Track expenses and scan receipts with Expensify’s Palm Pre app
UPDATE: We are the only expense report app to be listed for the February update on precentral.com. Read about it here.
Rejoice Palm Pre owners! The long awaited, freshly released Palm Pre expense tracking app is available for download. Open the app catalog on your Palm Pre and search for “Expensify” to download our expense app. Continually adding to our mobile apps, the Palm Pre app joins the already released iPhone, BlackBerry and Android apps to round out the smart phone expense app offering.
The Palm Pre allows you to…
Add Cash Expenses
Upload cash expenses with attached receipts using Expensify's Palm Pre app.
Grabbing last minute supplies for a presentation with a big client? Click “Add Expense” and enter in the name of the merchant where you made the purchase, the amount of the expense, and a brief note for yourself to remember the purchase. You can also quickly snap a picture of the cash receipt and forget it completely as it’ll be uploaded to your Expensify account for when you need to create your expense report.
Upload Receipt Images
Upload receipts using Expensify's Palm Pre app.
In a hurry? Forget adding in all the details that instant. Just snap a picture of the receipt and go on with your busy day. The cash receipt will be waiting for you to attach it to an expense the next time you log in to your account.
Search for “Expensify” in the Palm Pre app catalog, install the app and take control of your cash expenses and receipts.
FreshBooks expense reports!
We’ve had a lot of requests for exporting Expensify reports into FreshBooks invoices, so last night Witold and I decided to take on a late night project to whip it up. We were really impressed with the simplicity of the FreshBooks API, so the whole thing went in smoothly in just a couple hours. Accordingly, behold! FreshBooks expense reports exported straight from Expensify!
If you know that that means, take a look at drop me a line to let me know what you think. There’s a couple ways to do it and we’ve opted with the simplest for now; let me know if you’d like the data exported in a different way.
On the other hand, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it basically means this:
- Import your credit card into Expensify, as normal.
- Create, submit, and process an Expensify expense report, as normal.
- But when done, check out the flashy new Export to FreshBooks button.
- Click it and we’ll connect straight to your FreshBooks account, create a new invoice, and attach each of the itemized expenses.
The upshot is it lets you harness the power of Expensify for expense reporting, but combine it with the power of FreshBooks for invoicing. This is particularly handy for contractors with lots of “rebillable” expenses, as you can use Expensify to record those on the road using our suite of mobile apps, manage all the receipts online, export into QuickBooks for tracking, and then export to FreshBooks for invoicing. Pretty slick, eh?
Oh, and how much does it cost? It’s included for free in a standard Expensify account (which is free for individuals and very-small businesses).
And perhaps it’s not worth mentioning but I will, this works with all the standard Expensify features including support for 58 international currencies (with conversion on the day the expense was incurred), hour and mileage tracking, mobile expense logging and receipt scanning, direct import for most debit cards and 94% of US credit cards (and OFX upload for the rest), etc. By itself it’s a pretty small feature, but in conjunction with everything else, I’m hoping it’ll be a huge help for all the contractors who have requested this. Enjoy!
-david
Follow us on Twitter at @expensify
How-to use Expensify videos released
We’ve been working away at simplifying the expense reporting process for everyone involved. In that time we’ve added several mobile expense apps, launched out of Beta and in to our 1.0 offering a refined feature set such as greater policy support and a more intuitive QuickBooks export process. Now, we’ve added videos to literally show everyone how much we’ve simplified the process of expense reporting. Watch how quick it is to create an expense report with Expensify. But we don’t just stop there! This set of videos will take you through the entire expense reporting process: importing expense data from your credit card, creating your first expense report and submitting it for approval, approving a submitted report and then sharing it with a bookkeeper, and, how to export the report to QuickBooks.
Import your credit card
Importing your credit card has several advantages. First and foremost: it saves you time, lots of time. As a majority of your expenseable purchases are already on your card, linking your card and importing your purchase history makes creating an expense report a breeze. Our card import process is secure and trusted so you can feel confident importing your expense information. We currently import 94% of all US credit cards, so chances are we’ve got you covered. If you’d like to get more detailed, written information on creating and submitting expense reports, visit the employee’s getting started page.
Create an expense report
Once your credit card expenses have been imported, it’s time to create an expense report. Learn how to create a new report, add individual expenses right from your credit card, check that all eReceipts are attached and then submit it to the person who approves your expenses. After you send your report for approval, we’ll send you an email letting you know as soon as it approved and awaiting reimbursement.
