Step 1: Account Set-up

After you’ve signed-up for a free Expensify account, visit www.expensify.com/upgrade to upgrade to the Corporate plan and add GL Code functionality.

Add GL code functionality by upgrading to Expensify's corporate plan

Step 2: Create an expense policy

The Corporate plan also allows you to create an expense policy, or the umbrella under which all employees can create and submit expense reports.  To create an expense policy, visit the Expensify Dashboard and click on the button to “Set up a policy” (or if you have already created an Expensify account, you can go to Settings>Policies).

Set up an expense policy to begin importing GL codes

Step 3: Enable GL codes and add/import into your expense policy

In the basic section of the expense policy setup dialogue, you will see a checkbox to use GL codes.

Enable GL code functionality in the basics section of your expense policy

Enabling GL codes will reveal a new column in Expensify Categories.

You can add GL codes manually to test out our functionality, or you can import a CSV file that contains your account names and the corresponding GL Codes

You will also see a GL column for Expensify Tags.

Like Expensify Categories, with Expensify Tags you can input some GL Codes to test out our functionality, or you can import a CSV file that contains your customers/projects/etc. names and GL codes

Finally, you can associate a GL code with each of your employees.

If your employees are setup as vendors or cost centers, you can associate a GL code with them as well

Step 4: Customize your CSV export file (based on the format accepted by your accounting package)

After you set up GL codes for Expensify Categories and Tags, you can create the customized CSV format that is accepted by your accounting package.  To do so, click on the “create policy CSV export” button that appears below the People section in the expense policy setup process.  Clicking this button will take you to the following screen.

Expensify allows you to stipulate the order as well as the information contained in column of your CSV file

Expensify also has a formula helper on the righthand side of the screen.  Click on a name, and Expensify will reveal a formula that you can copy and paste for your CSV export file.  For instance, say you want to add a column that includes the email of the report submitter.  To do so, use the formula helper to go to Report>Submit>From.

Expensify's formula helper allows you to copy and paste the formulas for information you'd like to include in your CSV file

Step 5: Export expense information into your expense policy CSV file and then upload to your accounting package

Once your GL codes are mapped to Expensify and your expense policy CSV export format is set up, you can choose to “export to…Policy CSV Export” for any approved reports.  Your exported CSV file will look something like below.

An example of a customized CSV export

Now you just need to import your CSV file into your accounting package!  All done in five steps!

SO excited about these balls!

Before we get into any detail on how to get this set up, the first thing you want to do is to make sure that you can log in to your bank’s website. If you can’t, Expensify will not be able to communicate with them.

Link your account by clicking the Import credit card/bank account icon on your Dashboard and follow along with the step by step instructions.

Additional cards and accounts can be added by going to Settings -> Credit Cards and clicking on the “Import card/bank” button.

Step 1
Pick your bank from the list of most frequently added banks or type in its name to bring it up in a search

Step 2
Connect with your account by using the same Username and Password you use for online banking.

Step 3
We’ll pull in all of the accounts tied to your username; just pick and choose the ones you want to import. If you are importing a corporate credit card, or any other account that you don’t pay directly, make sure to un-check the box for “the expenses on these cards are reimbursable” when importing the card.

You can learn about this and more by visiting our help section at https://www.expensify.com/help or email Omar@Expensify.com!

We have this amazing feature called Domain Control to help make everyone on your team happy (including your boss!).  Domain Control enables you to manage user accounts that are part of your company’s divisions. With a domain under your control, you’re able to:

• require strict enforcement of rules,
• disable select features
• delete user accounts

Disclaimer: These abilities are powerful, use them wisely!

Before you get started, make sure that you are on the Corporate Plan.  If you’re not, then just click here and upgrade.  Next, head over to your Settings page, and click the Domain Control tab to the left. This is where you will add your domain.

You will then need to verify ownership of this domain before continuing. You may need to consult your organization’s IT department to complete the verification process… so make sure you get them a cup of coffee before you ask.

