Using the Menu, click on ‘New Payment’.

There are eight cells that require information, there is an optional ninth cell titled ‘General Details’.

Note the guidance provided in column E next to the cells. The format of the date, the availability of drop down menus and occasionally grey cells, which indicate that no information is required.

You must enter the information from the top down in order.

The spreadsheet is dynamic, based on your selection in earlier boxes it may change whether a cell needs information or not.

‘Invoice No.’

This is for your charity’s internal record keeping. This number cannot be changed and must be recorded on the receipt or invoice relating to the expense you are entering. For example, if you have a receipt from Tesco where some stationery was purchased. When you enter the payment for the stationery into the spreadsheet, write in the top right corner in large writing the ‘Invoice No.’. This will allow you, and the independent examiner to quickly identify receipts and invoices entered into the spreadsheet.

Let me demonstrate an example here. Let us assume I am in I have booked a classroom from a local school to complete some staff training for £125.

I need to enter a date (made up) and select the ‘Expense Category’ (when you click on the ‘Expense Category’ cell (B10), note a small grey square appears to the top right of the cell – this is clicked to access the drop down):

As the spreadsheet is dynamic you will notice that the greyed out ‘Expense Type’ has now changed to white, indicating that information is now required.

The money being used for this is coming from the Greggs Foundation (the same money used in the New Receipt example), therefore I need to select Restricted funds’.

By selecting ‘Restricted funds’ this has now activated ‘Spent on which Project’ – which was grey but is now white, indicating it needs some information.

The ‘Spent on which Project’, has ‘Staff Training’ available, we created this when we recorded the receipt from the Greggs Foundation in New Receipt.

What is the Project I want isn’t showing?

If the project wasn’t available (say because you were using unrestricted funds for a new initiative), just like when we created ‘Staff Training’ with New Receipt, you would click the Orange button (the wording might be different depending on whether you are using Restricted or Unrestricted Funds)and amend the Set Up screen.

‘Supplier Name’, is a free text field, here I’ll enter ‘Local School’.

‘Expense Type’ is a drop down menu and from the available options, I will select ‘Rent’.

The first eight ‘Expense Types’ of these can be changed based on the needs of your charity. Sundries cannot be changed and we recommend any one off transactions are recorded to ‘Sundries’. Use the other eight for your recurring expenses. At the same time try to use terms that are generic and allow for similar expenses to be grouped together.

To change these select the Orange button ‘Amend Expense Types’.

All of the necessary information has now been recorded:

We can see this as the red cell left to the Save button has changed to Green.

You can now click Save and the form will be reset and your payment will be saved.

Note that ‘Invoice No.’ has now updated to ‘2’, this is the number to add to the receipt/invoice of the next expense.