Approve and share an expense report
Has an employee or contractor submitted an expense report to you using Expensify? Wondering how to check over the expense and get a copy to your bookkeeper? Watch this video to find out how to check all of the expenses, approve the expense report and then either reimburse it share it with a bookkeeper so that it can be exported to QuickBooks and reimbursed. For more detailed information on getting started as the person who approves reports, visit the manager’s getting started page.
Export an expense report in to QuickBooks
This video deals with expense reports from the perspective of the bookkeeper. Learn how to access a report that was shared with you, and then export it to QuickBooks. This video shows the process to connect QuickBooks Online to Expensify, including going through the QuickBooks connection interview. After your QuickBooks company has been connected, the video continues with an overview of the QuickBooks export options available. Visit the bookkeepers information page to learn more about the options available to simplify processing and tracking expenses.
All of the videos can also be viewed on our Video How-tos Help page.
Happy Expensifying!
5-person, $1M funded, early-stage startup needs you! (junior coder)
Hello, my name is David Barrett and I’m the CEO of Expensify. We do “expense reports that don’t suck!” (Google “expensify” to read more.) We’re getting crushed under an ever-growing pile of super awesome work, and I need one bright soul to help us dig our way out. I can guarantee you fun, an amazing opportunity to learn, and the siren’s call of distant riches. But only if you are *all* of the following:
- An incredibly hard worker, even when it’s not so fun. There is a ton of work to do, and a lot of it downright sucks. After all — we do the sucky work so our customers won’t need to. I need you to buck up and grind through server logs, user emails, source code, and bug reports, without complaint or supervision, and come back asking for more.
- A cool person to be with. Not a crazy party animal, just someone we can trust, rely upon, hang out with, bounce ideas off of, and generally interact with in a positive way, both personally and professionally. In fact, this is one of the most stringent requirements we have: would you be fun to hang out with day and night on some remote, exotic beach? This isn’t a rhetorical question, either: every year we take the company overseas for a month (on your own dime, sorry) and work incredibly hard while having a ton of fun. We’ve done Thailand, Mexico, India, and Turkey. Where do you want to go this year?
- Super talented, in a general way. We’re going to throw a ton of work at you of every possible sort, and you need that magic skill of being able to figure it out even if you have no idea where to start. On any given day you might bounce between super low-level coding, super high-level technical support, updating our user documentation, inventing/designing/building some new feature, etc. This is not a code monkey job — you’re going to be a full participant in the process, and you need to bring your own unique blend of skills to the table.
- Specifically talented in a programming way. You can instantly visualize solutions to problems big and small. Your code is always clean, well commented, has good nomenclature and indentation. You can switch on a dime between C++, PHP, Bash, Cron, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Dwoo — not because you know them all, but because you’re the sort of person who can just pick it up and figure it out. If you’re this sort of person, you’ll know what I mean. If not, then this position isn’t for you.
And there are a bunch more, but odds are if you got this far, nothing I can do would stop you from applying. That’s a problem because while I know *you* are awesome, it’s actually really hard and time consuming to find you in the midst of the literally hundreds of other applications I get from everyone else. So this is where I’m going to ask my first favor: can you make it *really easy* and obvious how great you are, so I don’t accidentally overlook you?
There are probably many ways to do that. But the easiest way is to help me out by answering the following questions:
- What’s the URL of your website? If you don’t have one, stop now — please save us both the time by not applying.
- When did you start programming? Tell me about your first project, what technologies you used, and why you did it.
- Why do you do it? Why programming instead of all the other exciting careers out there?
- What was your last/current job, what was/is your total compensation package, and why did you / do you want to leave? Can I have the name and phone number of your last manager? It’s cool if you left on bad terms — I got fired from my last job, after all — just tell me the story.
- If you were rich, what would you do, and why?
- Without doing any research or asking any friends, what language is each of the following code fragments, and what’s wrong with each (if anything)?
.centered { text-align: center; vertical-align: center; } tail /var/log/syslog | grep warn char* data[] = { "foo", "bar", 0 }; int strlenSum = 0; do { strlenSum += strlen( *data ); } while( data++ ); The time is <? time() > o'clock. var a, b = { c: "d" }; alert( a.c ); - What’s the biggest, coolest project you ever built from top-to-bottom? Not a component; a whole self-sufficient thing.
- What’s a salary and equity cut that excites you? Like, truly feels “wow, I’m being valued”. What’s the minimum you’d take? Don’t skimp on the question: it’s gnarly, I know. But let’s just get it out in the open, up front.
- Why do you want to work at Expensify, specifically? Not something general about startups overall; what is it about us in particular that interests you?
- What’s the catch? Everybody has strings attached — you’ve got something you need to finish first, some big vacation commitment coming up, some particular fear you need addressed or requirement you need satisfied. It’s fine. But what is it?
