Who can assign and remove expenses from a Budget?
Any user can assign or remove an expense.
How to assign an expense to a Budget
Card transactions, invoices, reimbursements and purchase orders can be assigned to budgets in two ways:
Automatically
When creating a budget, you can set up auto-assign rules to automatically allocate expenses. These rules can be based on Teams, Users, Cards, Suppliers, Expense accounts, Cost centres, and Cost carriers. If an expense matches the defined criteria—including the transaction date—it is automatically assigned to the relevant budget. Allocations can still be adjusted or removed manually if needed.
Example: Andrea is assigned to the team Marketing in Moss. There is a monthly budget of 50k assigned to the Marketing team.
Andrea makes a payment with one of her Moss cards
Andrea submits an invoice
Andrea submits a reimbursement request
Andrea requests a purchase
All transactions are automatically assigned to the budget "Marketing".
Manually
Allocate by amount:
Login to Moss
Navigate to the transaction you want allocate
Open the transaction screen
In the “Budgets” section click “Allocate budgets”
Set the ‘Allocate by” toggle to “Amount”
Select the budget from the cell dropdown menu
Enter the amount you wish to allocate to this budget (Up to the total of the transaction)
Click “Save”
Allocate by percentage:
Login to Moss
Navigate to the transaction you want allocate
Open the transaction screen
In the “Budgets” section click “Allocate budgets”
Set the ‘Allocate by” toggle to “Percentage”
Select the box “Split allocation equally” (optional), this will split the transaction equally across all selected budgets.
Select the budget from the cell dropdown menu
Enter the percentage of the total you wish to allocate to this budget (Up to 100%)
Click “Save”
How to split expenses across budgets
Split automatically across periods
Transactions can be automatically split across multiple budget periods by defining multiple service or delivery dates and determining the transactions parameters to match a budget’s auto-assign rules:
Card transactions and invoices can be automatically allocated to multiple periods of a recurring budget by selecting 'Prepaid expense’ in the transaction drawer and defining a release plan.
Purchase orders with multiple delivery dates will be assigned to the budget periods that match those dates.
Reimbursements can only be allocated to multiple budget periods manually.
Invoices
Example: The budget ‘Marketing’ is a monthly recurring budget that starts on the 1st of each month. All transactions with cost center ‘Marketing’ should be auto-allocated to this budget.
An invoice for 1.200,00 € for an annual Saas subscription is uploaded to Moss.
The invoice reviewer inputs the service period for the invoice from 1st of January to 31st of December.
Moss generates a release plan for the invoice of 100,00 € on the last day of each month.
The cost center for this invoice is set to ‘Marketing’.
Moss will allocate the 100,00 € of each release to each period (calendar month) of the ‘Marketing’ budget.
Purchase orders
A purchase order will be automatically allocated to multiple periods of a budget if the PO parameters match the auto-assign rules of the budget and if the PO has multiple delivery dates as in the following cases:
A Purchase of Goods with recurring delivery
A Purchase of Goods with different delivery dates per line-item
A Purchase of Services for an ongoing contract (Start and end date)
A Purchase of Services for a multi-milestone project.
Example: A Purchase of Goods for coffee beans has a recurring delivery date on the 5th of each month
The cost of the goods is 120,00 € for each delivery
The PO is assigned to the “Office Management” cost center
A recurring monthly budget “Office Management” includes all transactions with cost center “Office Management”
120,00 € are automatically allocated to each period (calendar month) of the budget “Office Management"
Example: A Purchase of Goods for construction materials includes multiple items to be delivered in two batches.
The first delivery to be done in January with a total cost of 5.000,00 €
The second delivery to be done in February with a total cost of 3.000,00 €
The PO is assigned to the “Materials” cost center
A recurring monthly budget “Materials” includes all transactions with cost center “Materials”
5.000,00 € are automatically allocated to the January period of the “Materials” budget
3.000,00 € are automatically allocated to the February period of the “Materials” budget
Example: A Purchase of Services for a yearly Saas subscription (Ongoing contract)
The Saas subscription runs from 1st of January to the 31st of December with a total cost of 24.000,00 €
A recurring monthly budget “Marketing” includes all transactions with cost center “Marketing”
The PO is assigned to cost center “Marketing”
2.000,00 € are automatically allocated to each monthly period of the “Marketing” budget
Example: A Purchase of Services for a multi-milestone project has two line-items with different delivery dates.
