
  

  

Note: The imported expenses records are in the currency that is set in your general workspace settings.
Tip: All expenses records from the import have a tag "import_[Date]_[Time]", e.g. "import_2022-10-20_12-10-13". To quickly find and update/delete records from the import, use the tag for filtering the data.
• If import is completed with some problems, an orange message will appear meaning that not all records in your file were recognised (values for properties were not in the correct format or were not able to be matched with existing records) and stating that an error file was downloaded:



The error file contains only those expenses records that were not imported and indicates with a red colour the error values. Edit the incorrect data and repeat the importing process for the new data until all records are accepted.

Note: Read further how to import project activities and events, participants, personnel cost rates, and budget items into an EMDESK workspace.