hdls Expenses
hdls Expenses is a headless, MCP-native expense management backend. It manages expenses, reports, and approvals, operated entirely through named tools your AI assistant calls. It stands in for tools like Expensify, Ramp — same job, no UI to run.
💬 Just ask
"Log a $45 lunch expense and show me this month's total."
You don't call these tools yourself — just tell your assistant in plain English. Everything below is the reference for when you (or your assistant) want the exact details.
How Expenses is organized
The headline entity is the expense — start there, then attach the rest to it. The approval_event table is an append-only timeline — every change and note lands there and is never edited or deleted.
| Entity | Purpose | Relates to |
|---|---|---|
expense | A single spend line (merchant, amount, receipt) coded to a category and grouped into a report. | report, category |
category | A spend category used to code expenses to a GL account for accounting export. | — |
report | An expense report bundling individual expenses for a single submit/approve/reimburse cycle. | — |
approval_event | Append-only approval/audit timeline for expenses and reports (polymorphic via entity_type/entity_id). | — |
Common workflows
Each line is one real sequence of tool calls — your assistant chains them for you.
- Move an expense through its lifecycle:
create_expense→submit_report
Tools
Call these at https://hdls.ai/api/mcp/expenses. Required fields you must supply; optional fields refine the call. You never pass tenant_id — it is stamped server-side.
Create
| Tool | What it does | Required | Optional |
|---|---|---|---|
create_expense | Create a new expense. | description | report_id, category_id, merchant, status, amount, currency |
Update & advance
| Tool | What it does | Required | Optional |
|---|---|---|---|
approve_expense | Approve the expense. | id | — |
categorize | Categorize the record. | id | — |
Find & read
| Tool | What it does | Required | Optional |
|---|---|---|---|
submit_report | Report on report. | — | — |
search_expenses | Search expenses by free-text and/or column filters (tenant-scoped, paginated). | — | search, filters, limit, orderBy |
Field lists come from the product's live schema and are embedded in each tool's own description — read the tool description for the exact, current fields.
Field reference
Every field you can set on each record. Custom fields you add live alongside these in data.
expense
| Field | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
report_id | id | Links to a report. | |
category_id | id | Links to a category. | |
merchant | text | ||
description | text | Yes | |
status | text | Lifecycle state. | |
amount | numeric(14,2) | ||
currency | text | ||
payment_method | text | ||
spent_on | date | ||
receipt_url | text | ||
is_billable | true / false | ||
submitter | text | ||
data | json | Free-form JSON — custom fields live here. |
category
| Field | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
name | text | Yes | Display name. |
code | text | ||
gl_account | text | ||
is_active | true / false | ||
data | json | Free-form JSON — custom fields live here. |
report
| Field | Type | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
title | text | Yes | Display name. |
submitter | text | ||
status | text | Lifecycle state. | |
currency | text | ||
total | numeric(14,2) | ||
submitted_at | timestamp | ||
approved_at | timestamp | ||
reimbursed_at | timestamp | ||
data | json | Free-form JSON — custom fields live here. |
Tailor it with custom fields
Add fields without a schema change. add_custom_field defines one, list_custom_fields shows what's defined, and promote_custom_field (admin) shares a personal field with the whole workspace. The value lives in each row's data (JSON) and is set and read through the normal record tools. See Products, tools & custom fields for the full model.
Roles & safety
- Tenant isolation is automatic. Your credential is pinned to one workspace; you never pass
tenant_id, and you can only ever see your own data (enforced by Postgres row-level security). - Role-gated. Permissions run
reader < member < admin < owner. Installing a product and promoting a custom field workspace-wide need admin/owner. - History is append-only. The
approval_eventtimeline is never edited or deleted — it's your audit trail.
Connect
On the concierge (https://hdls.ai/api/mcp), run install_product({ slug: "expenses" }) (admin/owner) to enable it for your workspace, then add https://hdls.ai/api/mcp/expenses as a connector in your assistant — see Connect your assistant.
A worked example
The literal call your assistant makes when you ask it to create the headline record:
Tool: create_expense
Arguments: {
"description": "Notes go here."
}