Key concepts: receipts, card transactions, and expenses
Adaptive tracks company spending by bringing together three related pieces of information on the Expenses page:
Link your cards to pull in transactions and drag & drop receipts to match.
Expense — The accounting record in Adaptive for a purchase (vendor, amount, date, payment account, job, cost code). This is what you review, approve, and sync to QuickBooks.
Receipt — The uploaded image or PDF that documents a purchase. You add receipts by dragging and dropping onto Expenses, uploading from an expense, or submitting from mobile or email. A receipt attaches to an expense as supporting documentation — a receipt image alone is not a complete expense.
Card transaction — A charge from a linked credit or debit card that Adaptive pulls in automatically. When a card transaction posts, Adaptive can create a draft expense from it.
Piece | What it provides |
Card transaction | Confirms the charge happened |
Receipt | Documents the purchase |
Expense | Records the accounting details |
Linking an expense to its card transaction confirms a single purchase and helps prevent duplicate entries in QuickBooks.
1. Understand how receipts appear in Expenses
When a receipt is uploaded, emailed, or submitted from mobile, Adaptive creates an expense.
That expense may need review before it is approved or synced:
Draft: The expense needs review, coding, receipt matching, or required details.
Unlinked: The expense exists in Adaptive but is not linked to a card transaction.
For approval: The expense has been submitted and is waiting for approval.
All: The expense can be found with other expenses across statuses, including synced, pending sync, archived, or errored items.
Note: A receipt image and a card transaction may start as separate expense records. Adaptive can match them automatically, or you can link them manually.
2. Find a submitted receipt
To find a submitted receipt:
Go to Expenses.
Search by vendor, amount, date, job, payment account, submitter, or status.
Check the tab that matches the expense’s current stage:
Draft: Use this when the expense still needs details before approval or sync.
Unlinked: Use this when the receipt has not been matched to a card transaction.
For approval: Use this when the expense was submitted into an approval workflow.
All: Use this when you are unsure of the current status.
If the receipt was submitted from mobile, confirm the upload completed successfully in the mobile app.
If the receipt was submitted by email, confirm email integration processed the message.
3. Understand why an expense may stay unlinked
Adaptive attempts to match expenses to card transactions using details like:
Amount
Date
Vendor
Payment account
An expense may stay Unlinked when:
The card transaction has not settled yet.
The expense amount or date does not closely match the card transaction.
The vendor name is different.
The payment account is missing or different.
More than one possible card transaction could match the expense.
The card transaction is already matched to another expense.
If Adaptive does not match the expense automatically, open the expense and manually link it to the correct card transaction.
You can also use Global Search or Adaptive AI to quickly look up related expenses, vendors, or card transactions when you are trying to find the right match. These tools are helpful when the transaction may already be linked somewhere else or when you need more context before matching.
4. Review expenses in Draft
An expense may remain in Draft when required information is missing.
Check whether the expense has:
Vendor
Date
Amount
Receipt image, if required
Job
Cost code or account
Payment account
Class, location, or other required company fields
After the expense has the required details, submit it for approval or prepare it for sync, depending on your company’s workflow.
5. Check the expense type
If you cannot find the receipt where expected, confirm that the item was categorized correctly.
For example, an uploaded document may need to be managed as a receipt, bill, or purchase order depending on what was submitted and how your team uses Adaptive.
If the item is the wrong type, review whether it needs to be recategorized.
6. Before contacting support
Before contacting support, gather:
Vendor name
Amount
Date
How the receipt was submitted: mobile, email, upload, or card transaction
Which Expenses tab it appears in: Draft, Unlinked, For approval, or All
Whether there is a matching card transaction
Screenshot of the expense record
This helps support determine whether the issue is related to upload, matching, approval, coding, or sync.
Still Need Help?
Please reach out to our support team at [email protected] for further assistance.