Written by Maryam Ajorloo, CPA · Reviewed by Behdad Karimi Dermeni, CPA
An expense report template is a ready-made form for listing business costs you paid out of pocket, with the date, vendor, amount, category and business purpose of each, so the business can pay you back and record the expense correctly. A good one also totals mileage, subtracts any cash advance, and shows the final amount owed.
If your current system is a wallet full of receipts, a camera roll full of more receipts and a quiet hope that the business will remember it owes you $412.60 for a flight, you are not alone. (The business will not remember. Businesses are famously bad at that.) This free expense report template gives every out-of-pocket cost a proper home: an Excel workbook built by CPAs for American small businesses, with a mileage log that handles the 2026 rate change, red flags for missing receipts, and an optional expense tracker for the whole year.
No form, no email address, no sales call. And if you would rather never type a receipt into a cell again, Smart Shoebox reads your receipts and matches them to your bank transactions for you. We will come back to that.
Download the free expense report template
Download the expense report template (Excel, free, no sign-up)
It opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers. Cream cells are for you to type in; grey cells calculate on their own. Inside you get eight tabs:
How to use: short instructions, so you can fill it in without this page open.
Setup: your business name, your name, your approver, the IRS mileage rate, and two house rules (the receipt threshold and how many days people have to submit).
Expense Report: one report per trip or per month. Each line gets a date, vendor, business purpose, category, payment method, amount and a receipt check. The bottom of the form works out what the business owes you.
Mileage: business trips in your own car. The rate fills in by trip date, so a mid-year IRS change is handled, and the total flows into the report automatically.
Expense Tracker: an optional running log for the year, with a column that tells you which expenses still need to be paid back.
Tracker Summary: totals by category and by month, plus one number worth watching: what you paid personally that has not been reimbursed yet.
Categories: the drop-down list, with a plain-English note on each one.
Example: a finished report for XYZ Company (example), so you can see every cell filled in before you start your own.
What is an expense report?
An expense report is the document that turns "I paid for that" into "the business paid me back for that." You list each business cost you covered personally, attach the receipts, and send it to whoever approves spending. Once it is approved, the business reimburses you and records each cost as a business expense.
Here is the rule of thumb behind every expense report that holds up: each line should answer four questions: how much, when, where, and what it was for the business. Those are the same four facts the IRS asks you to be able to prove for a business expense, which is why a vague line like "Dinner, $96" is the weakest line on any report. "Dinner with client, project scope discussed, $96.40" is the strongest.
An expense tracker template is related but does a different job. A tracker is a running log of everything you spend, kept as you go. An expense report is a formal request for repayment covering a set period or trip. Most people need both: the tracker so nothing gets lost during the month, and the report so they actually get the money back. That is why this workbook has both.
What to include in an expense report
Whether you use this template, an expense reimbursement form from your bank or a sheet you build yourself, every business expense report template needs these fields:
Who and when. Your name, the business name, the period the report covers, and the date you submit it. The submission date matters more than people think (more on that below).
A date for every expense. The date you paid, not the date you remembered.
The vendor. The airline, hotel, restaurant or store.
The business purpose. One plain sentence. "Flight to Chicago for client kickoff" beats "Travel."
A category. Airfare, lodging, meals, ground transportation and so on. Categories are what let the expense flow into your books and, eventually, onto the right line of your tax return. Our guide to business expense categories covers which ones you actually need.
How you paid. Personal card, cash or a company card. Anything already charged to the business card is not reimbursed to you, but it still belongs on the report so the receipt is accounted for.
The amount and the receipt. The amount you actually paid, with a receipt attached where one is required.
Mileage, advances and the bottom line. Personal-car miles at the mileage rate, minus any cash advance you received, equals what the business owes you (or what you hand back).
Signatures. Yours, and the approver's.
How to fill out an expense report in 7 steps
Fill in the Setup tab once. Enter the business name, your name and your approver. Type in the IRS standard mileage rate for the dates of your trips. For 2026 that is 72.5 cents a mile through June 30 and 76 cents from July 1, so the template has room for a second rate and its start date.
Start a report. Give it a number, set the period it covers (one trip or one month), and enter today's date as the date submitted.
Add one row per receipt. Date, vendor, business purpose, category, how you paid and the amount. Write the purpose as if you were explaining it to someone who was not there, because one day you might be.
Mark whether you have the receipt. A red cell means a receipt is generally expected for that line: all lodging, plus anything at or above your threshold ($75 by default).
Log any personal-car trips on the Mileage tab. Date, from, to, purpose and miles. The rate and amount fill in on their own.
Enter any cash advance. The bottom line now shows exactly what the business owes you, or what you return.
Attach the receipts, sign it and send it within 60 days. The Days old column turns orange on anything older than the limit you set, which is your cue to stop sitting on reports.
The IRS rules that keep a reimbursement tax-free
This is the part most expense report templates skip, and it is the part that decides whether a reimbursement is just repayment or quietly becomes taxable pay.
If you are an employee of the business, and that includes an S corporation owner on payroll, reimbursements paid under an accountable plan are not wages. No income tax withholding, no payroll taxes, nothing on the W-2. Reimbursements paid without one are treated as wages and reported in box 1 of the W-2, which is a fairly expensive way to be paid back for a hotel.
The 3 requirements of an accountable plan
According to IRS Publication 463, a reimbursement arrangement is an accountable plan when it meets all three of these:
Business connection. The expense was paid or incurred while doing your job for the business.
Adequate accounting. You account for the expense to the business within a reasonable time, which is exactly what a completed expense report with receipts does.
Return of any excess. If you received an advance larger than what you spent, you give back the difference within a reasonable time.
Many small businesses put this in a short written policy so everyone knows the rules. One page is plenty.
The 60-day and 120-day clocks
"Reasonable time" sounds pleasantly vague. The IRS gives a safe harbor that takes the guesswork out: an advance paid within 30 days before the expense, an accounting within 60 days after the expense was paid or incurred, and any excess returned within 120 days. That is why the template's default deadline is 60 days.
An alternative is the periodic statement method: the business sends you a statement at least quarterly listing what you still need to account for or return, and you have 120 days after receiving it to do so. Either way, the habit is the same. Submit monthly and you will never get close to the line.
Receipts: always for lodging, and at $75 and up
You need to be able to show the amount, the date, the place and the business purpose of each expense. For the receipt itself, the IRS generally requires documentary evidence for all lodging, and for any other expense of $75 or more. Below $75, a written record with those details can be enough. (The IRS is relaxed about fonts and formatting. It is not relaxed about the hotel folio.)
Digital records count. Publication 463 says a record prepared on a computer is considered an adequate record, so a photo or PDF of a receipt kept alongside the report is fine.
Mileage: the 2026 rate changed mid-year
When the business reimburses you at the IRS standard mileage rate, you do not have to prove what the car actually cost to run. You do still have to log the date, destination, business purpose and miles for each trip. The 2026 business rate is 72.5 cents a mile from January 1 to June 30, 2026, and 76 cents from July 1 to December 31, 2026, after a rare mid-year increase. You can confirm the current figure on the IRS standard mileage rates page.
That timing detail is exactly the kind of thing a spreadsheet gets wrong when one rate is hard-coded for the year. It is also the kind of record-keeping that shrinks when your books run themselves: ReInvestWealth's AI Bookkeeper categorizes the transactions from your connected business accounts as they come in, and Smart Shoebox matches the receipts, so most of the proof behind each expense is already in place before you open a report.
Who needs an expense report (and who just records the expense)
Expense reports are not only for big companies with a finance team. Here is how they fit the most common small business setups:
S corporation owners: you are an employee of your own company, so an expense report under an accountable plan is the clean way to get business costs you paid personally back from the business without it counting as wages. Our guide to how to pay yourself as an LLC or S corp owner covers the salary side.
Employees: a W-2 employee generally cannot deduct unreimbursed work expenses on a federal return, so if the business does not reimburse it, nobody gets the deduction. A good expense report process fixes that for both sides.
Sole proprietors and single-member LLCs: the business and the owner are the same taxpayer, so there is no wage question. The business deducts the expense on Schedule C, and moving money from the business account back to you is neither income nor an expense (you are settling up for a cost you covered, which is different from taking an owner's draw). An expense report is still the tidiest way to document what you paid personally.
Partnerships and multi-member LLCs: partner reimbursements follow their own rules, often set by the partnership agreement. Ask your accountant how yours handles them.
One thing we hear often from customers: a business cost paid on a personal card is one of the easiest ways for an expense to go missing. It never shows up in the business bank feed, so it never gets recorded, and the deduction quietly disappears. An expense report, or at least a line in the tracker, is what keeps it on the books.
Using the expense tracker template between reports
The report is for getting paid back. The tracker is for not forgetting. Log each expense on the Expense Tracker tab the day it happens, mark whether it is reimbursable, and add the report number once it has been paid back. Any reimbursable line with no report number turns orange, and the Tracker Summary shows the running total you are still owed.
If you also want a full income and expense ledger for the business, not just out-of-pocket costs, our free small business bookkeeping template does that job and sorts everything by Schedule C line.
5 expense report mistakes that cost you money
Leaving out the business purpose. A line with no purpose is a line that cannot be defended. Ten extra words now saves an awkward conversation later.
Claiming mileage and fuel for the same trip. The mileage rate already covers gas, wear and insurance. Pick one method per vehicle, not both.
Reimbursing company-card charges. If the business card paid, the business already paid. List it for the receipt, but it does not go into the amount owed. The template handles this automatically.
Sitting on reports for months. Past the 60-day safe harbor, a reimbursement can start to look like wages. Monthly is the easy habit.
Cutting meals to 50% on the report. Reimburse the full business meal. The 50% limit applies to what the business can deduct on its tax return, not to what it pays you back.
Practical tips for expense reports that take minutes, not evenings
Photograph receipts the moment you get them. A receipt in your camera roll beats a receipt in your coat pocket that went through the wash.
Use one card for business spending. Every business charge on one card means fewer out-of-pocket costs to report in the first place, and a cleaner trail for the ones you do.
Let software do the matching. With ReInvestWealth, you upload or email receipts to Smart Shoebox (your receipt inbox), the AI reads them and matches each one to its bank transaction, so the record behind every expense is already in place.
Frequently asked questions
What is an expense report?
An expense report is a form that lists business costs you paid personally, with the date, vendor, amount, category and business purpose of each, plus the receipts. You submit it to the business for approval, the business reimburses you, and the costs are recorded as business expenses in the books.
Are expense reimbursements taxable income?
Not when they are paid under an accountable plan. If the expense had a business connection, you accounted for it within a reasonable time (60 days under the IRS safe harbor) and you returned any excess advance, the reimbursement is not wages. Reimbursements paid without those conditions are treated as wages and reported on your W-2.
Are original receipts required for an expense report?
You need documentary evidence for all lodging and for any other expense of $75 or more, and you need to be able to show the amount, date, place and business purpose of every expense. The IRS accepts records kept on a computer, so a clear photo or PDF of the receipt is generally fine. Your business can set a stricter policy.
Can a business owner reimburse themselves with an expense report?
Yes. An S corporation owner who is on payroll can be reimbursed under the company's accountable plan, just like any other employee, and the reimbursement is not wages. A sole proprietor or single-member LLC owner can repay themselves from the business account too, though for tax purposes it is simply a business expense the owner paid personally.
How often should you submit an expense report?
Monthly is the best habit, and per trip works well if you travel. Either way, stay inside 60 days from the date of each expense, which is the IRS safe harbor for accounting under an accountable plan. Short, regular reports are also far easier to approve than one giant stack in December.
Stop chasing receipts, start running the business
You could keep a camera roll of receipts and an expense report you fill in "later." Or you could connect your bank, forward your receipts to Smart Shoebox, and let the AI match and categorize everything as it happens. One of these options involves fewer Sunday evenings.
Over 3,000 entrepreneurs already run their books on ReInvestWealth, which for you means the system was built around how small businesses actually spend, not around accounting theory. CPA-level clean books, built by CPAs. Start free for 30 days.
A note from our CPAs: This guide is educational and covers the general rules for American small businesses and their owners. Tax situations vary, so for advice on your specific circumstances, talk to your accountant. (If they use ReInvestWealth, they'll already have clean books to work from.)
Written by Maryam Ajorloo, CPA
Maryam Ajorloo is the co-founder of ReInvestWealth and a CPA who specializes in small business tax and everyday bookkeeping. She helps entrepreneurs keep clean, audit-ready books and make sense of write-offs, filing deadlines, and the numbers behind their business. Read more · Connect on LinkedIn
Reviewed by Behdad Karimi Dermeni, CPA
Co-founder of ReInvestWealth and a founding community builder at Stripe. Behdad built ReInvestWealth to give smart, busy entrepreneurs CPA-level accounting without the CPA-level price tag. Read more · Connect on LinkedIn
