Using Team Fields in Abacus – Abacus

What Are Team Fields?

Team Fields allow you to track additional information about each employee and associate that information with the expenses that they submit for reporting and syncing back to your accounting system. Examples include Office Location, Department, Group, and Employee ID.

Admins can create custom Team Fields and assign values to members in Abacus. By default, Team Fields are fixed for the member, and employees do not see the field when submitting expenses. Data is automatically captured on each expense, depending on which employee is submitting it. This is great for fields that never need to change per employee such as Location.

However, there may be pieces of data that sometimes change depending on the expense. A common example is department. For example, most employees have the majority of expenses within their department, but occasionally they may need to expense something for another department. In this case, you can choose to set the Team Field as User Editable so that employees can edit it as needed.

If a Team Field is set to User Editable, you can still assign a default value for the Team Field to each user as you normally would. That value will auto-populate on the expense in a dropdown menu, but members will be able to optionally change the field item to something else.

Sync a New Team Field from Your Accounting Integration

For lists that exist within your connected accounting platform, Abacus can automatically pull, map, and sync these fields in a few easy steps once you have an accounting integration set up:

1. Click the gear in the top right corner to open the Company Settings page.

2. In the sidebar, select Team Fields.

3. Click Create New Team Field.

4. Select Sync from [Accounting Software].

5. Select the field from your integrated accounting software for which you would like to create a synced Team Field in Abacus.

The drop-down list that populates will include any currently unmapped custom fields from the integrated accounting software - each of these fields can be used only once within Abacus.

6. Optionally, rename the field as you would like it to appear in Abacus.

We recommend that you input a descriptive Team Field name for Abacus that your users will understand.

7. Choose whether or not team members should be able to edit the field.

Leave as No if the field will not vary for the employee on different expenses (such as location). Select Yes for Team Fields that could change depending on the expense.

8. Click Create.

You're all set! Synced accounting fields will always reflect the corresponding list in the connected accounting software - including as new tags are added - ensuring that the selections available to employees are always up to date.

Create a Custom Team Field

You can also create custom Team Fields in Abacus:

1. Click the gear in the top right corner to open the Company Settings page.

2. In the sidebar, select Team Fields.

3. Click Create New Team Field.

4. If you have an integrated accounting software, you'll see the option to create a new field or to sync from your accounting software. To create a custom Team Field, select Create New Field.

5. Choose from the standard Team Fields or choose to create a custom field.

We recommend that you input a descriptive Team Field name for Abacus that your users will understand.
Please Note: You cannot create multiple fields with the same names.

6. Input the Team Field Name.

7. Choose whether or not team members should be able to edit the field.

Leave as No if the field will not vary for the employee on different expenses (such as location). Select Yes for Team Fields that could change depending on the expense.

8. Click Create.

Add Custom Team Field Options

Once you have created a custom Team Field, you can define which options are available for that field.

1. Locate the Team Field on the Team Fields page of your Company Settings.

2. Click Add.

3. Add item names.

To add manually, input the item names in individual fields, clicking Add New Field Item to include additional options.
To add in bulk, click Bulk Add and input the list of items in the text box.

4. Click Save.

Map Team Fields to Accounting Fields for Manual Upload to Accounting Software

Team Fields can be easily mapped to secondary values, which will populate as a separate column in a CSV export from Abacus for simple upload into an accounting platform, project management system, etc.

To set up this mapping:

1. Locate the Team Field on the Team Fields page of your Company Settings.

2. Click Edit.

3. Add the name of the field in your accounting system you'd like to map the Abacus Team Field to in the Accounting Field box.

4. Click Save.

5. Input the value that you'd like each Abacus item to map to in your accounting system, pressing Return on your keyboard to save.

Please Note: You can also click Bulk Add to input the list of items with their associated accounting field value in the text box in bulk.

Assign Team Field items to your Employees

After adding a Team Field to your account, you can assign this additional piece of information to individuals or groups of users. This data will be automatically associated with each expense submitted by these users.

On the People page, you edit user information like Team Fields by clicking the pencil next to a user's name or by selecting multiple users and clicking Edit.

You can also use the bulk update feature on the People page to mass-assign team fields and other member information.

Archiving Team Fields or Team Field Items

If you created a Team Field or Team Field Item in Abacus that is no longer in use, you can archive it without losing access to any search or reporting capabilities related to that field or item. When a field or item is archived, it will still remain on all historic expenses, so you can still use the disabled field or item to run reports. The disabled field or item will no longer show up in your Team Fields page after it has been archived, and archived fields or items cannot be reactivated.

To archive a Team Field, click Delete below the Team Field name.
To archive a Team Field Item, click delete next to the item name.