How the Accounting page works

Overview

Account admins and bookkeepers can expedite accounting workflows by leveraging our direct ERP integrations or by downloading transactions via CSV files.

In the Accounting tab of your dashboard, you can categorize your expenses and export them—along with receipts and memos—directly to your accounting software. Depending on the ERP, this may include journal entries, expenses, or other record types. Alternatively, you can download your data as a CSV to import it manually.

The process can be completed in as little as three steps:

1. Prepare: Fill out required fields in your ERP, such as GL account and department, to categorize your transactions and move them to the Review tab.
2. Review: Make sure your transactions are coded correctly, because once exported, you can only edit them from within your ERP. Select the transactions you want to either push to your ERP as journal entries or download as a CSV, after which you can find them listed individually in your Export tab. Exports will be grouped up on the Export history page.

Export: Audit historic exported transactions that you’ve already exported to your ERP.

Getting started as a first time-user

To set up your accounting tab for the first time, please follow our guidelines below.

Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Accounting > Get started > Continue.

Step 2: Select your integration from the list of options and press Continue. If you don’t see your integration, select I don’t use any of these to use Custom Accounting.

Note: You can access the list of the supported ERPs here. Integrating Brex with your ERP won’t affect your data without your approval.

Step 3: Follow the prompts on the screen to enable token authentication and review your connection.

Step 4: You’ll be redirected to the Integrations page in your dashboard. Confirm that your integration has been successfully connected.

Step 5: Go back to Accounting and check that your fields were successfully imported. Once the importing is complete, you’ll see a green banner at the top of the page:

Step 6: Click Get started at the top of the page and set up your GL mappings.

Step 7: Choose the integration setting GL accounts to determine how your transactions will be posted. These include accounts payable, card collections, or rewards credit, which are configured in integration’s the entity settings.

Step 8: [Optional] You can create mappings and custom rules to help you auto-categorize your transactions. You can also set these later in Accounting > Manage automations. Learn more here.

Importing fields from your ERP

If you connect an ERP, we’ll automatically import your fields. To view fields brought in from your ERP integration or edit any existing custom accounting fields, go to Accounting > Fields library.

You can find more details about accounting and other fields in our fields library here.

Refreshing changes on your ERP

Changes made in your ERP will periodically auto-sync with Brex. If you make any changes to your ERP, such as adding or deleting accounts that you want to sync right away, go to Accounting > ERP settings. Under Integration management, click Refresh.

If the changes to your ERP don’t sync, please contact Support.

Accounting journal

Admins have access and can delegate access to the Brex accounting journal, where you’ll find tools to help you close the books. When you click Accounting from your dashboard, you’ll have access to the page with your transactions (such as card expenses and reimbursements), where you can prepare, review, and export transactions to your ERP.

The accounting journal is optimized for accounts payable (AP) teams with two roles in mind: a preparer and an exporter. Whether you have two separate employees doing this or one person acting as both a preparer and reviewer, you can use our process to guarantee your transactions are coded correctly before exporting.

Accruals for expenses

New for Spring

Save time at month's end by managing your accruals within Brex. Skip the chase for not yet compliant expenses and eliminate spreadsheets and manual journal entry creation. Once accruals are enabled, you can prepare and export card and reimbursement expenses as accruals when they aren’t yet compliant. We’ll post the accrual and create the auto-reversing journal in your ERP automatically. Learn more about it here.

Prepare tab

Accounting teams can use this table to categorize their transactions and get them ready to post in their ERPs. To prepare transactions, go to Accounting > Prepare. In this tab, you can search and filter for transactions. You can edit accounting fields (such as GL account, Department, Location, Class, etc.) by clicking on the field in the dashboard. Clicking on the row or on a non-editable field (such as Posted date, User or Merchant) will open the transaction details sidebar. Here you can categorize it, add a Receipt, access an Audit Log for the transaction, as well as commenting and tagging your teammates.

You can insert values into fields through Brex Assistant. Suggestions are displayed based on similar-pattern recurring transactions.

Bulk actions on transactions

You can bulk edit your transactions in Prepare by following the steps below. Step 1: Select Transactions for Bulk Editing. Begin by selecting the transactions you want to edit. You can either click the checkbox next to each transaction individually or select all visible transactions at once by clicking Select all [#] at the top of the table. The number in brackets reflects how many transactions are currently displayed on the page.

