# Expense Preferences

The Expenses tab holds custom fields and nothing else, and the account you code an expense to is the only category there is.

There is very little on this tab, and the useful part of this article is knowing where the things people expect to find here actually are.

![Finance Settings with Purchases selected in the left rail and the Expenses tab open, alongside tabs for Vendors, Purchase Orders, Purchase Receives, Bills, Vendor Payments and Vendor Credits.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/expenses/expense-preferences.png)

*Expense settings sit on their own tab, beside every other purchase module.*

## Settings

Go to **Settings > Finance > Expenses**. The tab offers custom fields, and that is all.

Add a custom field for anything the expense record does not model: a project code, a trip reference, the person who incurred it. Lists beat free text, because a text field fills with three spellings of the same word within a month.

## The controls people look for here

| Expected setting | What actually happens |
| --- | --- |
| Default expense account | Not a setting. Every expense picks its account on the form, and a bill line with no account falls back to Purchase Adjustments. |
| Default paid-through account | Not a setting. Paid Through is chosen each time, and it is required. |
| Require a receipt | Does not exist. Attaching the receipt is a habit the product does not enforce. |
| Default markup | Real, but not here. Default markup percentage is a workspace-wide setting, and it is not scoped to expenses. |
| Expense categories | There is no separate category list. The expense account is the category, chosen straight from your accounts chart. |

> **Note:**
>
> **The account is the category**
>
> There is no friendly label sitting in front of your chart of accounts, so the chart is what people pick from when they enter an expense. That makes account names worth writing for the person entering the expense rather than for the accountant reading it later.