Expensify Blog

Do you or your company use Bill.com? Have you thought about using it but you wanted to make sure that you could integrate your Expensify account with it? Well good news, you can!

If you don’t know about Bill.com – Bill.com is a great platform to streamline and automate vendor bill payment and customer invoicing. To read more about them, visit their site: www.bill.com

Once you have created your company specific Bill.com email address, you will then use that to send your company’s expense reports. When a report has been approved and is ready to send, you will use one of our features in the Reports tab, the ‘share with accountant’ button across the top row:

Once you click that button, you will then see the option to send this report to your @bill.com email address you have already set up.

The ‘share with accountant’ button will remember the last email address that you used for each policy. So if you have multiple policies, you will only have to enter the email address for each policy once.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email Help@expensify.com, tweet at us: @Expensify or just send us a smoke signal.

Recently, I have been receiving a lot of emails asking for help on how to sync Expensify with QuickBooks – so I have the need to re-blog this.In case if you still have questions, we do have a very detailed, step by step guide in our help section as mentioned above (www.expensify.com/help/quickbooks) as well as a weekly Webinar every Friday at 11:30am PST that will go over how to establish this connection and every possible other connection to your account package supported by Expensify. To register for that, click on any of the following links:

You’ve finished implementing Expensify across your entire company when your boss walks in and tells you that you will need to have more control with the users under your company’s Expensify account… You might be thinking to yourself at this point, “How am I going to do that?!?” Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered!

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!

Expense policies in Expensify offer the option to create custom report fields, which are appended inside each report. Users often ask us how they can include custom fields in a report which are complex and dynamically update with relevant information. There is actually a way to do this with Formulas, a little not-so-secret feature with powerful effects. When used right, formulas can help you achieve pretty much any output you’d want in a report. The best way to learn about formulas is with an example.

A Formulaic Example

Let’s suppose that we have three custom fields in our report, which the submitter of the report is required to fill in: Type of Expense, Client Name, and City.

Now, suppose we want to add a fourth field for our Accountant to use, so that he can code the Report appropriately in the accounting software. He needs the field to include the City name and the report total, along with the report submitter’s email. This new field, however, does not need to be filled in – it can be dynamically generated with the existing values using Formulas.

First, add the title of the new field.

Then, put the formula in the value of the field. Use the formulas help page as your cheat sheet. We can add the report submitter’s email with: {report:submit:from}. Let’s also include the City by accessing the field’s value: {field:City}. Finally, we add the report total’s reimbursable amount to the mix: {report:reimbursable}.

The Final Result

To recap, the value for the field Accounting Code is: {report:submit:from} – {field:City} – {report:reimbursable}. This ends up showing the report submitter’s email, the City field, and the reimbursable total. Moreover, this field will be automatically calculated on the fly inside the report.

To make the report title itself dynamic, just add a custom field named “Title.” You can check out our formulas, and other tips on how to use them, in our awesome guide here: https://www.expensify.com/help/formulas. Explore the power of formulas in your expense reports.

Each year the IRS updates the reimbursable mileage rate for business travel to reflect the costs for operating a vehicle. With prices going up, you are now able to claim $0.51 per mile travelled in 2011. Check out the full details on the rate change at IRS.gov.

Missed logging a few trips this past year? We’ve got plenty of ways for you to make up for it this year!

Log mileage…

• From your phone!

  Get any of our mobile apps and log your travel by entering in miles as the merchant and how far you drove as the amount.

• With an email!

  Add how far you traveled and the word miles to the subject line of an email and shoot it off to receipts@expensify.com.

• With a map!

  Create a new mileage expense directly from our site and click to show the map – enter in your start, end and any points in between to recreate a visual receipt for your travel.

However you choose to log your miles, we’ll make sure they’re converted to the rate you specify on the preferences tab of your settings page. For everyone still working on your 2010 expenses – make sure to update the mileage rate for the new year once you’re done!

Doing business in places others haven’t heard of? While we may not know where you are either, rest assured that we’ve got your expense needs covered – your purchases can now be recorded in any of 159 currencies.

Any expense in a foreign currency will automatically be converted to your home currency once added to a report. We use Oanda, the touchstone foreign exchange rate calculator used by corporations, tax authorities, auditing firms, and financial institutions worldwide, to do the currency conversion based on the day’s exchange rate when the expense was incurred. Check out the full list of supported foreign currencies on our currency conversion help page.

With the flow of the site improved, some of that same magic was put towards improving reimbursement times. Expenses paid back with direct deposit used to take 8 days to clear and land in the receivers account. We’ve just reduced that down to 4 days, making our reimbursement twice as fast!

If you’re already set up for direct deposit, welcome to the fast lane! If you haven’t had a chance to experience the awesome, set up your account and start getting your money back faster. Get more detailed info on our direct deposit help page.

Bigger, Bolder, Better

For the past couple of months we have been working on overhauling the Expensify Experience. But what exactly does that mean? For one, it definitely involves a visual makeover. But making it pretty is just the surface. There is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes to make entire *experience* a better one.

