Archive for the ‘Pro Tip’ Category
Announcing Bill Processing and Invoices that Don’t Suck!
Today we are excited to finally announce a much anticipated feature: Invoicing and Bill Processing! At the behest of our users who were fed up with their existing Invoicing and Bill Processing solution, we’ve worked extremely hard to bring you Bill Processing and Invoices that Don’t Suck! No longer must Expensify users subject themselves to clunky invoicing systems. We’ve taken everything you love about Expensify Expense Reports and applied it for our Bill Processing and Invoices!
Expensify now allows you to take Expense Reports created or submitted to you and re-bill them as an Invoice to your clients. Apply mark-up on materials purchased on behalf of your client. Upload your logo into Expensify and we’ll slap it on the invoice. Determine and communicate your custom payment terms. If your clients already use Expensify they can even pay your invoices directly within Expensify with the same great options that are available for our Expense Reports: ACH Direct Deposit, PayPal, and even Bitcoin!
Ok, so what if your vendors dont use Expensify? You can still send them invoices – just click Attach PDF before you hit send.
We know most users want to keep their bills and invoices in the same program, so we developed Bill Processing to be incredibly easy. When you activate Invoicing/Bill Processing we create an email address for you to give out to your vendors. Example: YourCompany@bills.expensify.com. Any bills sent to that email address will be SmartScanned and populated into your Expensify account.
We built this functionality because our users were complaining they didn’t like having to export their expenses into Freshbooks or Quickbooks in order to send out Invoices. Well, now you can seamlessly handle Expense Reports, Invoicing, and Bill Processing within one interconnected, powerful tool.
We’ve added more information on our help pages so check those out here:
As always, if you have any questions about Expensify or need help getting your company set up, feel free to email help@expensify.com.
Read the press release here: http://prn.to/YGXBuj
Pro-Tip Monday: Credit Card Best Practices
Expensify has a lot of users, a lot of different users. We know that our users come have varying use cases when when it comes to credit cards. We’ve got you covered no matter your situation or credit card.
Safety First:
We use bank-level security to keep your sensitive financial data safe. We’re tested regularly to ensure our security measures are up to date, and even subscribe to daily probing by McAfee to make sure that we can defend against the latest hacker tactics.
We take your security seriously and comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. This comprehensive analysis that spans many aspects of how systems interact is the gold standard of security measures for anyone taking credit card information online. The same rigorous standard is used by PayPal, Visa and YOUR bank. For more information on its requirements, check out the PCI-DSS website.
The Basics:
Import your card(s) automatically by logging into Expensify > going to Settings > Credit Cards > Import Card/Bank. You will then just need to find your bank and input your online banking username and password.
You will then want to select what accounts you do want to pull into Expensify and whether or not these accounts should default as being marked as reimbursable expenses or non-reimbursable expenses.
Having issues?
We work hard so that our users have as few issues as possible when it comes to importing your credit cards, but every now and again you may find that your card is not updating automatically. If you do find yourself in this situation here are some helpful tips:
- Manually update your card: You can do this by going to Settings > Credit Cards and selecting the ‘Update’ button to update your card. If you see a ‘Fix’ indicator, go to tip #2
- ‘Fix’ your card: We would first recommend that you can log into your online banking portal using the same username and password you’re using to import your card into Expensify. When you have confirmed this, please select the ‘Fix’ button and input your username and password. If this does not work, go to tip #3
- Write help@expensify.com: As noted earlier, Expensify and the banks we import from have a very high level of security. As a result, sometimes we do need to change/update our connections which could disable the connection for a bit. User’s usually do not notice the changes but if your cards will not fix, do write help@expensify.com so we can be sure to let you know what might be going on.
Commercial Cards/Centrally Administered Cards:
If your company does have a commercial card or wants to centrally administer your corporate cards, we still have you covered. If you are interested learning more please do check out this page.
As always, if you have any questions please write us at help@expensify.com and we will be happy to assist.
Pro-Tips Monday: Multi-Page Receipts
Managing multi-page PDF receipts in Expensify is simple. To begin, just upload them as you would usually (forward to receipts@expensify.com or upload them to the site). Once uploaded, you are free to attach the PDF to an expense much like any receipt image. You’ll notice that the thumbnail image in Expensify only displays the first page; don’t worry, we’ve got the other pages too.