You have two very simple methods to verify your domain: Host a File or Add a DNS record.

Once your domain is verified you will now be in control!

With Domain Control, you will have the ability to create and monitor what we call Permission Groups.  Permission Groups are an easy way to group your employees, and let you monitor what they are able to do or not do within Expensify. You can give the Permission Groups you have created any combination of the enforcements/restrictions we have made:

Once you have created all the Permission Groups needed for your company, you can begin to Add Domain Members (read as: this is where you add your employees).

You will use their email address to identify who each of your co-workers are. Once they are added, you will be able to declare what Permission Group they belong to, as well as who is an Administrator.

Don’t worry, you will be able to go back and edit these fields whenever you would like to, provided you are still the admin!

You can learn about this and more by visiting our help section at https://www.expensify.com/help or email Omar@Expensify.com!

With 2012 in full swing, everyone at Expensify is excited by the opportunity to make this year even better. Don’t get us wrong, 2011 was awesome! But we’re a startup, and re-thinking the old to build something new is an oft-repeated mantra. As larger and larger companies increasingly drink the Expensify kool-aid – or our own Expensify beer thanks to a resident brewmaster – our sights are squarely aimed at the scary-sounding world of “enterprise accounting.”

As you may recall, in late-2011 Expensify unveiled functionality that allows anyone to create and edit a very flexible CSV export file. This functionality enables our system’s Categories and Tags to speak the parlance of enterprise accounting and CRM packages. It’s called GL Mapping, and we’re super excited about the potential of this functionality, especially in the context of our self-service, bottom-up adoption model. With that said, we are still in the exploration stage when it comes to enterprise accounting and ERP systems, and for some reason, it conjures images of scary pumpkins. So we thought we should take up some white space to learn what’s out there. Thus far, we’ve talked to customers that use Sage, SAP, Oracle, Netsuite, Intacct, and many others.

But more than names, we’re interested to learn about the types of accounting configurations that we need to support. Past conversations have worked out how to export Expensify’s data into a MySQL database before eventually feeding this information into an accounting package. This was luckily solved by a bit of accounting triage; in other words, correctly mapping the columns in the company’s database. We’ve also seen customers that must track a variety of inter-related GL Codes, both at the expense-level and at the report-level, and this has required a good deal of problem solving for all involved.

This brings us to the interactive part! We’d love to hear from you about your GL setup.  Specifically:

• Do you have any pain points with Expensify’s existing GL functionality? What are they?
• Do you feel like Expensify doesn’t support your accounting package or setup? Why?
• Is accounting integration the most important factor in your purchase decision, or does other functionality like automation matter more?

Please join this conversation in the comments or feel free to email jmills@expensify.com.  Thanks!

No Bugs Allowed

Now, we’re mostly a bunch of programmers, and to be completely honest, we haven’t had great experience with dedicated QA teams in the past. They generally fit very large, very slow organizations where it takes a dozen people to do anything. But we’re super small, very fast moving, so we need someone who can hang with that.

What exactly that is we’re not sure — after all, we’re looking for someone with QA expertise to tell us what to do. But as best as we can tell, we need someone who is comfortable with PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, CSS, and ideally a smidge of C++. Don’t worry, we don’t expect you to know all of them. Unless you are a mega rockstar. But a regular rockstar would be lovely too.

Are you still interested? Sweet! Next steps are as follows:
Check out expensify.com/jobs, read more about us, the team, and get a feel for our environment. Are you as into us as we are into you?
Email us your resume and the answers to the questions below with “Sweet QA Analyst” as the subject line (jobs@expensify.com)

1. What is the difference between QA and programming, and why do you prefer to do QA instead of becoming a programmer?
2. What do you want to do with the rest of your life, and how is Expensify a step toward your long-term goals?
3. Please forward this application to three people you think we should hire, cc’ing jobs@expensify.com. (Don’t worry, we’re eager to hire you and them. Indeed, good people have good friends: solid referrals here increase the odds we’ll hire you.)
4. How did you hear about us? A job posting? Chalk on a sidewalk? From a friend? Let us know where you saw this opening.

