With brightwheel's Expense Tracking feature, administrators can quickly populate, categorize, and report on all transactions for their business. This feature will allow you to:

Automatically track expenses, directly in brightwheel — no more paper receipts
Customize your chart of accounts and tie them to charges and expenses so you can visualize your profit and loss
Make tax time a breeze

Import transactions

To begin using brightwheel's Expense Tracking platform, you'll first need to import expense transactions by connecting a bank account or adding a custom source.

🎥 Watch our Onboarding Video

Connect a bank account

When a bank account is connected, income or expense transactions up to the last year will be imported into brightwheel for you to categorize and edit as needed. Only U.S. bank accounts can be connected at this time.

Log into brightwheel on the web
Select Expenses from the purple sidebar
Click into the Sources tab
Click the purple +Add bank account
Find your financial institution via Plaid and select the desired account
(Optional) Once added, click Add nickname from the bank account tile to name the connected account
Repeat for each account you wish to connect

ℹ️ It can take up to 10 minutes to populate historical transactions once you connect a bank account.

Add a custom source

Providers can add a custom expense or income source to manually track non-bank account related transactions (E.g. Cash, Giftcards, Donations).

Log into brightwheel on the web
Select Expenses from the sidebar
Click the Sources tab
Click the button +Add custom source
Enter the Name & Description of the source
Click Save

Manually add transactions

Providers can add manually add income or expense transactions if they are not automatically populated. Custom sources (E.g. Cash) must be added manually.

Log into brightwheel on the web
Select Expenses from the sidebar
Click the Transactions tab
Select + Create Transactions
Input information about the transaction
Choose the transaction Category and add any custom notes
Click Save

💡The Type field for a transaction shows if a transaction is Income, Expense, or Transfer. For manually added transactions, the Type is determined by the Category selected.

Customize your expense settings

Enable shared business and personal expenses

If you have expenses shared between business and personal use (e.g., utilities for an in-home program) or use a connected bank account for both, you can apply a "business expense %" to transactions. Brightwheel records only the business portion for accurate expense reports.

For example, you can mark 50% of a utility bill as business-related, and only that amount will count toward your expenses. Follow these steps to enable expense sharing, then you can take steps to separate personal and business expenses.

Log into brightwheel on the web
Select Expenses from the purple sidebar
Click the Settings tab
In the Shared expenses box, turn on the setting

Customize your fiscal year for fast reporting

If your program follows a fiscal year different from the calendar year, you can set a custom fiscal year start date. Doing so will ensure all reports automatically reflect your set fiscal year when reporting on your expenses or profit.