Expense qualification

Qualifying an expense means answering two tax questions: what share is deductible, and is the VAT recoverable? In France, these answers follow precise rules — often counter-intuitive. Simon automates them through a rules engine, only calling on you for the cases that warrant it.

Qualification takes place after the document is extracted and validated, and before reconciliation and posting. It becomes necessary as soon as an expense may have mixed use, non-recoverable VAT, a rate schedule or a particular business rule.

When you validate, you make a call on the accounting category, the professional rate, the recoverable VAT, the deduction method, and the possible creation of a pattern for this supplier. If a rule depends on a context that is missing from the document, Simon blocks or asks you the question rather than assuming.

Note

The thresholds and rates on this page are examples drawn from the reference data of the installed version. Tax rate schedules change: always verify the active rule and its references before a sensitive decision.

Two ways to deduct

An expense is deducted according to one of two methods, and the difference is concrete.

In rate method, a fixed percentage is deductible, the rest being considered personal. A company director’s phone at 50%, for example: on a €100 net invoice, €50 goes into expenses and €50 is charged to the shareholder current account (455).

In bracket method, only the fraction between a floor and a ceiling is deductible. This is the typical case of a meal the director takes alone. On a meal of €15 gross:

• floor €5.50 (value of a meal taken at home);
• ceiling €21.40 (maximum deductible);
• deductible: 15.00 − 5.50 = €9.50;
• non-deductible: €5.50;
• the VAT, for its part, remains recoverable on the total (€15).

---

The factory rules

Simon ships about twenty factory rules drawn from the BOFiP, each with its legal references. A rule describes the conditions that trigger it (category, type of fuel, context of the meal…), the rate or rate schedule applied, the fate of the VAT, and whether validation is required.

They cover the most frequent cases: catering (director’s meal taken alone, by rate schedule; business or team meals), fuel according to the engine type and vehicle type, transport and rentals, or else mixed-use telecom, home office, professional insurance and contributions, customer gifts, fines and lavish expenses. The exact rates and thresholds depend on the installed edition: it is the agent that applies the active rule and cites its source.

---

Memorization: patterns

When you qualify an expense by hand, Simon can remember your choice in the form of a pattern, attached to the supplier + category pair.

Astuce

You qualify a TOTAL invoice as “diesel fuel, passenger car, 80%”. The next TOTAL fuel invoice will be qualified at 80% on its own, without asking you again.

Each pattern is stored by triplet (supplier, category, rule) and keeps the memorized rate, the reference rate at the time of recording, and the VAT choice.

This last point matters. If a factory rule changes — revision of a legal rate — Simon compares the reference rate recorded in the pattern with the new default rate, spots the discrepancy and proposes the update.

Attention

An obsolete pattern keeps applying an old deduction rate. After any update of the legal rate schedules, check your patterns.

---

The decision path

In practice, for each validated document, Simon follows this logic:

flowchart TD
    A[Validated document] --> B{Existing pattern?}
    B -->|Yes| C[Apply the pattern<br/>silently]
    B -->|No| D{Applicable rule?}
    D -->|Yes, without validation| E[Apply<br/>automatically]
    D -->|Yes, with validation| F[Propose to<br/>the user]
    D -->|No| G[Manual<br/>qualification]
    F --> H{Do you confirm?}
    H -->|Yes| I[Qualify + memorize the pattern]
    H -->|Adjust| J[Qualify at the corrected rate]