We look forward to hearing form you!

Now, after processing hundreds of thousands of SmartScanned images, we have learned a lot and fixed mistakes that couldn’t have otherwise been predicted.  As we continue to learn and find ways to improve, changes like increasing accuracy, and decreasing scanning time will make their way in to the system.  Some of the planned changes though are forward facing and more immediate:

• More free! Many of you have just a few receipts to deal with every month and there’s no good reason for us to hobble you just to eek out a few extra pennies. Instead of giving each account 10 free SmartScans, we now replenish them and give each account 10 free SmartScans each and every month!
• End of month billing. Just like your utilities, your phone and most any other usage based service, it makes sense to receive a total for all of your activity at the end of the month. Any receipts which are SmartScanned above the free monthly quota will now be billed to you at the end of the month.

With these changes on the horizon, the high level pitch and functionality remain the same: SmartScanning will take any uploaded receipt and pick out the date, merchant and purchase amount from the image.  The SmartScanned information is used to create a line item expense entry for that receipt, or to attach it to a matching credit card purchase.  Any SmartScans used above the free monthly quota will be billed at only 20¢ each at the end of the month.  Learn more about SmartScans.

Happy Scanning in 2012!

I’m not saying every day feels like living in some parallel universe where Sneakers meets Ocean’s Eleven. But some do, and I can’t help but think “Damn! I love working here.”

PS: Did I mention we’re hiring? Programmers, salespeople, and desperately looking for a designer. Know any? Send them our way, please!

French Passeport

Expensify is a very innovative company. We have an awesome expense report system, a cross platform framework for mobile development, real replication layer, … But we also innovate on non-technical areas, such as immigration.

But soon, Giorgio is going to join us in our office in San Francisco. For the occasion, he will be the first to really try our relocation box!

As the only non-American Expensify employee working in the US, I was the best person to beta test it.

Relocation Box

Usually, company pays for plane tickets, but first class flights are over-rated! Spending 12 hours in a nice box, full of peanuts, is the new way to travel! You will have the impression to be in a bubble. A square and white bubble …

And the janitor will also love it!

PS: no animals were harm in the making of this video.

Expensify is on a Bridge!

David

Witold

Tom

Nate

Zhenya

Jason

Matt

Kevin

Kirk

Thomas

Giorgio

Credits:

Picture 1 (group): Zhenya

All the others: Thomas

The apps:

iPhone
Android
BlackBerry
Windows Phone

This rounds out our offering of mobile apps by having the same app available on the four major smartphone platforms: iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone. Let’s see how it looks on the iPhone:

To install it, just click here, or search for “Expensify Lite” on your iPhone.

As with our other mobile apps, this app includes mileage & odometer entry, business card scanning, comments on receipts, and offline support!

But if you’re looking for more expense report management features in your iPhone app, our “Expensify – Expense Reports” app is still available in the App Store. Both apps are available, so pick whichever suits you best!

