Internal Expenses

Internal expenses are the costs you incur without a supplier invoice — mileage to a wedding shoot, per-diems on a destination assignment, cash receipts you can’t get a proper bill for. The expenses ledger lives alongside the Incoming invoices inbox and feeds the same tax report + Treuhänder export.

Rates and treatments are guidance, not advice. The seeded CHF 0.70/km mileage rate and per-diem defaults are starting points — your actual deductible rate depends on your jurisdiction, your business type, and your Treuhänder’s view. Verify before claiming on your tax return.

Prerequisites

Feature flag: expenses enabled in Settings → Features. The parent accounting flag must also be on.
Settings → Accounting configured — at minimum the mileage and per-diem rates (defaults seed CHF 0.70/km and CHF 0.00 per diem).

Where to find it

/admin/accounting/expenses — the Internal expenses ledger page.

Expense kinds

Three flavours, distinguished by the kind column:

Kind	What it captures	How the amount is computed
`amount`	A cash receipt with a fixed total	Enter the amount directly
`mileage`	Kilometres driven for business	`quantity` (km) × `rate_minor` (CHF/km — snapshotted from settings at entry time)
`per_diem`	Days on assignment	`quantity` (days) × `rate_minor` (CHF/day)

The km and per-diem rates are snapshotted at entry time into rate_minor so a later rate-change in settings doesn’t retroactively rewrite historical expense totals.

Booking targets

Every expense is booked to one of:

An event (event_id set) — appears on that event / customer in cost reports
The company (event_id NULL) — pure overhead, no customer attribution

Booking to an event is what enables re-billing the customer through the event’s CRM chain — see the same workflow as incoming invoices.

Proof file

Each expense can carry a proof_file_path — a receipt photo, screenshot of the bank charge, mileage record. When accounting_require_proof is enabled in Settings → Accounting, the entry form refuses to save without one.

When to require proof. Your jurisdiction usually mandates documentary evidence for cash expenses over a certain threshold (CHF 200 in many CH cases). The require_proof toggle is a blunt all-or-nothing — finer-grained “require for amounts > X” is in the project backlog.

Re-billing an expense

When the expense is booked to an event, you can mark it for re-bill the same way as an incoming invoice — appears as a line item on a draft customer invoice (with optional markup), and the expense row gets linked back via billed_invoice_id + billed_invoice_line_item_id.

This is how mileage to a customer’s wedding shoot flows back onto their invoice without you re-entering it manually.

Tax treatment

Internal expenses default to disposition='eigener_aufwand' (your company’s cost). The tax_treatment defaults to domestic — input VAT reclaimable when you’re VAT-registered. Override per-entry for unusual cases (e.g. a per-diem in EU on a reverse_charge_service treatment).

What’s NOT in scope

No automatic OCR of cash receipts — you enter amounts manually. Receipt → expense automation is in the project backlog but not shipped.
No mileage tracking — you tell picpeak how many kilometres; it doesn’t read your GPS / car logger.
No multi-currency rate snapshots beyond what business_profile.default_currency provides — mileage rates assume CHF.

Permissions

accounting.view — see the ledger, open detail views
accounting.manage — create / edit / delete expense entries, attach proofs, re-bill to clients

Both granted to super_admin and admin by default.