October 2012 - Expensify Blog Expensify Blog

Pro-Tips Monday: Adding Commercial Cards for your Company

garrettmknight — October 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

With commercial card import, you can forget about cumbersome manual entry. Now your bank and Expensify will do all the typing for you! We’ll even automatically generate guaranteed eReceipts for all non-lodging transactions under $75.

It’s important to understand that Commercial Cards and Corporate Cards are different and as such, need to be set up differently. To ensure that you are using Commercial Cards and not Corporate Cards, email us at help@expensify.com.

Prerequisites:

Upgrade to the Corporate plan
Setup Domain Control

Setting up Commercial Card Import For MasterCard cardholders

Contact your banking relationship manager and request that your CDF feed be sent directly to Expensify via SFTP. Your bank will then initiate the feed through MasterCard’s global SmartData portal.
Notify us at help@expensify.com that you are having your CDF feed sent so we can match it to your Expensify account.
Once we’ve confirmed the feed is live and matched it to your account, you will be able to go to the Admin tab and assign individual cards to your employees by adding the last 4 digits of the card and the employee’s email address. In some cases, you may need to click on Update before the import will begin.

Setting up Commercial Card Import for VISA cardholders

Contact your banking relationship manager and request that your VCF feed be sent directly to Expensify via SFTP. Your bank will require some information about Expensify in order to send the feed. Contact us at help@expensify.com for this information.
Your bank will then send us a test file. We will confirm that it has been received and that the format is correct.
Your bank will put the feed into production and we will confirm that it is live.
Once we’ve confirmed the feed is live, you will be able to go to the Admin tab and assign individual cards to your employees by adding the last 4 digits of the card and the employee’s email address. In some cases, you may need to click on Update before the import will begin.

And voilà, you have your cards importing and creating eReceipts to make your expense report even easier! If you have any questions about Commercial Cards or setup, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

In Announcements

How Do You Expensify: Tracking Tax Deductible Expenses

garrettmknight — October 24, 2012 — Leave a comment

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!

In Announcements, Featured Users, Product Info

Offshore Update: The Good, The Bad, and The Awesome of Railay Beach

garrettmknight — October 19, 2012 — Leave a comment

The Good:

I mentioned in a post a few weeks back that a major point of our offshore is to focus on our strategy for the upcoming year and re-gel as a team. This is my first offshore with Expensify and we have already made tremendous progress towards both of these goals.

As a company, we relish the opportunity to discuss the heights we’d like to take Expensify to. While we make time in our day-to-day to stew on this, we’ve been allowed ample time to discuss, in depth, and crystalize the finer points. I’m not exaggerating when I say this year is shaping up to be an excellent one, for both Expensify and our users!

This is where all the planning magic happens!

The re-gel is also going spectacularly. We’re definitely getting closer and more confident in our colleagues all around, not to mention nicknames are spreading like wildfire. For a little fun, take a look at our Team page and guess at who’s who: Franky Danger, Crispy D, Tone Loc, The Frenchman, and Swag Da Vinci. Enjoy yourself!

The Bad:

My coconut shake consumption has escalated well into the danger zone (see depiction above). I’ve partnered with a local restaurant (it’s called “Local Thai”, in fact) to create a coffee/coconut shake. I’m aiming to bring it to the states as a subsidiary of Expensify. In fact, look out for a CocoLoco (already trademarked it) at a coffee/coconut shop near you in the coming year.

The Awesome:

We’re here to work, but we’re also here to have fun… and hustle back to work if need be. This past Saturday, a few of us decided to take a little jungle trek to another beach to survey the scene outside of our local beach bubble. We discovered a slackline and had some fun until Witold got called back for a small error he needed to correct. Did he take the relatively easy, less-timely route back through the jungle? Of course not, it would have taken longer. Instead he blazed a path through a cave and over a cliff back to our HQ. Now that’s dedication.

In Company Life

How Do You Expensify: International Travel Best Practices

garrettmknight — October 18, 2012 — 1 Comment

In light of our international business travel, we figured it is high time to let you in on Expensify’s best practices for expense reporting abroad. These aren’t hard and fast rules, but suggestions to make reporting expenses the easiest it can be.