Milestone 1 with delivery date in January and cost 1.000,00 €
Milestone 2 with delivery date in February and cost 2.000,00 €
A recurring monthly budget “Marketing” includes all transactions with cost center “Marketing”
The PO is assigned to Cost Center “Marketing”
1.000,00 € is automatically allocated to the January period of the “Marketing” budget
2.000,00 € are automatically allocated to the February period of the “Marketing” budget
Split manually across periods
Allocate by amount:
Login to Moss
Navigate to the transaction you want allocate
Open the transaction screen
In the “Budgets” section click “Allocate budgets”
Set the ‘Allocate by” toggle to “Amount”
Select the budget and period you wish to allocate to from the cell dropdown menu
Enter the amount you wish to allocate (Up to the total of the transaction)
Click “Add budget” and select the same budget and different period from the dropdown
Enter the amount you wish to allocate to that budget period
Repeat the steps above
Click “Save”
Allocate by percentage:
Login to Moss
Navigate to the transaction you want allocate
Open the transaction screen
In the “Budgets” section click “Allocate budgets”
Set the ‘Allocate by” toggle to “Percentage”
Select the box “Split allocation equally” (optional), this will split the transaction equally across all selected budgets.
Select the budget and period from the cell dropdown menu
Enter the percentage of the total you wish to allocate to this budget (Up to 100%)
Click “Add budget” and select the same budget and different period from the dropdown
Enter the amount you wish to allocate to that budget period
Repeat the steps above
Click “Save”
Split automatically across budgets
Moss supports the allocation of split expenses to multiple budgets. An expense that is split into multiple line-items will be assigned to the budgets that match the parameters set for each line-item. These allocations can be removed or edited manually if required.
Example: An invoice of 1.000 euros is split into two line-items:
Line item A is assigned to Cost centre “Marketing”, and amount 500 euros
500 euros are assigned to Budget “Marketing” (auto-assign rule Cost centre=”Marketing”)
Line item B is assigned to Cost centre “Product” and amount 500 euros
500 euros are assigned to Budget “Product” (auto-assign rule Cost centre=”Product”)
Split manually across budgets
Allocate by amount:
Login to Moss
Navigate to the transaction you want allocate
Open the transaction screen
In the “Budgets” section click “Allocate budgets”
Set the ‘Allocate by” toggle to “Amount”
Select the budget from the cell dropdown menu
Enter the amount you wish to allocate (Up to the total of the transaction)
Click “Add budget” and select a different budget from the dropdown
Enter the amount you wish to allocate to that budget
Repeat the steps above
Click “Save”
Allocate by percentage:
Login to Moss
Navigate to the transaction you want allocate
Open the transaction screen
In the “Budgets” section click “Allocate budgets”
Set the ‘Allocate by” toggle to “Percentage”
Select the box “Split allocation equally” (optional), this will split the transaction equally across all selected budgets.
Select the budget from the cell dropdown menu
Enter the percentage of the total you wish to allocate to this budget (Up to 100%)
Click “Add budget” and select the a different budget from the dropdown
Enter the amount you wish to allocate to that budget
Repeat the steps above
Click “Save”
Resetting automatic allocation of budgets
Moss automatically allocates transactions to budgets using the auto-assign rules defined during budget creation. These rules are triggered whenever an accounting detail on a transaction changes.
For example, if a transaction’s cost centre is updated from Marketing to Product, Moss will automatically reassign the transaction to a budget linked to the Product cost centre.
If an automatically created budget allocation is later edited manually (for example, by adjusting the allocated amount), auto-assignment for that transaction is disabled. From that point on, further changes to the transaction will no longer trigger automatic reallocation.
To undo a manual edit and re-enable auto-assignment, click “Reset allocation” in the Allocate budgets screen.
How to remove an expense from a Budget
If an expense was assigned to a budget and you no longer want it to be deducted from that budget, you can easily remove it.
Option 1: In the budget settings
You will see a 'Spent' and 'Upcoming' section in the budget drawer. There you can remove expenses from the budget, by hovering over an expense and clicking on the 'x'.
Option 2: In the expense or purchase order drawer
You will see a Budgets section in each expense drawer. Click on “Allocate budgets” and delete the desired budget using the “trash can” icon on the row. Alternatively click “Delete all allocations”.