Update: You might also enjoy our new Chrome Extension, or just sign in and click “import from…” on the Receipts page to see all the options below and more — including our new desktop scanning integration!
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Expense reports suck, and receipts are to blame. Expensify claims to offer “expense reports that don’t suck!” and they can’t be too bad — 100,000 companies now use Expensify, who upload over 10,000 receipts and submit over $2M in expense reports every day. But a challenge this great requires allies, so Expensify created the ScanAnywhere Alliance: a fearless crew fighting the toxic tide of crumpled, BPA-laced receipts lurking in pockets everywhere.
- Dacuda, inventor of the “LG LSM-100 Mouse Scanner” (in partnership with LG Electronics, and available at Fry’s and NewEgg): the first mouse that doubles as a realtime scanner such that you can capture receipts of all sizes (including long, long receipts) and use them directly inside Expensify.
- Genius Scan, an incredibly popular app that turns your iPhone into a pocket scanner by automatically finding the edges of the receipt, neatly cropping out the background, white balancing the remainder, and making it look like you used a flatbed scanner.
- Lemon, a beautiful new mobile money management tool, which provides a fresh perspective on your spending by scanning the purchase details from paper and email receipts, and then neatly categorizing them for your review and analysis — on the web and on your phone.
- OneReceipt puts all your purchases in one place, automatically aggregating purchase information from both online and print receipts. The website, and app coming soon, gives users a full look at their spending, with return alerts, shipping information and organizing tools to save you time and money.
But this is only the beginning. Even as we go into battle a single, unified force, we are in secret negotiations with ever more partners to swell our ranks. Visit http://blog.expensify.com to learn more, contact david@expensify.com to join, or see our intrepid CEO David Barrett speak live at SXSW about “How the Wallet Was Won: The End of Paper Receipts“. Together we stand, and together, we will prevail.
About Expensify
Expensify does “Expense reports that don’t suck!” by importing eReceipts from credit cards, SmartScanning paper receipts from mobile phones, submitting expense reports through email, and reimbursing everything online with QuickBooks and direct deposit. Expensify has raised $6.7M, builds incredible technology, and is always hiring.
Expensify Blog 
i am.intrested. How to go about it. Is there any demo which i can enjoy.
Unless I am missing something, you have not said where to find Lemon or OneReceipt. I have tried to find the apps for my (Google) phone. Coincidentally, I love the Chrome app and use it daily.
Having found Lemon and OneReceipt through articles in TechCrunch, now I cannot see how to link either one to Expensify.
If the iPhone itself is doing the scanning, will we still have to pay for individual scans?
@Freddy – No, if you’re using a ScanAnywhere partner who reads the receipt details off of the image before they’re sent to Expensify, then there is no need to SmartScan the receipt with Expensify and thus no charge. Thanks for asking!
@John and @kd – Yes, I’m sorry for not providing more comprehensive examples here. (That was the plan, but got left on the cutting room floor in the scramble to get the launch out.) But in general, purchase Genius Scan from the iPhone app store; after scanning an image click the Expensify icon and you’ll be prompted to enter your username/password. Once connected, you can upload Genius receipts to Expensify with one click. For Lemon.com and OneReceipt.com, the integration is on the website: create a free account on either service, scan a receipt, and then inside the web interface there is the ability to export to Expensify. Again, sorry for the unclear examples, but thanks for asking!
For the ANdroid community hoping that CamScanner may co-operate and become one of your partners….
Good work, David and the Expensify team. Keep em coming.
@JMK – Ah, can you do me a favor and contact them? It’s so much more compelling if they hear a request from their own users, rather than us contacting them out of the blue. Thanks!
I thought about doing just that quite a while ago. Then I recalled that I sent them a note after I bought their Pro version and did not receive a reply. At the time I suggested they consider adding S3 (Amazon Cloud Drive Service) to their embedded upload options, but I never got a reply. I ended up using a very good App called ‘Folder Sync’ to accomplish pretty much the same end (there’s another idea, maybe we could get the folks at tacit.dk to add Expensify to Foldersync as a ‘Folderpair’). It seems to me I’m getting better resolution on the receipt scans using the Camscanner app rather than what you just get with the default camera firmware.
Also I checked out some of the new possibilities noted above. I’m starting to get bewildered by all the possible options at a time when I’m still struggling to just get familiar with Expensify and get it set up to work for me. As well, there are other good apps such as CamScanner, Amazon S3, and FolderSync that also may hold great promise for some users if implemented correctly.
And BTW, that scan mouse is not in stock at Newegg (and not even listed on Newegg.ca), and boy it does not really loook like it would be comfortable to use as a mouse all day long!
I just got a wand scanner. I haven’t tried it out yet but I’m looking forward to seeing how/if it will work with Expensify. It is a Mustek Scan Express H610, incase anyone is wondering…
@Leslie – Awesome! Please let us know how it goes!