Just doing my expenses. Don’t mind me.

Reporting in Multiple Currencies

Whether your big business trip is across the world with several stops or just over the border, we support the currency you’re using. Expensify works with 159 currencies, worldwide. We convert expenses to your reimbursement currency using the international “market close” rate available from Oanda.com. So rest assured that your pad thai, schnitzel, and tacos will be expensable.

Using ‘Offline Mode’ in the mobile app

If you don’t have a strong cellular data signal, enable ‘Offline Mode’ in your app’s settings menu. This will save battery and any roaming fees associated with international travel. Once you have access to WiFi or a strong, affordable, cellular data signal, simply disable ‘Offline Mode’ to upload all of your accumulated expenses.

Important Note: When ‘Offline Mode’ is enabled, your receipts and expenses are only saved on your Expensify mobile app. This means that if you sign out of the mobile app or uninstall the app while you have unsynced information, you will lose it.

Finish your report on the flight

Once you’ve closed the deal and you’re flying high, on your way home take a minute to finish up your report. Add all your expenses to your report, give it a good once over, tap the submit button and you’re done!

Please let us know if you have any international expense reporting tips to add or if you have any questions about our tips by emailing help@expensify.com.

In All, Announcements, Featured Users

Offshore 2012: Snorkeling!

— October 16, 2012 — 4 Comments

Matt experiences a deadly sea urchin. Precious memories.

Well you guys, an update from overseas. We have spent the past week in Railay Beach. Its been incredible and to celebrate, we went snorkeling over the weekend! The picture above is probably the best picture of the trip, mostly because Matt is giggling like a school boy (our favorite cookies, BTW) and probably pooping his pants a little bit. Apparently that particular sea urchin is especially deadly.

Ready Freddy? JKruse looks like he is!

Tom. Perfect.

Garrett diving into the water! So much fun in the sun!

Bromance at its finest

Sky while at the beach BBQ

After I was awkwardly flowered and betrothed to our guide. Pure joy?

sand bar strolling





: Matt and our guide (also named Alex) jumping/missing legs

Pensive David

Work it Puneet!

David creeping on us.

Dinna Time!

Some magic tricks for our eerie boat ride back

The team

If you can’t tell, I am so in love. We had a great day. The setting was incredible, but more importantly, we have an amazing team of people who are making this journey so unbeatably awesome.

In Company Life business travel, offshore 2012, team, team travel, Thailand, travel

How Do You Expensify: Using Your Report History

garrettmknight — October 10, 2012 — Leave a comment

Curious about what’s happening with your report and when it’s happening? Whether you’re a submitter, approver, or exporter you can find detailed history of your reports actions.

This history is especially useful in a myriad of situations , but we’ve found these to be the most common:

Checking the status of your reimbursment: ACH Direct Deposit reimbursement takes between 4-5 business days. If you’ve forgotten when your report’s reimbursement was initiated, you’ll find this information in the report history. Then count the days till you get paid!
Tracking your report through its approval workflow: Find out where in your company’s approval workflow your report is. Ex: your manager has approved it, but your accountant has not. (Bother your accountant!)
Comments on report submission or rejection: If you need to review and act on comments made on a report when it was submitted or in the case of rejection, they are all documented in the report history.
Proof of submission, approval, and reimbursement: Numbers don’t lie! This documentation will help you keep track of dates of important report actions.

While this is our best practices list of uses, don’t feel limited! Feel free to use report history any way you see fit. If you have any questions about report history or any of Expensify’s documentation, give us a shout at help@expensify.com.

In Announcements, Featured Users

Thailand Thus Far…

— October 8, 2012 — Leave a comment

So its been a few days for us, and Thailand is incredible. While work has been about the same (it really is true, we can work anywhere there is internet!), being able to explore Bangkok during lunch is amazing. Truly an adventure and an awesome way to break up the work day.

There are lots of little excursions we have collectively gone on and I have tried to put together a few of these pictures. My personal favorite adventure so far: Wine bar. Keep reading for the story below.