Tom.
Team Mobile

• More free scans! — It’s always free to upload receipt images without using our premium “scanning” feature.  And previously we gave every new account 10 free receipt scans, period.  But we’re raising the bar and now all accounts get 10 free scans every month.  Our data suggests that that’s adequate for about 98% of active users, with only a 2% of “power users” going beyond that (and they go *way* beyond that).
• And to celebrate just how awesome things are going, we’re giving away unlimited free receipt scanning through the rest of 2011.  Have you got a box of receipts you want to organize before the new year?  Now’s the perfect chance — scan away to your heart’s content and it won’t cost you a dime!
• 50-State Reimbursement! — We’ve made some very difficult and expensive but extremely boring legal changes that now allow us to reimburse via direct deposit in all 50 states (previously we only did 12). We’ve also dramatically changed the setup process to do away with “voided checks” and instead just have you enter your own information and confirm it with a series of “test deposits”. The result is a more seamless setup experience with universal coverage.
• New tiered account plans — Until now, every Expensify user had the same account with the same capabilities.  This worked surprisingly well, but as our user count skyrockets, we’ve found that it’s useful to have different “tiers” of accounts targeted to different users with different requirements.  All the functionality you’ve come to know and love is still there (and a bunch more), but now not all of it is thrown into everybody’s face all the time.  To change your plan, just go to https://expensify.com/upgrade and read all about it.
• New “Corporate” features — Recognizing the needs of some of our larger customers, we’ve added:
• GL Codes – Advanced, highly-customizable accounting integration with a wider variety of ledger systems.
• Domain Control – Central administration of accounts while protecting the privacy of users.
• Digital Signatures – Enhanced audit trail with signed snapsohts of the report stored at key points.
• No more Personal policy — just personal settings.  In the past, the “policy” is what defined your tags and categories.  Every new account included a “Personal” policy, such that everybody could configure their own categories and tags.  However, a policy also does a whole lot more than that, and the rest of the policy functionality was confusing users who just wanted the basics.  So, lesson learned!  Now you configure your categories in tags in a “Settings” section called, that’s right, “Categories and Tags”.  Brilliant!
• No more People page — Along the top of every page is a “nav bar” that has such items as “Expenses”, “Receipts”, and so on.  It previously had a “People” section that showed essentially everybody with who you’ve interacted.  However, it’s completely redundant with the “People” section inside each policy, has been a big hassle to maintain, and almost nobody used it.  So in the interests of staying focused on building the tightest, simplest product possible, we removed it.  I don’t think you’ll miss it, but if you, do — I apologize for the inconvenience!
• “Billable” and “Reimbusable” flags are now hidden — Specifically, you no longer see these flags unless you’re using a shared policy.  (The theory being that those flags only make sense in the context of groups, so let’s not confuse people individuals who are using Expensify.)
• And tons of smaller changes that you probably won’t notice.  Our general strategy is to make small, continuous, unannounced changes across the board, making the whole site a little better every day.  But when we do something big like this, we figure it’s best to just let give you a heads up to alleviate any potential for confusion.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for using Expensify.  Please contact help@expensify.com if you have any questions at all.  Keep on Expensifying!

-david
Founder and CEO of Expensify
Follow us at http://twitter.com/expensify

Gourmet Garden in Hoi An

People don’t really understand this concept of travel/work, so it is always funny to see their reaction when they see a group of people arriving in a restaurant, each of them turning on a laptop, starting to look for an electrical outlet, asking about wi-fi signal…

Witold, working on a bus

Our main problem is to find reliable access to the internet. The engineers can live without for brief periods as they are use Git to version our code (which fully supports offline mode), and also because our local development environment recreates the entire “Expensify ecosystem” without being connected to the network. This feature allow us to work in some pretty weird places.

A café in Hué

Be most of the time, we have no problems. Restaurant owners and staff are happy to have customers who are going to stay all day and ordering smoothies after coffees. Although, one restaurant charged us a daily rent to pay for our electricity!

Kevin, working in a hotel lobby

Our breakfast place in Hoi An

Gourmet Garden in Hoi An

Art Talk Cafe, Hanoi

Illy Café, Hanoi

Working in a hotel room

Hanoi, Busy Street

The first thing that feels different is the streets. There are nice a big roads and very small, dark and secret streets. The roads here are busy all day. Spending time to discover them is a veritable pleasure.

Street at Night

Hanoi, market Street

Hanoi small street

We spend the majority of our time in the Old Quarter district of Hanoi. This part of the town is supposed to looks like Hanoi in the past:  a bunch of small streets bordered by old buildings and lots of people!

