When I enter an expense in the expense claim tab, on my summary, certain expenses show as a negative (i.e. -$100 for rent) and certain expenses aren’t a negative (i.e. $50 for software).
Shouldn’t all expenses be as a minus (such as the example above with the rent), how do I fix this?
First, the only things you should enter under Expense Claims are company expenses you paid for with personal funds instead of from a company bank or cash account.
When you enter them, you do so as a positive number. Manager knows, because Expense Claims is a liability account, to treat the amount as a credit. When you look at the Expense Claims register, you should see only positive amounts for the payments. Negative amounts should only show for reimbursements or transfers to equity.
If expenses like rent and software are showing as both positive and negative, that means you entered the negative ones incorrectly. Go back to those transactions and figure out why. You probably put them in as negative.
In double-entry accounting it is better not to think in terms of positive and negative, but to get familiar with debits and credits and understand which is applied, depending on the category of account (asset, liability, equity, income, or expense).
Expense claims will let you charge to both Expense Accounts and Revenue accounts. My bet is that you charged the claim to a revenue account instead of an expense account.
On the Summary Revenue accounts appear in the Revenue Section, Expenses in the expenses. Both are shown normally as posititve numbers. Remember that revenue is normally a Credit entry and expense a Debit. So, lets say you entered an expense report against rent and used the RENT INCOME account instead of rent expense, then that DEBIT to to the REVENUE account will indeed show as a NEGATIVE revenue (i.e. expense) on the summary.
In Summary Make sure you charged your rent expense to your rent EXPENSE account and not your rental income account.
Hope that helps.
If expense claims is only for personal funds used for business transaction, where would I record expenses like rent, software, etc. paid for with petty cash or business credit card?
Use the Spend Money button in either a bank or cash account. It sounds like you might benefit from reviewing the various Guides to see how these ordinary transactions are designed to happen in Manager. If you haven’t read them, I strongly recommend it. Click here: Guides | Manager