Please send your answers to dbarrett@expensify.com. If you make an honest attempt at answering the questions above, I promise I’ll respond personally — hopefully in a timely fashion, but definitely sometime.
Thanks. I’m genuinely excited to hear from you. I know there’s someone out there who will be a perfect fit for our team. I really hope it’s you, and I appreciate your help in patience while we figure that out together. Thanks!
David Barrett
Founder and CEO of Expensify
Follow us at http://twitter.com/expensify
Personal blog: http://quinthar.com
Company blog: http://blog.expensify.com
Recent coverage:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/16/expensify-expense-reports/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/28/outright-com-leaves-beta-adds-new-partners-to-streamline-small-business-accounting/
http://gigaom.com/2009/09/14/where-do-your-biz-bucks-go-expensify-outright-team-up-to-find-out/
http://blogs.salesforce.com/the_appexchange_blog/2009/08/app-of-the-week-expensify.html
http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/12/expensify-raises-1m-for-online-expense-reporting/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/11/expensifys-free-expense-report-system-takes-the-hassle-out-of-reimbursements/
Maximize tax deductions
Tax season is fast approaching and the Chicago Tribune has posted an interesting list of some oft overlooked tax deductions which many people may qualify for.
Expensify is all about making your life simpler, including the burden of taxes. A good example of this comes from #5 on the Chicago Tribune list: a mileage and toll deduction for a move related to a new job. While it may be too late to do so for 2009, start the new year off right; set up a mileage relocation unit in Expensify:
- Log in, click on “settings” in the upper right.
- Scroll to “Customize your units,” and click “[add new unit]“
- Give the new unit a name, I used “relocation mileage,” and a value, which in this case would be $0.24
Moving for work? Create a new expense report, and log an expense for “relocation mileage” (or whichever name you give to the unit) as the number of miles you’ve traveled for your new work. It will automatically be converted in to the reimbursable rate for the miles you’ve traveled. Make sure to import all receipts for gas and tolls, or, if you paid with cash, snap a picture of the receipts with our mobile app and add them to your expense report. Come end of the year, expense reports like these will help you maximize deductions on your taxes.
Get 2010 started right; start logging expenses early to get the most available deductions at the end of the year.
2010 reimbursable mileage rates
The IRS has released the new reimbursement rate for mileage in 2010:
• 50 cents per mile for business miles driven
• 16.5 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes
• 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations
The new mileage rates “reflect generally lower transportation costs compared to a year ago.” (IRS)
For now, all current users will need to change their mileage rate in Settings after they have completed their last 2009 expense report. Update your expense mileage by:
- After logging in, click on Settings
- Scroll down to “Customize your units”
- Click “[change]” next to mile, type in “.5″ and hit “ok.”
For the visual folks, follow along with the video below to change your mileage rate:
Done! Your expense reports will now be created using the reimbursable mileage rate for 2010.
Expensify’s 1.0 Launch
We just launched out of Beta and in to 1.0! The results of our blood, sweat and tears many days of hard work are finally visible. With that, I’m proud to announce the following major changes:
* Totally new UI: Based on your feedback we’ve made massive UI changes to be faster, more intuitive, and generally sharper looking across the board. Enjoy!
* QuickBooks overhaul: Attention bookkeepers, accountants, and finance departments: the wait is over! You can now create categories from your QuickBooks chart of accounts, share them with employees, auto-categorize based on merchant type, and export everything to the appropriate accounts automatically.
* More mobile apps: In addition to our iPhone app, we now have BlackBerry and Android apps (with Palm Pre awaiting approval). Expensify goes on the road with you!
* International currencies: Not a fan of USD? How about EUR, CAD, GBP, or any of 54 other currencies? Mix-and-match within the report and we’ll convert based on the closing exchange rate on the day the expense was incurred.
* No longer free (for new users): And last but not least — because I know this has actually been a concern for many of you — we’re now less free than ever! Starting immediately, we charge $5/reporter/mo with the first two free (so if you receive reports from 3 people a month, it costs you $5/mo). As a thank you to everyone that has used Expensify and supported us during our trying times in Beta, we’re grandfathering you in to a free plan for life! We couldn’t have made the countless changes and improvements without your help; Thanks!
That’s all for now, but lots more is on the way. Please send any questions, comments, or suggestions to help@expensify.com, and we’ll take care of it. We’ve also created the definitive “Expense Report” group where you can share your tips and tricks as well as your feedback.
For more coverage, check out the article on TechCrunch
Until then, I look forward to seeing you for your next expense report!
RockYou… Encryption is your friend.