Consistency

Whichever page you are on, whichever dialog you open, or whichever button you click, you should know and feel you are inside Expensify the whole time. For an overall sleeker look we created a unified color scheme, matching icons, a bolder logo, evenly distributed whitespace, controlled font sizes, rounded corners, and some surprise drop shadows here and there. To ensure everything looks the same way, we established styling patterns for existing and future features that designers and developers must adhere to.

Interaction

Since we see and breathe Expensify every day, sometimes it’s hard to see the app from a user’s perspective, when everything is new and unfamiliar, and at times even confusing. Thus we strive to make each action unconfusing and obvious in order to match the user’s expectations as closely as possible. Do the buttons look like buttons? Will a user know how to close a dialog? Should that be on the left side or the right side? These and more are the questions we tested, implemented, re-implemented, and discussed at length. For example, we did away with the cancel and done buttons to close dialogs, and opted instead for just a regular X, which is the same way you close a window. We added an ellipsis … to buttons that open a popup. There is no more search button if the search updates automatically. The main site navigation has moved from the left side of the screen to the top. Now there is additional information with tips, hints, and handy shortcuts on the left side of each page, leaving much more room to manage your data. Thus by merging established web patterns with bold explorations of new ideas we made Expensify as easy to use as possible.

Flow

Complex systems are complex, no matter which way you look at it. However, you can still make a complex system understandable by breaking it down into discrete steps that show only what is necessary at that point. Therefore, we carefully analyzed our flows to detect problem points, confusing messages, and just common annoyances. Then we crafted a plan to get highlight the positives and get rid of all the negatives (even if it meant massively reorganizing existing code) in order to achieve a much smoother flow.

Sign Up: Before, it took a user at least 5 steps to actually sign up and start using Expensify, given that they didn’t diverge into other convulted steps. Now, you can sign up in one click, and BAM you’re in the Dashboard, ready to start.

Sign In: Often what seems so straightforward can contain a number of different errors which crop up at a crucial point; in this case, before you’re even in the app. We polished our sign in flow to distinguish existing users from new users, pre-fill your email, show only the relevant Single Sign On option, and helpfully inform the user of any errors, making sign in seamless.

Import a credit card or bank account: What used to be a dreaded process is now as easy as 1, 2, 3, literally! The new import flow nudges you along your import journey, whether it means uploading an OFX or CSV file and customizing the settings or entering your username and password from on online account.

Features

Expensify wouldn’t be Expensify if it were just a plain ol’ expense reporting application. To get that little extra kick we added sugar and spice and everything nice, plus these juicy extras. Some of these new features have already been popping up, and they are all part of the big redesign. Morevoer, there a number of brand new features packaged in this launch.

Centralized Billing: To do away with the confusion of who is paying, we introduced centralized billing at the beginning of the month. You can read more about it here.

Reports: We simplified report states and added starred reports so you can easily see which reports are awaiting action. You can read more about it here.

People: With the people page you can consolidate all of your employees, consultants, clients, and others you work with, as well as manage their admin status and their approval workflow all in one place. You can read more about it here.

New Expense: Now there’s a better, slicker, quicker way to create expenses. You can easily switch between adding a manual expense, be it a cash expense or from a card, and a mileage expense. You can fill in all the expense details, and even attach the receipt or map right there. Another of the big improvements is the ability to create expenses in bulk. Modelled after a spreadsheet, the Excel-like table of data allows you to add multiple expenses faster and in one go. And yes, you can even add mileage this way.

Analytics: You could already quickly filter your expenses by date, category, tag, keyword, and then view them in a line, bar, or pie chart. Now you can save these charts to your Analytics page, allowing you to see more data at a glance. You can also go back to your filtered expenses with one click, so you spend less time getting to your data and more time thinking about your data.

Dashboard: We recognize expense reporting and tracking can be overwhelming at times, so we decided to give you a stable ground to start on. At first you’ll see big icons that guide you towards the next action you should take, so you can start expensifying as painlessly and quickly as possible. Moreover, the dashboard changes as your needs evolve. After you’ve added or completed an action, you’ll see in its spot a useful summary of your activity along with shortucts to jump straight into productive expensifying.

And it doesn’t end there. We are continually working on fixing, tweaking, and adding new features, so you can always expect to see improvements in the Expensify Experience.

So, what do you think? I’d love to read your feedback about these big changes. After all, we work for YOU.

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. But when it comes from competition… what does that even mean? Take our award-winning job post, whose intro includes this line:

“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.”

A competitor — let’s call them “ExpenseFog” — posts the following *three days later*:

“We’re getting hammered by an explosion of users loving our product and we need a hero to come to the rescue. I can guarantee you an amazing opportunity to learn from some of the smartest engineers and business people LA has to offer. Plus an amazing opportunity to make money.”

Seriously dude? Write your own frickin’ job post.