Expense Tracking with Hierarchical Submission

The Problem

Finance teams track expenses in Smartsheet with budget categories or projects as parent rows and individual expenses as child rows. Team members submitting expenses through native forms create rows at the bottom of the sheet, disconnected from their budget category. The finance team must manually reclassify and indent each expense, risking misallocation.

The Solution

Task Forms lets employees select the project or budget category when submitting an expense. The expense row is created as a child under the selected category, and parent-level budget totals update automatically.

Step-by-Step Implementation

1. Structure the budget sheet with categories or projects as parent rows (Travel, Software, Equipment, Marketing).
2. Create a Task Forms with the category/project name as the reference field.
3. Define form fields: Expense Description, Amount, Date, Vendor, Receipt Reference, and Justification.
4. Enable password protection if the form should be restricted to authorized submitters.
5. Share the link with employees who submit expenses.

Expected Outcome

• Expenses are categorized correctly upon submission.
• Budget category totals update in real time.
• Finance team eliminates manual reclassification work.
• Monthly financial reports are accurate without manual reconciliation.