In order to view all receipt pages just open the ‘Edit Expense/Receipt’ window and click the ‘download’ button below the image. This will open the receipt, in its entirety, in another tab in your web browser.
Alternatively, select the ‘Include full page images in PDF’ option on your report before printing a PDF and you’ll be able to view all pages of a receipt in the resulting PDF.
If you have any further multi-page questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at help@expensify.com and we’ll get them smoothed out.
EXTRA! EXTRA! IRS Increases Standard Mileage Rates for 2013!
Each year, the IRS updates the reimbursable mileage rate for business travel to reflect the costs for operating a vehicle. With (still) prices going up, you are now able to claim $0.565 per mile travelled in 2013. Check out the full details on the rate change at IRS.gov.
All new Expensify accounts created after the mileage rate change takes effect will already be updated with the new rate.
For personal users, change your rate by going to Settings > Preferences and clicking the ‘change’ button to the right your miles unit.
For policy managers, please go to Settings > Policies > (choose your policy) > Basics and change the ‘Mileage Rate’ of your policies if you are using the IRS rate.
Disclaimer: We do not update everyone’s mileage rate because a vast many of our users utilize company rates as opposed to the IRS rate.
New Years Pro-Tip: Recent Destinations for Mileage Expenses
Now you can enter your mileage expenses quicker, making expense reports suck even less! When you create a mileage expense on the web app, click the ‘use map’ button in order to use Google Maps to determine the distance you traveled.
When you type in one of your last five destinations/starting points, we will remember it and give you the option to select it.
If you have any suggestions for shortcuts or features that would help you save more time on your expense reports, please let us know at help@expensify.com and we’ll see what we can do for you!
Pro-Tip: Employee Onboarding
So you’ve made the decision to ease the expense reporting burden of your colleagues and began using Expensify! Our hats are off to you. You won’t regret it. Now let’s get your employees up to speed.
We maintain various tools to assist with onboading of your employees. We recommend you share a combination of these to enhance learning and get your company more acquainted with Expensify. If you’d like to work with us to put your onboarding plan together, contact us at help@expensify.com and we’ll get help sort it out.
1. Communicate Company Expense Policy
Provide your team with guidelines and rules for the expense reporting process. These details can be shared via internal email, and we also recommend summarizing these on invite (through our customizable welcome message). Details include but are not limited to:
- Expense categorization directions
- Company expense rules (max expense age, max expense amount, receipt required amount, etc.)
- Personal and company credit card policies
- Report naming policies
- Reimbursement processes and timing
- Approval workflows
Best for: Ensuring a smooth roll-out.
2. The Getting Started Page
This is a broad overview of using Expensify for employees, in a step-by-step guide.
Best for: Users that prefer step-by-step written directions. The initial view is very simple, with links to detailed feature and terminology definitions.
3. Expensify Workshops (Live and Pre-Recorded)
We host live and pre-recorded workshops to train employees on the basic functions of Expensify. These functions include:
- Creating/importing expenses
- Creating reports and adding expenses
- Submitting reports for approval
- Adding an ACH reimbursement account
Best for: Users who prefer to learn with audio direction and visual demonstration. The learning is very straightforward. We recommend that all Workshop attendees also use our Getting Started page and Help site as research companions.
4. ExpensifyHelp
Your employees can find detailed descriptions of every facet and feature in Expensify on our Help Site. It serves as a great tool in learning about Expensify, becoming familiar with terminology, and setting up features for your company or employee accounts.
Best for: Referencing specific features or processes in Expensify. This is by far the most in-depth of all tools. Feel free to skim, but we find that ExpensifyHelp is most efficient by searching for specific information.
5. Contact our Support Team
You put that IKEA table together without any help, Expensify should be a walk in the park… Just kidding.
If your employees still can’t find the answers they’re looking for, our support team will be more than happy to answer any questions and provide advice.
Best for: Getting answers to company specific questions, once you’ve exhausted all of our other documentation.
6. The Expensify Blog
Obviously, you’re familiar with our blog since you are here. This serves as a reminder to share the blog with any interested employees. We post pro-tips, best practices, and advice for specific use cases on our here every week.