Typical Hanoi Street

Hanoi cross roads

Of course there are also parts of the city that have much more wide streets, and more touristy, but I haven’t been there (yet).

With a population this large, the traffic can just be crazy.

“Now, I don’t read many ‘pop business books’ (air quotes), but there’s one I really swear by called the Innovator’s Dilemma.”

That’s been part of my pitch for a long while now. It’s even on tape. So guess how pleased I was to learn who else swears by it? None other than the late great Steve Jobs.

However, never one to pass up an opportunity to disagree with Mr. Jobs, I should mention that I took away a different lesson. Granted, I haven’t read his biography so I’m going off of other reports. But I’ve heard his opinion summarized as:

“Over-focus on profit is the problem, and the solution is to focus on the product.”

Granted, that’s watered down to a nice-sounding but highly ambiguous statement, so I don’t really know what he meant by that in practice (or if he’d have even agreed with that summary). But despite what he may or may not of have thought, I’d say the pursuit of profit isn’t itself the problem. Profit isn’t some happy accident that can only be pursued out of the corner of your eye. Rather, it’s how you pursue that profit that causes the dilemma.

Specifically, if your profit depends on continuously abandoning your core to move up market, you’ll eventually hit the top and be incapable of going back down. This is the inevitable fate of any (successful) organization with a direct salesforce that:

• Is compensated through commissions, and
• Sells to leads gathered from outside the core userbase.

Indeed, if your salespeople are encouraged to always go out and get the “next biggest deal” — and are given free reign to get it from anywhere — how else could they possibly accomplish that goal without abandoning the core market? If there aren’t an equal number of people pushing the product down into smaller markets, naturally you’re going to find yourself drawn into inexorably bigger markets. An organization like this can’t help but use their current market position as a stepping stone to move somewhere else, which as the book explains, is a fantastic rocket ride up to the top followed by disruption from below — typically by another rocket using the same strategy, and then another after that. It seems the cycle of life.

Mr. Jobs broke the cycle by (apparently) decoupling product focus from sales. And luckily he’s a genius with the intuitive vision to predict where the money was, so it paid off.

But I think that’s a risky gamble that could have gone the other way. Apple bet it all on black (or brushed aluminum, in this case), and it paid off handsomely. But don’t forget that it didn’t pay off so well a couple decades back when he tried the exact same strategy: Apple was only able to have this stunning rebound because of its previous tragic decline.

So I feel there’s got to be some other way to break the cycle — some way that doesn’t require going “all in” on the gut instincts of a genius at the helm. Some way to build an organization based on repeatable, customer-focused development that can be accomplished by mere mortals instead of an endless game of “double or nothing” played by the gods.

If product isn’t the answer, and sales isn’t the problem, then where else to look?  And that’s where I lay the blame at something surprisingly benign: the lead source.

Nobody talks much about lead sources. “Leads” — the people at which you point your salesforce — are just assumed to come from the same places other companies get them. SEM and SEO to landing pages, going to conferences and gathering business cards, channel partners, affiliate programs, buying contact lists from the many, many people who sell them, etc. And you might argue that all these leads come from such a diverse array of sources that you’re naturally inoculated against myopia. But all those sources have one thing in common: none of those people actually use your product.

So if your salespeople are always talking with people who don’t use your product, and are always incentivized to start with the biggest first, then they can’t help but pull you away from the needs of all the smaller people who already do use your product.

(This is aggravated further by outside sales typically talking with the “decision maker” — a person whose likelihood of actually using the product they’re buying decreases as the company size increases.)

All of this inexorably shifts your customerbase’s center of gravity up market, day after day, such that even if you’re in the most customer-focused organization, you can’t help but realize “our customers are getting bigger, that’s where our resources should go”.  This inevitably de-prioritizes the initial customers who got you where you are, in favor of the bigger customers that you’re always trying to get. It’s a vicious cycle; it’s a dilemma.

