Option to Make Description a Required Field

BeanBoy

Correct coding of expenses is critical for accurate and congruous reporting, period to period. The problem is that sometimes an expense that gets submitted isn't easily decipherable as to where it should be expensed. This causes us as accountants to have to chase down the employees and ask questions to make sure things are accurate. Having the option to make the description field a required field that employees must fill out with any expense submission would greatly reduce time spent going after details for receipts that are unclear.

Mark Louis

Hi @BeanBoy! Thanks for positing this!

I can definitely see how having the description field required would be useful, and the good news is, there is a way you can set this up already using Category Rules! Each category can be set up to have specific rules like required receipts, maximum expense amounts, and description being required. This feature is available to policy admins with a Group policy under the Control plan.

To set this up, just follow these steps:

1. Head to Settings > Policies > Group > [Policy name] > Categories.
2. Click Edit Rules next to the category.
3. On the next screen, click "Required" next to Description.

BeanBoy

@Mark Louis Thanks for your response! When I go into Categories (under settings), I don't see anywhere to "Edit Rules". All I see is a little edit pencil when I hover over a category. When I click that, it only allows me to change the Category name.

Mark Louis

@BeanBoy my apologies for not specifying – this option is available to admins that have Group policies under the Control plan. I'll edit my comment above as well to reflect this.

Svillanueva

@Mark Louis I see what you are referring to but is it possible to make the Description field required for all expenses no matter what category is selected? We have a lot of categories so it is a bit tedious to go into each one to edit this rule.

Sonia Liapounova

@Svillanueva unfortunately we don't have an option to edit category settings in bulk but these steps may make it easier for you:

1. Click on "View All" to show the entire list of categories
2. Click on the arrows next to the toggle to sort the categories enabled at top and disabled under

This way you won't have to click through the letters and scroll through the categories.