> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.nyumbazetu.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Expense wallets

> Run a petty-cash style fund — top it up, spend it down, and keep every movement on the ledger.

**Finance → Payables → Expense Wallets → `/expense-wallets`** <sup>Beta</sup>

An **expense wallet** is a fund a property manager tops up and then draws down as they pay
expenses. It gives petty cash a ledger: every top-up and every spend is recorded, the balance is
always derivable, and you cannot spend money the wallet does not have.

<Note>
  A wallet is bound to a **bank account**. One bank account can back several wallets — for example a
  maintenance float and a utilities float on the same account — and a wallet can be re-pointed to a
  different account later.
</Note>

## The list

| Column              | Meaning                                                                                |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Wallet**          | Name — make it say what the fund is for ("Maintenance petty cash").                    |
| **Bank Account**    | The account backing it.                                                                |
| **Currency**        | The wallet's currency.                                                                 |
| **Balance**         | Top-ups less spends.                                                                   |
| **Overdraft Limit** | How far below zero the wallet may go, if your policy allows any.                       |
| **Spendable**       | Balance plus any permitted overdraft — the figure a spend is actually checked against. |
| **Status**          | Active or inactive.                                                                    |

## Creating a wallet

<Steps>
  <Step title="New expense wallet">
    From the list, create the wallet: name, bank account, currency.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set the overdraft limit">
    Default is none. Only allow an overdraft if your finance policy genuinely permits spending
    ahead of funding.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Top it up">
    A wallet with no funds cannot spend — the block is hard, not a warning.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Topping up

A top-up adds funds to the wallet. Record the amount, the date, a reference and a note.

Top-ups are **source-agnostic by design**: a manually entered top-up and a top-up sourced from real
money movement are the same kind of record, differing only in their source and status. That is what
lets an organisation start with typed-in balances and move to funded top-ups later without
re-doing anything downstream.

<Warning>
  A manually entered top-up records that money is *available to the wallet*. It does not move money
  in the real world. Only record top-ups that correspond to funds you have actually set aside, or the
  wallet balance becomes fiction.
</Warning>

## Spending

Two ways to spend, both writing the same underlying records:

### Quick spend

For small, immediate payments. Capture: **paid to**, amount, **category**, **reference**,
**receipt** and a **note**. This is the petty-cash experience — one dialog, done.

### Pay an expense

For payments against an existing [expense](/guides/expenses) record. Select the expense and pay it
from the wallet. The expense is settled and the wallet balance falls.

Either way, the spend creates a real expense and an outgoing payment on the ledger, so it appears
in the expenses list and posts to the general ledger through the normal path. A wallet is not a
parallel expense system.

### The insufficient-funds guard

Spending more than the wallet's spendable amount is **blocked server-side**, atomically. The check
happens at the moment of spending, not in the form, so two people spending at once cannot both pass
a stale balance check.

## Receipts

Receipts can be attached at the point of spending. **Expense wallet receipts** are stored with the
transaction, so a month-end review does not depend on someone's shoebox.

## The wallet detail page

Opening a wallet shows:

* the current balance, overdraft limit and spendable amount;
* the **ledger** — every top-up and spend in order, with references and notes;
* the bound bank account;
* the wallet's spend actions.

## Reconciling a wallet

<Steps>
  <Step title="Compare wallet balance to the fund">
    Cash on hand (or the earmarked account balance) should equal the wallet balance.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Check every spend has a receipt">
    Spends without receipts are the first thing an auditor will ask about.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Check categories">
    Miscategorised spends land in the wrong expense account and distort the P\&L.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Investigate a negative balance">
    If overdraft is not permitted and the balance is negative, something bypassed the guard —
    escalate rather than adjusting it.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Wallets vs expenses vs tenant wallet

Three different things share the word "wallet" or the idea of held money:

| Concept                  | What it is                                                                                                   |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Expense wallet**       | Your operating float for paying costs. Covered here.                                                         |
| **Expense**              | A cost owed or paid to a vendor. See [Expenses](/guides/expenses).                                           |
| **Tenant wallet amount** | Money a *resident* paid you that is not yet allocated to an invoice. See [Allocations](/guides/allocations). |

They never interact. Money a tenant overpays does not fund your maintenance float.

## Permissions and control

Wallets are finance records: creating them, setting overdraft limits and topping them up are
administrator-level actions, while spending is normally granted more widely. Keep the two apart —
the whole control value of a wallet is that the person spending is not the person funding.