But what if you could somehow keep your center of gravity stable? What if instead of building new features, you just kept your organization focused on improving the features you already have, for the same people who already use them?  It means you have a lot fewer features.  And require fewer engineers.  And have less to support, all of which is higher quality.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could do this, and still achieve your growth and profit goals?

There are some obvious ways to try. One way is to just not take on larger customers — maintain a laser focus in a particular customer segment, always resisting the urge to move upmarket. That’s one way. But I wouldn’t recommend it — in any market, upmarket is where the money’s at. The margins are thicker, the opportunities bigger, the names sexier, etc. Any company that has no interest in going up market is one that intends to be overrun (or at best, acquired) by someone who does.

Another obvious way to do it is to have two teams: one focused on moving up, and another on moving down, such that you always balance out your growth. And that might work, if they’re very carefully balanced.  But that seems impractical to manage, so again, I wouldn’t recommend it.

A third option, and the one I would recommend, is to focus your sales effort on people who already use the product.  This way you avoid shifting the center of balance and create an organization focused on increasing engagement amongst existing users. This approach addresses the core deficiency of the lead source itself: the fact that new leads don’t use the product.

Now you could argue “Of course they don’t use the product; if they did then sales wouldn’t need to talk with them.” If the only way to use your product is to buy it, then that’s quite right! But as we know, that needn’t be the case. The internet is full of services that offer huge value at absolutely no cost. Services that have millions of “users” who aren’t yet “customers”. People who already use the product, even if they haven’t yet bought it.

What I’m describing of course is the classic “freemium” model: give away basic functionality for free such that some users will decide to upgrade. This isn’t terribly new.

But what is new is applying the freemium model in a space where the “deal size” is big enough to enable a sales team to make postive-ROI sales (where the cost of the sale is exceeded by its revenue). This isn’t Farmville — no salesperson is going to earn a commission by convincing you to buy a purple cow. And this isn’t a consumer product that encourages you to upgrade to a $10/mo plan. This is an enterprise product, with customers having hundreds or thousands or more employees. And using the existing users within an organization to serve as leads into converting the organization overall.

Ultimately, the primary purpose of sales is to drive up market. And it’s a slow, steady march taking on new customer segments as you firm up support in existing segments.  But this process is only destabilizing if doing so distracts from the core userbase. If the sales leads are instead drawn from the core userbase, however, then the only way to increase leads (and thus increase sales) is to also grow the core userbase from which the leads are drawn.  So long as your leads some from your active userbase, then you simply can’t lose touch with it.  This makes the entire organization — from the most senior salesperson selling the largest deal, to the most junior support person talking with individual freemium users — play for the same team, aligned toward the same goals.

In a sense, the whole company is spinning up the same flywheel.  It doesn’t matter who pushes, where, or how hard: the bottom-up adoption curve allows everyone to contribute to top-line sales success, no matter where they are in the organization.

This is how you solve the innovators dilemma, without sacrificing the move up market, and without losing touch with the core.

At the very least, this is the strategy that Expensify is using, and it seems to be working pretty well for us.

Note: If you’re interested, consider joining our “Salesforce of the Future!“

Throughout our journey, we’ve kept one ear open to the employees selling our product, and the other to the accounting and finance departments that have had to implement us. Through this approach, our product is poised to command an extensive presence among medium-sized businesses.  And so, with the stage set and the curtains drawn, Expensify is in the first act and first scene of building out a salesforce of the future! 

What do we mean by salesforce of the future? That’s a pretty nebulous statement, no? Yes, great point! You’re impressing us already!

In answer, the interesting thing about sales at Expensify is that your job will be just as much about selling our product as it will be supporting the diverse group of individuals, employees, managers and accountants that use our product. Thus, we’re looking for people who can speak in the parlance of accounting and finance departments, and who also have a knack for navigating the ins and outs of a deceptively intricate product – and masterfully so.

