Categorizing Expenses with Vendors and Notes

Accurate expense coding is key to staying organized, making reconciliation easy, and ensuring your accounting software reflects your business reality. With Relay, you can quickly assign categories, vendors, and notes to each transaction — either manually or as part of a review process before syncing.

This article walks through how to categorize expenses in Relay and shares tips for staying consistent and audit-ready.

To assign a category or vendor to an expense in Relay you'll need to use our QuickBooks or Xero integration—their platform lets you create specific categories/vendors which sync directly into Relay.

If you do not use any accounting software-that’s no problem! You can still add memos or notes into each expense for better clarity.

This process, known as expense coding, helps keep your records organized and accurate. In this article we’ll walk you through how to categorize expenses in Relay and offer tips to stay consistent and audit-ready.

What Is Expense Coding?

Each transaction in Relay can be assigned:

A category (e.g., Office Supplies, Meals & Entertainment)
A vendor (e.g., Amazon, Delta Airlines)
A memo (e.g., “Team lunch for offsite”)

These fields flow directly into your accounting software if you’ve connected Relay to QuickBooks Online or Xero.

Think of expense categorization as the connective tissue between your team’s spending and your financial records.

Where Do Categories and Vendors Come From?

If you’ve connected QuickBooks or Xero, Relay pulls in your Chart of Accounts and Vendor list.

Changes you make in your accounting platform (like renaming or adding a category) will sync back into Relay the next time you connect. Please note: this is the only way to create a category or a vendor at this time.

How to Categorize Expenses in Relay

Sign in to your Relay account on your desktop.
Go to the Expenses tab
In the Transactions view, find the row for the transaction you want to edit
Click into the Category or Vendor column.
Select or type your entry
Hit Enter or click away to save

You can bulk edit multiple transactions by selecting checkboxes.

How to add a Note to an Expense

Sign in to your Relay account on your desktop.
Go to the Expenses tab
In the Transactions view, find the row for the transaction you want to edit
Click on the Note for the selected transaction.
Enter any specific/related details.

Please note: This can only be completed on a desktop/computer.

When to Use Notes

Notes are optional, but super helpful when:

The transaction might raise questions later (e.g., “Why did we spend $200 at Target?”)
You want to leave a note for your bookkeeper
A single vendor serves multiple purposes (e.g., “Hotel stay for client meeting”)

Notes do not need to be formal — just enough to give context.

Tips for Keeping Things Organized

Be consistent with naming conventions (e.g., don’t alternate between “Meals” and “Food”)
Review frequently — a weekly or monthly pass can help catch miscodes
Use automation rules to reduce manual work

What If I Need to Split a Transaction?

No problem — Relay supports split coding. Learn more in Splitting Transactions for Multiple Expense Categories.

What’s Next?

Once your transactions are categorized: