Features / Expense claims
Field workers raise expense claims on the phone with a receipt photo. The photo uploads straight to Azure Blob via a signed URL — the backend never proxies the bytes. Manager approves from the same queue as leave. The approved claim posts as a journal entry into HelloBooks. One app, one audit trail, one finance loop.
Available on the HelloTime mobile app · Approver flow on phone and web · HelloBooks journal posting included.
Four steps. Phone to journal entry. No spreadsheet in between.
Worker raises the claim on the phone
On the mobile app, the field worker picks a category, types an amount, adds a description and — where applicable — flags GST. The same app they already use to clock in handles the claim. No separate reimbursement portal, no email-to-finance, no PDF.
Receipt photo uploads directly to Azure Blob
The phone requests a short-lived SAS URL and uploads the receipt photo straight to Azure Blob storage. The HelloTime backend never proxies the bytes — it issues the signed URL, the phone does the upload. Lower latency on patchy site connectivity and one less hop for the receipt to leak through.
Manager approves from the same queue as leave
The claim lands in the manager's approval queue alongside leave requests and regularizations. One inbox, one decision flow, one notification thread — no separate expense app to remember to open.
Approved expense becomes a journal entry in HelloBooks
The moment a manager approves, HelloTime posts the expense into the HelloBooks Expense module as a journal entry against the right ledger and GST treatment. By the time finance opens the P&L, the cost is already there — no monthly reimbursement spreadsheet, no statement-end reconciliation.
Reimbursable expense capture is one of those workflows that looks easy in a demo and falls apart in the field. HelloTime is engineered around the realities of crews — patchy connectivity, paper receipts, GST capture at the source, advances and reconciliations.
Travel, fuel, lodging, materials, meals, tolls, parking. Admins can rename or add categories per organization. Each category maps to a HelloBooks expense ledger so the journal entry posts to the right line on the P&L.
For Indian organizations, the worker tags the claim with the supplier's GSTIN and the GST rate from the receipt. The journal entry posted to HelloBooks carries the GST detail straight through — input tax credit is claimable without a finance team retyping it later.
The receipt photo, not a typed line, is the auditable artefact. It's stored in Azure Blob with the claim, surfaced in the approver view, and retained per the org's record-retention policy. The typed amount is a hint; the photo is the truth.
Workers can request a petty cash advance before a trip — manager approves the advance, money is paid out, and on return the worker reconciles by raising the actual expense claims against the advance. Net unspent is returned; net overspent is reimbursed. Closed inside the same app, no manual ledger.
Bundled under expenses
A site supervisor asks for ₹5,000 in petty cash before heading to a remote install. The advance is requested, approved and paid out — and then reconciled against the actual receipts they bring back. Petty cash is not its own product; it's a request type on the same expense flow.
Request the advance
Worker raises a petty cash request from the same form they'd use for an expense claim — amount and purpose. Manager approves; cash or transfer is paid out.
Spend in the field
Receipts pile up over a trip — fuel, tolls, lodging, materials. Each one is photographed and added to the open petty cash bundle inside the app.
Reconcile against the advance
On return, the worker submits the bundle. HelloTime nets the receipts against the advance — overspent rolls into an expense claim, unspent is returned to the org's ledger.
Closes inside HelloBooks
The reconciliation posts the right journal entries: a petty-cash payout on issuance, the actual expense lines on close, and a refund line on any unspent balance. No manual journal needed.
The interesting engineering on an expense product isn't the form — it's the receipt photo. HelloTime treats receipts as the primary record, ships them outside the gRPC bytes path, and links the blob back to the claim atomically.
Expense claims are raised, photographed and submitted on the phone. There is no equivalent desktop entry path that the field worker has to wait for finance to set up. Field crews aren't gated on access to a portal.
Receipts go from the phone to Azure Blob via a short-lived SAS URL. The HelloTime API surface returns the URL, validates the manifest after the upload completes, and links the blob to the claim record. Receipts can be tens of MB without saturating the gRPC pipe.
Claim approvals share the queue that already handles leave requests and missed-punch regularizations. Managers approve everything from one screen on the phone in the meeting — not three apps, not three notification streams.
Approved expenses flow into the HelloBooks Expense module via the same TimeX backbone HelloTime payroll runs on. One tenancy. One audit trail. No CSV bridge between attendance and books.
Zoho Expense is a separate app a field worker has to install, log into and remember. HelloTime is the same app they already clock in with — claim-raising is one more tab on a screen they already open.
Zoho Expense is its own approval funnel; leave lives elsewhere, attendance lives elsewhere again. HelloTime puts every people-decision the manager owes into one inbox — fewer dropped approvals, faster reimbursement.
Zoho Expense posts into Zoho Books, or exports a CSV for whatever else you run. HelloTime posts directly into HelloBooks with the right ledger and GST treatment — no export step, no monthly batch.
SAP Concur is engineered around corporate cards, travel agency feeds and multi-step expense policies. HelloTime is engineered around the field worker who paid cash for diesel at a roadside pump. Different shape of expense, different tool.
Concur is bought separately, deployed separately, integrated separately. HelloTime expense claims share the tenancy, the login and the audit trail that payroll already has — one bill, one finance integration, one IT setup.
Reimbursable expense capture is included in HelloTime — there is no separate enterprise SKU. GSTIN, rate and place-of-supply fields ship in the claim form by default for Indian organizations.
Field-service crews, site supervisors, sales reps, multi-branch operations. Expense claims share the same approval queue as leave and regularization, the same Azure Blob backbone as the kiosk and face-rec photo pipeline, and the same HelloBooks journal feed as payroll.
Mileage tracking
Reimburse distance the same way you reimburse a fuel receipt.
GPS geofencing
Per-site fences for the crews raising the claims.
Face-recognition attendance
Same SAS-signed Blob pipeline. Same audit trail.
Construction & site teams
Petty cash, fuel, materials — paid back without spreadsheets.
Facility & cleaning services
Multi-client routes, expenses logged stop by stop.
Security agencies
Rotating posts, advance + reconcile flow built-in.
HelloBooks integration
Approved claims become journal entries on the same day.
One app for the field worker
Attendance, expense, mileage, payslip — one login.
All HelloTime features
Browse the full feature index.
Free forever for 1 user. No credit card. Paid from ₹99/seat, billed monthly.