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Records and Workflows

Track Petty Cash and Member Expenses

Record a household member's cash float, log every credit and debit, share access with the right assistants, and watch the running balance.

Updated Jun 09, 2026 Back to directory

Petty cash in AssistHive is a structured way to track the cash an assistant holds on behalf of a household member — the principal. Each petty-cash account is a single float (e.g. SAR 2,000 in an office drawer, or USD 500 in a travel pouch). Every transaction is recorded as a credit (money in) or a debit (money out), and the running balance updates live.

Required permissions — by action (tenant administrator and superuser bypass all of these):
  • See an account at all: the user must satisfy both layers: (1) expenses:view on the account's household, and (2) account-level access — be the account's creator, the principal (the household member's linked workspace user), or appear on the explicit access list.
  • Create a new account: expenses:create on the household.
  • Add or edit a credit / debit, change the account name, archive it: expenses:edit on the household, plus account-level access.
  • Delete an account or entry: expenses:delete on the household, plus account-level access.
  • Grant or revoke another user's account-level access: only the creator, the principal, or a tenant administrator. Assistants added to the list cannot pass their access on to others.

If a user's expenses:view permission is revoked on the household, all of their accounts on that household disappear from the list until permission is restored, even if their ACL rows remain.

When to create a petty-cash account

Create one whenever a member hands cash to an assistant for ongoing use — for example:

  • A monthly office float for stationery and small services.
  • Travel cash held during a trip.
  • School-fees envelope that turns over each term.

One member can have any number of accounts. Currencies don't mix — each account stores a single currency, so a member holding both SAR and USD floats gets two accounts.

Create an account

  1. Open Petty Cash from the main navigation, then select New account.
  2. Pick the household and the household member who owns the cash.
  3. Give the account a short, recognisable name (e.g. "Office float — May", "Visa run — July").
  4. Set the currency (three-letter ISO 4217 code such as SAR, USD, EUR).
  5. Enter the opening balance — the cash already in the account at the moment you start tracking it. AssistHive records this as the first credit entry in the transactions list, labelled "Opening balance", so it shows up alongside every other movement.
  6. Optionally set a low-balance alert. When the running balance drops to or below this number, the dashboard flags it as Low.
  7. Save. You become the account creator and gain implicit access.

Record credits and debits

From the account detail page, the Add an entry form captures each movement.

  • Credit — money into the account. Use it for top-ups from the member, reimbursements from third parties, or recovered cash.
  • Debit — money out of the account. Use it for any spending the assistant does on the member's behalf.

Every entry has a date (when the transaction actually happened, not when it was entered), a description, an optional category (e.g. Travel, Office, Health) and an optional receipt file. Receipt files are stored privately and count against the workspace storage limit.

Practical tip: categorise consistently — it makes reconciling at the end of the month easier, and any later reporting will roll up cleanly along the category dimension.

Read the balance

Balance is computed live, not stored. The formula is:

balance = Σ credits − Σ debits

The opening balance is included automatically because it lives in the credits sum as the first entry — there is no separate column.

The account detail page shows three numbers at the top: the current balance (highlighted amber if it sits below the low-balance threshold), total credits, and total debits. The dashboard tile shows the same balance with the low-balance flag inline.

Share access with assistants

The principal (when linked to a workspace user) and the account creator always have access — they don't need to be added explicitly. To extend access to other assistants:

  1. Open the account detail page.
  2. Scroll to the Who has access panel.
  3. Pick a candidate from the dropdown (the dropdown only lists active users in your tenant). Select Grant access.

Granting account-level access does not grant the system-level expenses:* permission. Both layers must be in place for the assistant to actually see the account. If the assistant cannot find the account after you grant access, ask the tenant administrator to grant expenses:view on the household.

The Revoke button next to any explicit entry removes that row. Removing the creator or the principal is not possible — those slots are implicit.

Edit or correct an entry

Any user with expenses:edit on the household plus account-level access can edit or delete an entry. Deletions are immediate and permanent, but each delete writes an audit-log entry that records who removed it, the amount, and the date — so the record can be reconstructed if there's a dispute later. For bookkeeping-clean corrections, prefer logging a reversing entry (a credit that mirrors an over-recorded debit, for example) over deleting the original.

Archive vs delete an account

  • Archive — hides the account from the active list but keeps all history. Use this when the float is paid back and the account is no longer in active use. Toggle the Show archived filter on the list page to find archived accounts again.
  • Delete — permanently removes the account and every entry. Requires expenses:delete. Use only when an account was created in error.

Common questions

Can two members share one account?
No. Each account belongs to exactly one household member. If two members are pooling cash, create one account per member and split entries logically, or pick one member as the canonical owner.
Can I split one entry across multiple categories?
Not in one row. Split the receipt into two entries — each with its own category — and the totals will roll up correctly.
Can I see all accounts for a single member?
Use the search box on the list page; typing the member's name filters to all of their accounts at once.
What happens when the household is deactivated?
Petty-cash accounts and their entries are deleted along with the household, as part of the standard household-cascade. Archive accounts (and export the data if you need a record) before deactivating.

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