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Set up categories in your organization

How do I create a category? How do I restrict employees to use only certain categories? How do I disable a category?

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Written by Meeha Tewari
Updated over a week ago

Setting up categories is essential to allow employees to code expenses based on your general ledger. You can set up a list of categories for your organization and employees can choose the correct category from this list while coding any expense.

Add categories for your organization

You can add the list of categories for your organization in Admin Settings > Organization > Categories. Employees can choose the correct category from this list of categories while coding an expense form. You can add categories in the following way:

Add a single category

  1. Click on Add Category.

  2. Fill in the the details of the category you want to add.

  3. After filling all the mandatory fields, click on Add Category to confirm the action.

Add categories in bulk

  1. Click on the dropdown next to Add Category. Click on Bulk Add Categories.

  2. Click on Download Template. This will download an Excel file to your computer.

  3. Fill in the template with the categories' details. Upload the file on the same screen by clicking on Upload File.

Import categories from your accounting software

Fyle offers 2-way integrations with most popular accounting software including Quickbooks Online, Sage Intacct, Netsuite and Xero. You can automatically import categories from any of these accounting software using the integration with Fyle.

Add sub categories for your organization

For any category in your organization, you can add multiple sub categories under it. Sub categories can be set up, used, disabled and deleted in the same way as categories.

To create a sub category, click on Add Sub Category on the parent category.

Sub categories appear along with the parent category name in the expense form. For example, for category Travel and sub category Meals, your employees will see Travel/Meals as an option in the categories field while filling an expense form.

Disable or delete categories for your organization

If you are no longer using a category, you can disable or delete it from your organization.

  1. If a category has never been used in an expense, you can select it and click on Delete to delete it. This will completely remove the category from your organization.

  2. If a category has been used in any expense, you can select it and click on Disable to disable it. This will remove the category from the enabled categories list in your organization.

You can also select multiple categories to disable or delete them in bulk.

For more information on how to delete unused categories and why some categories cannot be deleted, click here.

Restrict allowed categories for different employees

You can enable restrictions to allow each employee to use different lists of categories for their expenses. For example, you can restrict John to be able to use categories Airlines, Per Diem and Office Supplies for his expenses, and Ginny to use categories Office Supplies, Accounting Software and Food for her expenses.

Enabling these restrictions ensures that each employee sees only the relevant categories for them and improves their efficiency in correctly coding expenses.

You can enable or disable restrictions on allowed categories for different employees using the Restrict employees to their own categories toggle.

  • When enabled, you can select the allowed categories for each employee from the Manage Employees page. While coding expenses, each employee will only be able to choose categories from the categories allowed for them.

  • When disabled, each employee will be able to see all categories from your organization while coding expenses.

Find a category using search and filters

Fyle makes it easy to find any category in your long list of categories in many ways:

Toggle between enabled and disabled categories

By default, Fyle only shows enabled categories. You can easily toggle between enabled and disabled categories. You can also view the complete list of all categories by removing unselecting both the options.

Search

You can type in any category name in the search bar and Fyle shows all matching options (within any filters already applied.)

Filters

Fyle allows you to filter categories based on name, enabled/disabled state and associated system category.

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