An expense report is how an employee or contractor asks to be paid back for business costs. List each expense with its date, category, description and amount, tick whether a receipt is attached and whether it's billable to a client, add business miles at your per-mile rate, and subtract any cash advance. The generator totals it by category, shows what the company owes (or what should be returned), and prints a PDF with employee and approver signature lines.
Who is claiming and who approves it, the business purpose, the period it covers, and one line per expense: the date, the category, the merchant and what it was for, and the amount. Mileage goes on as miles times a rate, not as a fuel receipt — claim one or the other for the same trip, not both.
A trip report reads best when the purpose is specific — "Chicago trade show, booth 412" — and the expenses are in date order, which the PDF does for you.
Under an IRS accountable plan, reimbursements aren't taxable income to the employee if the expenses have a business purpose, are substantiated within a reasonable time and any excess advance is returned. IRS Publication 463 expects documentary evidence such as receipts for lodging and for any other expense of $75 or more; the report flags lines without a receipt.
Cash advances are subtracted from the total. If the advance was larger than the expenses, the report shows what the employee owes back — under an accountable plan that excess has to be returned.
An expense report is a claim for one trip or one period, sent to someone who approves it. To keep a running record of your own business spending, use the expense tracker; for the driving itself, the mileage log records each trip the IRS way. Our guide to tracking business expenses covers the habits that make month-end painless.
Billable expenses — costs you'll pass on to a client — can be totalled here and added to the client's invoice.
Other employee paperwork lives alongside it: the time off request form for leave and the employee write-up form for documented warnings.
A form an employee or contractor submits to be reimbursed for business costs they paid themselves, listing each expense with receipts and the total due.
Company policies vary. For tax purposes, IRS Publication 463 expects receipts for lodging and for any expense of $75 or more; for smaller items a record of the date, place, amount and purpose is generally enough.
Enter the business miles and the rate per mile — many employers use the IRS standard rate (70 cents a mile for 2025). The report adds it as its own line.
The report shows the difference as owed back to the company. Under an accountable plan, excess advances have to be returned.
In this browser only. Download the PDF to submit and the CSV for your records.
These templates do the same job as an editable document you can fill in again and again.
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