Deep Dive: What are Domains and how do I use them?

Ted Harris
Ted Harris Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 359 Expensify Team
edited May 2023 in Deep Dive Docs
The Domains tab in Expensify is the first place to look if you are managing Company Cards. Additionally, you can verify your domain if you need to control user account access or configure restrictions on users that belong to your e-mail domain.

This deep dive post covers the following topics:
  • What can I do from the Domains tab?
  • What's the difference between claiming a domain and verifying a domain?
  • How do I claim a domain?
  • How do I verify my domain?


What can I do from the Domains tab?

Domains are linked to employees, whose email addresses end with that specific domain name. For example, assume we have a company with the domain expensivepie.com. This would mean the following:
  • All expensivepie.com employee email addresses will end in "@expensivepie.com". For example, two employees might be john@expensivepie.com & lindsey@expensivepie.com.
  • But from the expensivepie.com domain, you can't assign CCs or rules to users on the expensivecrumble.com domain (since this domain is different). In order to do that, you'd need to claim or fully verify the expensivecrumble.com domain as well.

What's the difference between claiming a domain and verifying a domain?

Claiming a domain: Any Policy Admin with the company email address can claim a domain (or request access to an already claimed domain) to have company bills sent to Expensify and access Company Cards and Reconciliation for their company. Claiming a domain can only be done by a user with an email address matching the domain.

Verifying a domain: Gives you access to access additional features. In a nutshell, the additional features of verified domains exist to impose security/control on your domain users. Verification can be done by anyone with any email address, for example, an accountant firm for their client.

Verifying your domain will give you access to the following features:
  1. Receive vendor bills in Expensify
  2. Fine-tuned user restrictions through domain Groups
  3. Configure SAML SSO for logging into Expensify
  4. The ability to set vacation delegates on behalf of your domain members
  5. Consolidated Domain Billing

How do I claim a domain?

Claiming a domain is easy. If you are the first user from your company to set-up an expense policy in Expensify, you'll already be the Domain Admin.

Just sign-up for a new Expensify account and create a policy. Then, you'll gain access to the Settings > Domains page which is shown in the screenshot below:



From there, just click on your domain name and you can set up your Company Cards for management!

If you'd like to have your company bills sent to Expensify, you will be the primary contact to receive these bills.  

If someone from your domain has already claimed the domain, you will see the ability to request access from the existing Domain Admins. Or you can verify the domain to gain access.

How do I verify a domain? 

A walkthrough for this can be found here!

How can I remove my domain?

If you need to remove your domain, you can accomplish this in 2 steps:
  1. Remove all other Domain Admins from Settings > Domains > [Domain Name] > Domain Admins
  2. When you are the only Domain Admin left, click Reset Domain next to your email address
Note: After resetting the domain, if you have an email address on that domain listed in your Secondary Logins then you will continue to see the domain name under Settings > Domains. Removing the email on that domain from your logins will remove it from your list.


For a live overview of the Policy Admin role, policy management, and administration, register for our free Admin Onboarding Webinar!

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