Remember when Danger lost all their backups? At that time I wrote about Expensify’s massively redundant, multi-tiered backup system (to two remote locations in realtime, and to two more remote locations nightly) in a passionate appeal to sanity. Soon after that I turned off my Sidekick for the last time, and turned on my shiny new Palm Pre. (And I ain’t going back!)
But now I read that RockYou has compromised the usernames and logins to 32 million social networking accounts because they didn’t encrypt a damn thing? Come on people! Encryption is so… I don’t know, 1942?
At Expensify, we take security incredibly seriously. We spent pretty much the entire first year building a geo-redundant, PCI compliant datacenter that achieves… actually, now that I think about it pretty amazingly high uptime, while simultaneously remaining super secure. It wasn’t easy. But that’s our job. It’s not an optional thing. Either you do it secure, or you don’t do it at all.
In our case, we use a type of encryption called “split knowledge, dual control”. It’s more complex than this, but we basically split our master encryption key in half, and store each half in a different safe deposit box (Witold controls one, I control the other) such that nobody ever knows the whole thing. This means nobody can decrypt our data alone, not even me.
Additionally, this key is assembled in memory on our servers using a type of “turn two keys simultaneously” system (akin to a nuclear launch panel) and never written to disk. So even if you physically stole the servers out of our hardened datacenters (something you’d be a fool to try), they’d be little more than really expensive paperweights.
Anyway, I understand social networking data isn’t as sensitive as financial data. And I understand most web developers don’t know how to deploy and maintain realtime distributed transaction layers.
But I don’t find those very satisfying excuses, and I doubt you do either.
Expensify is going global! Support for 58 currencies released.
We’ve added yet another feature to make expense reporting easier for you. Not working with US dollars? Now you can set the default currency for your account to be the legal tender of your locale. Feel free to import expenses in one of the 58 supported currencies. Add these expenses to your report as you normally would. When the report is generated, we’ll automatically convert all expenses in to your local currency automatically. All historical currency conversion rates are nominal noon rates imported directly from the Bank of Canada at 14:30 EST, daily.
Expensify can now import expenses in 58 currencies.
Go ahead, give the new currency conversion feature a try!
We’re always looking for ideas to improve our service. If your currency isn’t supported and you want it to be, or you’re having issues, write in and demand an answer: help@expensify.com.
The full list of supported international currencies:
UAE Dirham
Neth Antilles Guilder
Argentine Peso
Australian Dollar
Brazilian Real
Bahamian Dollar
Canadian Dollar
Swiss Franc
Chilean Peso
Chinese Yuan
Colombian Peso
Czech Koruna
Danish Krone
Euro
Fiji Dollar
British Pound
Ghanaian Cedi
Guatemala Quetzal
Hong Kong Dollar
Honduras Lempira
Croatian Kuna
Hungarian Forint
Indonesian Rupiah
Israeli Shekel
Indian Rupee
Iceland Krona
Jamaican Dollar
Japanese Yen
Korean Won
Sri Lanka Rupee
Moroccan Dirham,
Myanmar Kyat
Mexican Peso
Malaysian Ringgit
Norwegian Krone
New Zealand Dollar
Panama Balboa
Peruvian Nuevo Sol
Philippine Peso
Pakistani Rupee
Polish Zloty
Romanian New Leu
Serbian Dinar
Russian Rouble
Swedish Krona
Singapore Dollar
Thai Baht
Tunisian Dinar
Turkish Lira
Trinidad & Tobago Dollar
Taiwan Dollar
United States Dollar
Venezuelan Bolivar Fuerte
Vietnam Dong
CFA Franc
East Caribbean Dollar
Pacific Franc
South African Rand
The Expensify Android Application, Now Live!
We just keep rolling them out; we’ve just released the Expensify Android application!
Again, what can you do with it?
Add Cash Expenses
For example, just after a fancy meal with clients, pick up your phone, press Expensify, press Add Expense, enter the amount, the name of the restaurant, enter the client’s name in the comments field, and press Submit to send those details right on up to your Expensify account, one click away from being on your next expense report! And if your company requires a receipt…
Upload Receipt Images
Simply snap a picture of the receipt with your phone’s camera, and it’ll be also sent up to Expensify, either attached to the expense you just entered, or unattached, ready to be attached to an expense later.
Install It
So don’t just sit there, pick up your Android G1 or MyTouch phone, head to the Market, and search for Expensify, or just check out the “Just in” section in Finance!
The app works on all currently released Android phones – and if you’re thinking of getting a Motorola Droid phone, coming our next week, don’t worry, we’ll have your expense reporting needs covered!
Tom
Mobile Developer
Expensify.