Best for: Keeping up with new features, use cases and expense report best practices.
How Do You Expensify: Using Expense, Receipt, and Report Filters
Get the most out of your Expensify experience; learn a little bit about slicing and dicing our Expenses and Receipts pages using filters. Not only is this knowledge handy for tracking down your expense data, you can also use it to capture subsets of your expenses for analytics as well as editing multiple expenses and receipts.
To begin, you’ll find filters on the left side of the Expenses and Receipts page. Also, date filters on all pages of Expensify are, by default, set to view the last 90 days. To view any expenses previous to the last 90 days, extend the date filters on the page to include your desired dates.
Expense Page Filters
Breakdown your expenses by four types of expenses:
- Unreported Expenses have not been added to reports.
- Unsubmitted Expenses have been added to a report, but the report has not been submitted yet.
- Reported Expenses have been added to reports that have been submitted.
- Deleted Expenses have been deleted, but can still be accessed in case you made a mistake. (We know you don’t make mistakes and never have to use this.)
You can also filter your expenses by the card they were imported from and the category/tag they have been marked with.
Receipt Page Filters
Similar to Expense page filters, you can view different receipt types: Unreported, Unsubmitted, Reported, and Deleted. Beyond this distinction, you can view receipts that have been attached to expenses, receipts that have not, or both.
To learn a little more about the Reports page filter, check out our Understanding Report States post from a little while back. If you have any questions about filters or any feature of Expensify, as always, please feel free to contact us at help@expensify.com.
Pro-Tips Monday: Taking Control of a Policy
Being a policy owner has it’s benefits. You are automatically and permanently given admin privileges on the policy. You get to say you’re the owner. You are granted the right to add or remove other admins at a whim! (And you have to pay for the policy usage, but don’t worry about that, you’re the boss!)
If you’d like to claim any of these fine perks for yourself you’ll need to take control of the policy. To do so, first you’ll need to upgrade to the plan of the previous owner. Then you’ll need to be added to the policy with Admin permission.
Once you’ve become an Admin on the policy, navigate to the Billing Section of the policy and follow the directions there to become the owner of the policy.
Once you’ve taken over billing you are the proud new owner of the policy!
If you have any issues taking policy ownership or have any questions about the process, please contact us at help@expensify.com and we’ll be glad to provide you with answers.
Bulk Report Actions Are Alive!
Good news for Expensify administrators: You’re now one, (err…two), clicks away from approving and reimbursing submitted expense reports in bulk. Yes, that’s right! It’s now possible to approve and “mark as reimbursed” all submitted expense reports with our new “bulk actions…” button, a time-saving feature available to companies on the Corporate Plan.
We’ve added bulk report actions for those companies that see hundreds, even thousands, of expense report submissions every month. It’s also designed for companies that use a multi-level batch approval process, typically ending with final approval in bulk by the CFO. Whatever the case for your company, here’s how bulk report actions work:
Corporate plan subscribers will now see a “bulk actions…” button at the top of the Reports page.
Then, by using filters, it’s possible to select only the batch of reports that require your attention. Bulk actions allow you to either “approve and forward,” “final approve,” or “mark as reimbursed.”
And you’re done! One word of caution: Any policy violations will be ignored with bulk actions, so please make sure that someone at your company has thoroughly audited each expense report for correctness and compliance beforehand.
We hope you enjoy this new feature! If you have any questions, or if we can help with anything at all, please write us at help@expensify.com.
How Do You Expensify: Tracking Tax Deductible Expenses
Here at Expensify we make expense reports that don’t suck, but that doesn’t mean we’re just a one trick pony. Just the other day I was having a chat with one of our ops maestros and keeping track of your tax deductible expenses with Expensify came up. (As you can tell, we engage in some rather highbrow discourse.)
He creates a report to store all of his tax deductible expenses for the year. Whether it’s donating to charity, traveling for work, or incurring any non-reimbursable business expenses, he just snaps a picture of the receipt and adds the expense to his tax deductible report. At the end of the year, he runs a report and it’s all there ready for the IRS, simple as that.
So if you have any use for money in your life this may be a great way to make sure you hold onto more of it. If you have any questions about keeping track of your tax deductible expenses with Expensify or Expensify in general, feel free to email us at help@expensify.com!