Step 2: Initiate Field Editing. To trigger a bulk edit, you must first edit a field (such as GL Account or Category) for one of the selected transactions. Click on the field you want to change for any of the selected transactions—this will open the field’s editing interface. Step 3: Apply Changes to Selected Transactions. Once you make the change, a prompt will appear asking if you'd like to apply the new value to all selected transactions or only the one you just edited. Choose the option that fits your intent, and the transactions will be updated accordingly.

Sending transactions to review

You can send transactions to review by selecting one or multiple transactions, and clicking Prepare for Review. This moves them to the Review tab. We’ll confirm the number of transactions that were sent successfully.

Review tab

Transactions that you’ve sent to review will show up on the Review tab. These transactions are ready for a final review before exporting. Go to Accounting > Review to view all transactions that are ready for review and export. To export transactions, select one or more transactions and click Export. You have the option to export to your ERP directly or download a CSV. If you choose to export as CSV, you can edit an export template with your desired columns. We remove exported transactions from the Review tab and transfer them to the Exported tab. A banner on the top of the page will indicate the status of your export. You cannot edit transactions in the Review tab. To re-categorize a transaction, select it and click Send back to prepare. After a transaction is sent back to prepare, it will be flagged on the Prepare tab with a Sent back for review flag. You can filter these using the Sent back for review option in the Accounting flag filter.

Exported tab

The Exported tab displays all transactions exported from Brex. Here, you’ll see all the individual transactions that have been successfully exported. You can click on any of them to view the transaction details. You can’t edit accounting fields for exported transactions, but you can still add documentation (memos, receipts) to exported transactions. Go to the Accounting > Export history page to see the different groups of transactions exported in the past, Note: We do not sync changes made to transactions in the Exported tab with your ERP. You must make these edits manually in your ERP.

Downloading transactions without exporting

Admins can download transactions from the accounting journal as a .csv, .xlsx, or .txt file by following the steps below. Step 1: Go to Accounting and choose one of the existing tabs: Prepare, Review, or Exported. Step 2: Select the set of transactions you want to download and click the download icon on the top right of the table:

Step 3: Choose the format that you want and click Download.

Customizing your accounting experience

Within the Accounting Journal, you can customize your experience using any of the following options.

Rows per page

At the bottom right of the table, you can click on the tab to choose the number of records to be displayed per page from the available options.

Quick filters

At the top left of the table, we have some suggested filter options that help visualize common situations for various users.

Custom filters

You can combine more than one criterion to help locate and categorize records. To remove a filter individually, click on the 'x' next to it, or click on Clear filters to remove all active filters.

You’ll find filters related to the status of the transaction, such as:

• Accounting flag: Common characteristics of a transaction that might require review

• Compliance flag: Based on documentation attached to a transaction

• You can filter your transactions to identify those that are compliant (approved and have documentation completed), or non-compliant (require documentation before they are categorized and exported).

Visible columns and display options

Click the gear icon in the top right of the table to customize the column settings. Here, you can choose which columns will be displayed (by checking the checkbox to the right of each one) and customize the order in which they appear in the table (by dragging the fields when clicking and holding on the dots to the left of the name of each column). You can also pin columns to the left of your screen by dragging a column all the way up to Pinned.

You can choose the best display format by clicking Display options or the gear icon.

ERP posting date

Users can use the ERP posting date column to choose the date on which a given transaction will be booked to your ERPs. You can choose to display this column in the Accounting Journal by clicking on the gear icon on the top right of the table and selecting the corresponding toggle.

Export history

Export history displays the history of all attempts to send transactions, regardless of whether they were successful or failed to synchronize. To access this information go to Accounting > Export history. Here, You can see the list of exports made and their status.

Click a record to open the side menu to see more information.

Sending exported transactions to prepare

Account admins can re-export transactions that were previously exported, by sending them back to your accounting journal. We won’t delete exported entries from your ERP. Step 1: Go to Accounting > Export history, and click on an export row with a green Exported status that you want to re-categorize and re-export. Step 2: In the details window, click Send back to transactions to prepare.

Step 3: Carefully read the warning sign and click Send back to prepare. The transactions that comprised this export will now appear on the Prepare tab of your accounting journal.

Step 4: The transactions you sent back will have a Previously exported tag to reduce the risk of posting duplicate entries on your ERP.