• 14/10/2026
  • 6 minutter at læse

Posting expenses to an item instead of a G/L account

In Continia Expense Management, each expense type's posting setup determines where its expenses are posted in Business Central. By default, this is a G/L account, but the Posting Account Type field also supports posting to an inventory Item. This is relevant when an expense represents a purchase of something your company tracks as inventory (for example, when an employee uses a corporate card to buy stock items, materials, or goods that should flow into item costing alongside purchase order receipts).

However, item posting comes with trade-offs that affect the Expense Management setup, not just the expense type that you configure. This article describes those consequences, the setup steps, and what happens at posting.

Changes to be aware of

To post expenses to an item, the Expense Management setup must be reconfigured to post documents as purchase invoices rather than as general journal entries. This has the following effects:

  • You can no longer use Expense Report or settlements.
  • Post at Import can no longer be enabled for card transactions.
  • All documents, including: expenses, mileages, and per diems, are posted as purchase invoices instead of to the general journal.
  • Each posted document creates a purchase invoice with the status Open. You must then approve and post each invoice manually through the standard Business Central workflow.
  • For cash or privately paid expenses, the invoice is created on the vendor assigned to the expense user.
  • For card expenses, the invoice is created on the vendor assigned to the relevant payment type.

If any of these constraints aren't compatible with your processes, item posting isn't the right choice. The setup is the same as the one described in Use a vendor as a posting account type on card transactions – the only difference is that the expense type's posting account points to an item instead of a vendor or G/L account.

Set up item posting

The setup involves three changes: disabling the report at the Expense Management level, adjusting the relevant payment type for card transactions, and configuring the expense type itself to post as an item.

Disable the report

To disable the expense report:

  1. Search () for and select Setup (Continia Expense Management).
  2. Under General > Modules, click in the Expense Report field.
  3. In Expense Report Setup > General > in the Enable Expense Report field, choose Disabled.

The Purchase Document Posting section becomes visible and you can set how the Expense Posting field controls how expenses are posted; the default value is Preferable Purchase Invoice.

Adjust the payment type

The second change in the item posting setup is to adjust the relevant payment type for card transactions. If credit card transactions are in scope, the payment type used for them must post against a vendor rather than a bank account.

To adjust the payment type used for card transactions:

  1. Search () for and select Payment Types (Continia Expense Management).
  2. Open the payment type used for company card transactions.
  3. Under Posting > Posting Account in the Type field, select Vendor.
  4. In the No. field, select the appropriate vendor – typically the bank or card issuer.

Configure the expense type

The last change in the setup is to configure the expense type itself to post as an item.

To configure the expense type:

  1. Search () for and select Expense Types (Continia Expense Management).
  2. Select the expense type you want to post to an item, then on the action bar, click Posting Setup. The Expense Posting Setup page opens.
  3. On the posting setup line, in the Posting Account Type field, select Item.
  4. In the Posting Account No. field, enter the item number.

Repeat the steps above for any other expense types that you want to post to items.

What happens at posting

When an expense is synchronized to Business Central, approved, and posted, the following occurs:

  • A purchase invoice is created with the status Open, with a single line of type Item referencing the item configured on the expense type. The quantity is one, using the item's default unit of measure.
  • For a cash or privately paid expense, the invoice is created for the expense user's vendor.
  • For an expense paid with a credit card, the invoice is created for the vendor assigned to the payment type.

To complete the posting, open the invoice, review it, and post it through the standard Business Central purchase invoice workflow..

Use a vendor as posting account type on card transactions
Setting up expense types
Setting up payment types
Posting expenses