Configuring Mobile Expenses in the Salesforce Mobile App

Warning:

Mobile Expenses uses Lightning components, which require My Domain to be set up on your org. If you do not already have My Domain set up, it is essential that you do this first before proceeding to configure Mobile Expenses. For more information on My Domain, see the Salesforce Help.

Users can manage expenses from their mobile phone using the Salesforce mobile app. As an administrator, you can configure Mobile Expenses from the desktop version of PSA.

Notes:

Some of the configuration options in the Expense configuration group do not apply when using Mobile Expenses via the Salesforce mobile app. For more information on the Expense configuration groupClosed A collection of configuration options contained in the configuration groups tab that defines behavior of a FinancialForce PSA object or feature., see Expense Settings.

Although expense reports have not been optimized for use with Mobile Expenses, you might still be able to create, submit, and approve expense reports successfully via the Salesforce mobile app. You can pin the Expense Reports item to the Recent section of the navigation menu using the instructions provided in Adding the Expenses Item to the Recent Section of the Navigation Menu.

Installing the Salesforce App on a User's Mobile Device

For information on setting up and using the Salesforce mobile app, see the Salesforce App Admin Guide, available from the Salesforce website.

Supported Mobile Devices

Mobile Expenses is currently supported on mobile phones using iOS version 12.1.4 and later, and mobile phones using Android version 7.0 and later. There may, however, be small differences in the user experience between models.

iPad and tablet devices are not currently supported.

For information on devices supported by the Salesforce mobile app, see the Salesforce App Admin Guide, available from the Salesforce website.

Setting up List Views

The Mobile: My Expenses list view, which is filtered by owner, allows users to view a list that only contains the expenses they own.

Alternatively, you can create a custom list view for users of Mobile Expenses and use a sharing rule to restrict users so that they can only view their own expense records. For more information on sharing rules, see the Salesforce Help.

A list view is only visible in Mobile Expenses if you have already used it on the desktop version of PSA.

Tip:

Users can sort and filter the records displayed on a list view in Mobile Expenses using the Sort and Filter buttons in the action bar on the Salesforce mobile app.

Providing Access to Mobile Expenses in the Salesforce Mobile App

You must ensure that a contact record is associated with the Salesforce User who wants to use Mobile Expenses.

You can assign the PSA - Expenses permission set to users who do not already have permissions to enter expenses and need to create, edit, or delete expenses.

Notes:

This permission set includes access to the Visualforce page called pse.MobileExpenses that allows users to create and edit expenses via the Salesforce mobile app.

If a user already has access to create and edit expenses, you can add this page to an existing permission set to allow the user to create and edit expenses via the Salesforce mobile app.

To prevent a user from using Mobile Expenses, you can delete pse.MobileExpenses from their permission set. You can control access to any Visualforce page by adding or removing it from a permission set.

For more information on expenses, see Expense Reports.

For more information on permission sets, see Permission Sets and Other Technical Documentation.

Assigning Page Layouts

Users must have been assigned a page layout that contains the Edit button. If a user does not already have a page layout with the Edit button, you must assign the Expense Layout to the user.

Note:

When used in the Salesforce mobile app, the Edit button only allows users to change the details in the fields that are available in Mobile Expenses.

Customizing the Fields Displayed When Creating or Editing an Expense

The following fields are mandatory for Mobile Expenses to work successfully:

  • Project/Assignment
  • Date
  • Type
  • Amount

These fields are always displayed when creating or editing an expense and cannot be removed from the page.

You can add more fields by customizing the Mobile Expenses: Additional Fields in New and Edit Mode field set on the Expense object. This field set enables you to control the following:

  • The additional fields displayed when creating or editing an expense
  • The order in which these additional fields are displayed
Tip:

If you add the Expense Report field to the field set, a user can link an expense to the relevant expense report.

The following notes apply to this field set:

  • Only a subset of the fields on the Expense object is available in this field set.
  • Avoid adding fields that belong to objects other than the Expense object because they might not always render correctly or show a value.
  • If you add lookup fields to the field set, bear in mind that they are not optimized for mobile display, owing to a known limitation in the Salesforce mobile app.
  • If you add the Audit Notes field to the field set, a user can enter notes manually via the Salesforce mobile app. The Audit Notes field is only populated with automatic text following changes made via the desktop app. You can control the automatic text used for audit notes by editing the assignment-project-editable-after-save-audit-notes configuration option in the Expense configuration groupClosed A collection of configuration options contained in the configuration groups tab that defines behavior of a FinancialForce PSA object or feature..

The following additional fields are available by default in the field set:

  • Billable
  • Currency
  • Description

You can remove any or all of these fields, as required.

Note:

Even if the Currency or Billable fields are not displayed:

  • The expense currency defaults to that of the selected project.
  • The Billable field is automatically set to true when you select a project or assignment that is billable and the associated expense report, if any, is billable. The Billable field only updates automatically when you select the project or assignment.

Managing Attachments

Notes:

Images are limited to 10MB per expense line. The image formats supported are JPG, JPEG, GIF, and PNG.

You can currently add one image per expense in Mobile Expenses.

Images attached to mobile expenses are saved as Salesforce files.

To use Salesforce files elsewhere in your org, enable the following Salesforce Files setting:

  • Files uploaded to the Attachments related list on records are uploaded as Salesforce Files, not as attachments.

If you want to move to Salesforce files, you will need to enable the Salesforce Files Support feature in the Feature Console. For more information, see Enabling Salesforce Files Support.

For more information on Salesforce files, see the Salesforce Help.

Rate Type Expenses

Mobile Expenses in the Salesforce mobile app only supports one rate type expense, which is Auto Mileage. You can change the name of this expense type, if required.

For instructions on how to do this, see the Type field in Expense Limits and Rates Fields.

Helping Users with Mobile Expenses in the Salesforce Mobile App

Adding the Expenses Item to the Recent Section of the Navigation Menu

To make it easy to locate the Expenses item in the navigation menu of the Salesforce mobile app, a user can set it to display in the Recent section of the navigation menu using the instructions below.

Notes:

You can do this in Salesforce Classic only.

Any user can log in to the org via the desktop version of PSA and pin the Expenses item to the Recent section using these instructions.

You can also use these instructions to pin the Expense Reports item to the Recent section of the navigation menu.

To customize the items displayed in the Recent section of your navigation menu on the Salesforce mobile app and control the order of these items by pinning them:

  1. Use the Salesforce global search at the top of the page in the desktop version of PSA to search for the Expense object.
  2. Hover over the Expense object in the list of search results and click the Pin icon to pin it to the top of the list.

The order of pinned objects displayed on the desktop is reflected in the Recent section of the navigation menu in the Salesforce mobile app.

Note:

If you pin several objects in this way, unpinned objects may be pushed into the More element on the navigation menu.

For more information on controlling what is displayed in the navigation menu on the Salesforce mobile app, see the Salesforce App Admin Guide.

User Help

See the following for help with using Mobile Expenses in the Salesforce mobile app:

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

See Mobile Expenses: User Frequently Asked Questions for a list of answers to common questions.