What’s new in Zetadocs Expenses November 2021 update

Daily allowances and improved user permissions

This article describes the new features and other improvements in the November 2021 update of the Zetadocs Expenses service.

Changes in this update

Feature enhancements

Daily allowances

We have added support for fixed daily allowances (also known as per-diem expenses), which you configure using a new settings page in the admin site.  You can set the daily rate which the user will receive, including different rates for the first day, last day and single day trips, and also specify meal allowances to fit with company policy.

If your business pays different allowance rates depending on criteria like business role or destination then you can configure multiple daily allowance rates, and you can also control which users are allowed to use each rate.

Users claim daily allowances in the same way as cash and mileage expenses.  You create a new expense for each trip then submit these to your manager for approval on an expense report.  The amount is calculated automatically, helping to prevent mistakes and saving time for the submitter, approver and finance team.

For more information see the Administering Daily Allowances Quick Start Guide in the online help.

Restrict users for companies

If your Zetadocs Expenses system is configured with two or more companies, you can now control which users are permitted to create expenses for each company.  This is configured in the Company Settings page in the admin site.

Permissions can be controlled by specifying individual users.  However a better option is to control permissions with User Groups, creating a separate group for each company then adding users to the relevant groups.

Restrict users for custom properties

You can now control which users are allowed to set a value for each custom property.  This can be used with Jobs and Tasks to determine which users can recharge expenses to a job or recharge an expense to a customer.

When a user is not allowed to set a custom property value, that property will not be shown on the expense and the configured default value (typically blank) will be used when the expense is exported.

Display Business Central extension details

The Manage Company settings page in the admin site now displays version details for the Business Central extension and connector.  This makes it easier to decide whether these components need to be upgraded to use new features and helps technical staff supporting the product at customers and channel partners.

Quality and performance improvements

This update includes a number of quality and performance improvements, including the following:

Approval and export process fails to complete

We have made a number of changes to improve the reliability of the approval and export processes.  These changes correct an infrequent issue where an approval or export operation could become “stuck” if the system was heavily loaded.

Unable to remove expense from a Payment Card Report

We have corrected an issue which blocked the finance processor from removing (unlinking) an expense from a Payment Card Report in some circumstances.

Card transaction files with multiple lines before the header

We have corrected an issue in the admin site when configuring payment card transaction files which include two or more lines before the header line.

Ignore old values for disabled custom properties

Custom properties which are disabled are not shown on new expenses.  However previously if you had already set the property value on an old expense then it would still be displayed and exported.  This was confusing for users, and caused difficulties when exporting old expenses in some cases.

We have now changed the behaviour so that disabled properties are ignored when displaying or exporting old expenses.

Additional upgrade steps

Extension for Business Central

There is no update to the extension for public cloud or on-premises Business Central systems with this release.

This release is compatible with all previous versions of the Extension for Business Central.

NAV Server Components

There is no update to the NAV Server Components with this release.

This release is compatible with previous versions of the NAV Server Components (versions 3.3.18178 and later).

Reporting Template

There is no update to the PowerBI Reporting Template with this release.

Mobile apps

Installed mobile apps will be updated automatically on mobile devices where this is enabled.