Can you troubleshoot on the fly? Great! Are you flexible in solving any given problem? Even better!

Our salesforce of the future will also be very comfortable leveraging various sales tools, including our internal lead generation database and unique online demos, to manage and seek out high value leads.

Important Notice: this isn’t a cold calling job. You will speak with people who have a genuine – sometimes fanatical – interest in our product. Yes we’re talking about expense reports, but people love us. Just check out what people tweet about us!

Finally, and most importantly from your perspective, we will aggressively promote the best among our team. Impress us and you’ll reap clear benefits, both financially and for your career.

Still with us? Awesome! Check out our jobs page, and then email your answers to the following questions to jobs@expensify.com:

1. Did you ever have a summer sales job when you were in high school? What did you sell, and what was your personal take on the product? How did you sell it?

2. If you were given free reign to choose the optimal set of sales tools, what would they be and how would they optimize your sales approach? (Feel free to list actual sales tools you’ve used, or fictitious ones. You’ve got free reign).

3. Pretend you had a month to do whatever you wanted. What would you do? And would this be sufficient time to accomplish the goals you set out to achieve?

4. What do you want to do with your life, and how is Expensify a step toward those long-term goals?

Thanks and we look forward to hearing from you!

So it is a long flight, with a least one stop. Be sure to bring something to not be bored to death during the flight, the airport waiting time, and other delays.

Waiting in SFO

Zhenya was the first to arrive (October 2), Kevin followed (October 4), then Matt and Jason (October 5), Witold and me (October 6), Nate and Giorgio (October 8), David and Kirk (October 19), and finally Tom (October 24).

My trip

I flew with Korean Airline. I departed SFO ( San Francisco Airport ), to ICN ( Seoul Incheon Airport ). It is a 12 hours flight, mostly during the night, and above the water, so I didn’t get many awesome views from the sky. Well except for take off …

San Francisco from the sky

When I arrived at ICN, I was of course totally jet lagged, tired, and grumpy. But ICN is an awesome airport: gigantic, quiet, clean, modern. And it was also my first contact with Asia! After leaving the plane, I had to go through a random and stupid security test which took forever.

Busy Airport

Korean Airline Hostess in Seoul

After that, I walked randomly in the airport trying to find Witold. We flew on different airlines, with only a 20 min gap between our flights.

Parts of the airport were full of people and others very quiet and peaceful. Like every airport, it’s full of stores selling beauty stuff, electronics and fast food.

Zen Airport

Busy ICN

I finally found Witold in front of his next flight gate. A few minutes later it was time to grab my flight from Seoul to Hanoi.

Reactor

Once arrived in Hanoi, we had to pass the border. You can buy your visa their if you don’t have one. It is cheaper this way. I bought mine in San Francisco, but Witold bought his at the border.
The next step was to get a taxi to go to the Old Quarter, find a hotel, and finally get some sleep!

Pictures From Thomas Genin

Flag of Vietnam

Expensify tries to be a cutting-edge company. We use awesome new technology and try to detect the new tendencies of the world of the expense report. But Expensify also tries to do some innovation on the side of the “team spirit building”.

One of these initiative is the annual offshore. Every year, Expensify spends one month abroad. This tradition was born in the previous start-up of the “oldest” team member and has been naturally repeated for the Expensify adventure.

What do you mean by offshore?

It is pretty straight forward: the team goes to work in another country. By the team I mean the whole team: CEO, CFO, engineers and non-technical employees.

We spent a few hours to discuss the choice of the destination. The requirements were pretty simple: a “cheap” country with decent access to the Internet, if possible a country that nobody has visited yet, awesome weather and an easy-to-get visa. The two finalists were Argentina and Vietnam. After a terrible debate, Vietnam was the winner.

So we booked airplane tickets to Hanoi, with a return date 30 days later. And over the course of a week, we were all in Vietnam!

This post is just the first one a series of post which will explain our trip and its great moments.