Introduction to the Expenses Tab

What Is the Expenses Tab?

The Expenses tab lives inside the AskBiz CFO dashboard, which you reach by tapping the Intelligence icon in the bottom navigation bar and then selecting the Cash Flow tab. Within Cash Flow, you will find two main sub-tabs: Overview and Expenses. Tap Expenses to open it. This area is your business spending ledger. Every time you pay a supplier, cover payroll, settle a software subscription, or buy office supplies, you record it here. The tab stores each entry as a row in a secure database, giving you a single searchable, filterable history of all your outgoings.

Why Track Expenses Inside AskBiz?

Many founders rely on bank statements to understand their spending, but bank feeds are often delayed by one to three business days and group related transactions in unhelpful ways. By logging expenses in AskBiz as they happen, you maintain a real-time picture of outgoing cash. This matters for three reasons. First, your Daily Net Gain/Burn card on the CFO dashboard reads directly from this table, so the card stays accurate the moment you save a new expense. Second, the Rolling Cash Forecast uses your expense history to project future outflows, making the weekly forecast more precise over time. Third, you can instantly see how much you are spending in each category — payroll, rent, software — without waiting for an accountant to categorise a statement.

Free — no card needed

See this in action for your business

AskBiz tracks these metrics automatically — just connect your data and start asking questions.

How the Expenses Tab Is Laid Out

When you open the Expenses tab you will notice several distinct areas. At the very top is the Category Breakdown bar, a coloured stacked bar that shows what proportion of your total spend falls into each of the 14 expense categories. Below that is a toolbar containing a search input, category filter chips, and a date range selector. Under the toolbar is the expenses list, a scrollable table of every recorded expense. Each row shows the date, vendor name, amount, category, and any notes you added. At the bottom right of the screen is the floating indigo camera button, which opens the AI receipt scanner. In the top right of the tab you will also find the Add Expense button that opens the manual entry form.

The Connection to Burn Rate and Runway

Your burn rate is the net amount of cash leaving your business each day. AskBiz calculates this by taking total expenses recorded in the current period and subtracting revenue. The more complete your expense data is, the more accurate this figure becomes. If you forget to log a large rent payment, your apparent burn rate will look lower than it really is, and your runway estimate will be overstated. A cash runway that says you have six months of runway when you actually have four is a dangerous mismatch. Keeping the Expenses tab up to date is therefore not just good bookkeeping — it is what keeps every other CFO metric trustworthy.

Two Ways to Add Expenses

AskBiz gives you a choice of two entry methods. The manual form is best when you are at a desk and want to type in the details directly — you fill in vendor, date, amount, category, and optional notes, then tap Save. The AI receipt scanner is best on the go: you photograph a paper receipt or upload an image from your photo library, and Claude AI reads the receipt and pre-fills all the fields for you. You then review the extracted data, correct anything that looks wrong, and confirm to save. Both methods save the expense to the same Supabase database table, so the data is identical regardless of which route you use.