Honestly the pictures below barely begin to encapsulate how much fun it is to just walk around and explore. The temples you stumble upon are incredible, the markets are eye opening and the company is delightful. Seriously, how is this real life?

Lost in Bangkok

Street decorations


More street decorations

]
Right off the river boat into the heart of Bangkok


Passing by on the river taxi


Such cool clouds.


Dark Alley


Temple we weren’t allowed into because SOMEONE was wearing a tank top.

Fancy Wine Bar in Bangkok, maybe a little too fancy for us?

After mentioning a withdrawal from wine, David suggests we go to a wine bar downtown last night. Five of us cram into a 4 person cab, and it becomes very clear that communication with our driver is going to be an issue. With 4 of us uncomfortably squished in the back, David has the directions pulled up on his phone, but we still got out of the cab incredulous that we had made it (and severely cramped). When we get to the restaurant/wine bar (Opus, highly recommend it!) we realized we are considerably underdressed than the rest of the population. We had somehow wandered out of our hostel and its corresponding casual atmosphere into a beautiful, high end restaurant in which several of the patrons may have poo-poo-ed our obvious back-packing attire. Oops. Anyways in the background you can see the beautiful wine cellar they have where you can go hand select which bottles you would like to enjoy. We were also unaware that you were supposed to leave the bottle there and tell your server the bottle we preferred. We basically committed 8 faux pas in an hour.

Below are Shawn’s pictures from this market we wandered around. Saw a lot of weird stuff….

And below we have the Lumphinee Stadium for Muay Thai. Highlights? The stadium is not air conditioned and while it was pouring rain, several sections were shut down due to roof leaks. Oh, also, the violence. Two fighters left the ring in wheel chairs, one on a stretcher (that one made me cry) and one with his arm broken. While it was a little tooooo violent for my taste, I think the guys had fun [especially capturing pictures of me crying which will never see the light of day].

: Thanks JKruse for the idea…definitely a unique experience; Thats all for now! Updates to come as we explore the beach.

: And finally, here we are, Day One at West Railay Beach.

In Company Life business travel, company life, company travel, offshore 2012, Thailand, travel

Bangkok HQ 1 found

— October 2, 2012 — 3 Comments

The majority of the team has arrived in Bangkok. Today is our first official day of work for Offshore 2012.

In Company Life offshore 2012, Thailand

Pro-Tips Monday: QuickBooks Best Practices

Puneet Lath — October 1, 2012 — 2 Comments

QuickBooks is by far the most popular small business accounting software out there and is used by quite a few Expensify users. We wanted to take a moment to outline some best practices for the large constituency of QuickBooks accountants using Expensify.

Best practice #1: Export reports after reimbursing

If your company does reimbursement through Expensify, we recommend exporting reports after they have been reimbursed. This way the information that is reflected is most up-to-date and accurate. Otherwise, you will end up with a bunch of payables in QuickBooks that you will need to go in and manually reconcile.

Best practice #2: Remove any remnants of the Intuit App Center

Expensify used to offer the option to integrate with QuickBooks through the Intuit App Center. We recently discontinued this integration, so it is important to remove any remnants of this from your Expensify account. This includes deleting any secondary logins associated with the app center.

Best practice #3: Deleting and re-adding your connection

Whenever having problems with your QuickBooks connection in Expensify, the first thing to try is always to delete and re-add the connection. Sometimes the Intuit auth-token can timeout, causing the connection to break. In this scenario, simply deleting and re-adding the connection will fix the problem.

Additionally, in the case that there is a real problem, this allows us to identify and remedy any possible issues more quickly. When diagnosing issues in the integration, we need to start with a clean slate provided by readding the connection.

Best practice #4: Use customers/jobs for tags with billable expenses

If your company has billable expenses, you will want to use customers/jobs as tags. Expensify won’t be able to export billable expenses to QuickBooks unless there is a customer/job associated with each expense, so we recommend enabling customers/jobs as tags.

That’s it for today! As always, if you have any questions about anything QuickBooks related, please do shoot us an email at help@expensify.com.

In Product Info

Expensify Blog

Archives For September 30, 2012