David, I just sent that request to support@intsig.com asking them to consider adding Expensify (and AMazon S3) to their existing Cloud Storage upload choices for CamScanner. You guys have been so good about providing scans I’ll do what I can to help. (I’ve heard a rumour that cats have started to mysteriously follow some of your staff around?)
Awfully quiet in here? Anyway, being a senior child of the New Age and wanting instant gratification but trusting in your judgement David, I went off in pursuit of enlightenment on OneReceipt, and Lemon. After spending 5 minutes looking at each, I still had no inkling why I’d want to use them. Perhaps if I had spent 10 minutes and used some better drill-down research techiques, I may have been enlightened. I had the impression that using plugins and tools available for Expensify I could amalgamate my expenses as represented by my receipts and online purchases. So I’m still in the dark as to why I would want to use either of these additional apps and what they would add to my monthly expenses. I would suggest that they do some work on their sites to allow us to get down the the nitty gritty spec’s and lose some of the flannel and spin.
In the meantime I spent a couple of hours working with a friend who knows Vuescan real well to come up with a profile that is somewhat optimal for scanning receipts for Expensify. The value of Vuescan is you can use your trusty old flatbed scanner that even Epson has abandoned, and the software is easy to obtain. If there are any others that want this .ini file and perhaps build on it and make it even better, I’d be happy to share it. Perhaps it wil also help excuse me for spending my time doing that rather than figuring out what the heck I’d want Lemon or OneReceipt for?
Oh well, I tried to download Lemon and was informed that there were no Android apps associated with my account. On checking further, it appears that there are many frustrated users with the same problem and no solution from Google. Just scribble.
Do you guys have any solutions?
matt, I clicked here from your newsletter. Hoping to find more details about the products you mention (pro tip: Links would be helpful). Also you mention the “Expensify Desktop Connector”, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Do you have any more details on the desktop connector?
I agree with the above comment, especially because Expensify has its own app (I discovered).
How can I import receipts from Lemon?
Hi Jonathan, sorry for the delay. Here’s a link: https://www.expensify.com/help/desktop Thanks!
@Peter – Hm, I’m not sure. Can you try contacting Lemon’s tech support? Sorry!
Installed the connector. First time recognized my scanner interfaces. Clicked the appropriate scanner and the connector crashed. Try again and wants to reinstall connector. Tried three times, ‘modify’, ‘repair’ and ‘remove’ and connector installation just hangs with ‘Waiting for installer to finish’…
I’m wondering how much time I am spending trying to get Expensify all sorted out and configured and there is a nasty niggling thought in the back of my mind telling me that with the amount of time I’ve spent so far I could already have completed manually entering everything into Quickbooks and been out skiing. So now I look at my efforts as an interesting hobby who’s reward will be unto itself in the simple satisfaction of getting this challenge accomplished.
One thing I have decided however, I would not recommend anyone take all their historical receipts and try to process them through Expensify retroactively, I think the value of this app may be for processing receipts in real time as you collect them in the field once you’ve got all your settings streamlined.
@JMK I use Lemon to scan the receipt details (so I don’t have to enter them) without using the scanning process on Expensify. (Which is limited per month). The whole extraction of data happens on my phone. I can edit categories, tags, etc and then export it to Expensify. It would be nice to be able to do all this in Expensify, but until then, Lemon works great. (and it’s free)
@Benjamin I can export directly from the Lemon app on my iPhone to Expensify. Expensify and CVS show up as options when I click on the export icon. (I have both apps on my iPhone.)
AH, correction. The edited tags and categories I do in Lemon don’t seem to export to Expensify. Darn. However the vendor/merchant and the amount are included, which is still helpful.
@JMK: You might want to use OneReceipt since it automatically scans all your emails and pulls out the receipts. You don’t have to manually forward each one everytime… That’s, obviously, if you are comfortable giving you email account info out…
@David Barrett: I have tried everything under the sun and not been able to figure out how to import the receipts from OneReceipt. I went into OneReceipt and “connected” it to my Expensify account. I have also tried clicking on the “import from” button in Expensify and then clicking on OneReceipt (that takes you to this blog?!?!). Not sure what else to try.
@Moe – There should be the ability to select a receipt and export it to Expensify; I apologize for not recalling the details. Can you contact OneReceipt to ask them for how they’re currently doing it? Thanks, sorry for the inconvenience!
Thanks you guys for clarifying what both those additional apps can do symbiotically with Expensify. Sounds like it is worth it to give them a try so I will do that when I’ve finished getting all my 2011 data caught up. Lately my main contribution has been identifying a glitch in the EDC where my scanner Twain drivers have been crashing it so they are working on that.
Figured out how to export receipts from OneReceipt. Once you scroll over a receipt, the “Order Options” drop down pulls up. In the drop down is an option to “Export to Expensify”. I don’t believe this option was there yesterday…but could be wrong…
Is there a way to add a custom field? I need to track taxes on purchases, we can apply to get some of them back. I suppose I can add a comment, but it would be better if I can add a field and use it to calculate a total in a report. Possible?
Hey Mike!
We actually have a Tax field that you can enable. Check it out! http://help.expensify.com/tax