Getting Started with Expense Management in Relay

Relay’s Expense Management feature helps you keep business spending in check—from collecting receipts to syncing with your accounting software. Whether you're a solo founder or managing a growing team, Relay’s tools evolve with your business to reduce manual work, maintain compliance, and streamline reconciliation.

This guide walks you through how to enable Expense Management and what to expect at each subscription tier.

What You Can Do with Expense Management

All tiers—Starter, Grow, and Scale—offer core expense management features to help your team stay audit-ready and your books up-to-date. Depending on your plan, you’ll unlock advanced tools for automating and customizing your spend controls.

All tiers include:

• Set a receipt policy to determine when receipts are required
• Collect receipts via email, SMS, or mobile upload
• Auto-match receipts to card transactions
• Add categories, vendors, and memos to each expense
• Sync transactions to QuickBooks Online or Xero

Grow and Scale include additional capabilities:

• Custom categorization rules to split and tag transactions with precision
• Spend policies that restrict card usage by vendor or category
• Coming Soon to Scale: spend insights dashboards, out-of-policy request flows, auto-locking cards for missing receipts, and customizable CSV exports

Who Can Use Expense Management?

To set up Expense Management in Relay, you must either be a Team Member with Administrator access or an Advisor granted Super Administrator permissions.

Here’s what each role can do:

• Administrators and Managers: View and manage all transactions, assign receipt managers, and access accounting sync settings
• Cardholders: Upload receipts and respond to receipt requests via SMS or mobile, but cannot access the Expenses dashboard or sync to accounting platforms

For more information on permissions for Expense Management, view our article Assigning Roles and Permissions in Expense Management

How to Enable Expense Management

To enable this feature follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Relay account on your desktop.
2. Go to the Expenses tab
   • From your main navigation menu, select Expenses.
3. Follow the setup steps
   • You’ll be guided through enabling the dashboard and setting initial preferences.
4. Choose a receipt policy, you can change this anytime:
   • No receipts required
   • Receipts required for transactions over $75 (IRS-recommended)
   • Receipts required for all transactions
5. Connect your accounting software
   • Link your Relay account to Xero or QuickBooks Online so transactions sync automatically—complete with receipts, notes, and categorizations.

What Happens Next?

Once Expense Management is enabled:

• Cardholders will receive email or SMS notifications based on your documentation policy
• You’ll see incoming expenses and track receipt status in the Expenses dashboard
• Administrators and managers can nudge team members, review documentation, and delegate tasks to receipt admins

Features by Subscription Tier

Tips for a Smooth Start

• Forward receipts to your unique Relay inbox
  Once enabled, you’ll receive a unique email address for forwarding receipts—visible in the Expenses dashboard.
• Encourage mobile uploads
  Team members can upload receipts via Relay’s mobile app or a secure SMS link.
• Assign a receipt admin
  If someone on your team manages receipts, you can delegate this role so they can track submissions and follow up.

What’s Next?

Now that your Expense Management is up and running, check out these guides to deepen your setup:

• Uploading Receipts to Relay
• Assigning Categories, Vendors, and Notes to Expenses
• Sending Cardholder Nudge
• Connecting to Xero or QuickBooks

Still have questions? Our team is ready to help! Talk to our Customer Experience team