Deep Dive: Understanding policy types

Amanda DeWitt
Amanda DeWitt Expensify Success Coach - Admin Posts: 84 Expensify Team
edited February 2023 in Deep Dive Docs

Choosing your policy type is an important first step when adopting Expensify so let's take a look at all the options!

The starting point for an Expensify account is a free account. This will give you access to most functionality for an individual user. A free account includes an Individual Policy and is limited to 25 free SmartScans per month.

If you need to use Expensify with other people, such as for a business, you may want to set up a Group Policy, and we have two paid plans and one FREE plan for this! 

Your billing will depend on your plan type, whether you use Expensify regularly or ad-hoc, or a bit of both.

Let’s look at all these options below.

Policy Types

Getting right to it, you must be wondering, "what's a policy?" Your Expensify policy is where you create expense submission rules, define approval workflows, connect your accounting system, configure reimbursements, and more.

Individual Policy

There are two Plans on the Individual Policy; Submit and Track. Both are configured within the single Personal Policy available in the Individual tab.

You can always tell whether your Individual policy is configured for Submit or Track based on the Paper Plane icon (Submit) or the Piggy Bank icon (Track).

The Individual Policy is completely free to use, however, if you'd like to use it with access to Unlimited SmartScans, you'll need an Individual Monthly Subscription which can be activated from the Settings > Policies > Individual page:


You can always change the Individual Policy Type from the Settings > Policies > [Individual Policy Name] > Plan options.

Group Policy

Unlike the Individual tab, within the Group policies tab, you can have multiple policies based on their Plan; either Collect or Control or FREE. You can create multiple group policies without any additional cost, you’ll be charged based on the number of active users across all of your policies. If you have a Free Plan and a Collect/Control policy, you will still be charged at the appropriate rate for your Collect/Control policy. If you have both Collect and Control policies, you’ll be charged at the Control rate. 

  • A Collect plan is ideal for small groups who only need basic features such as expense approvals, reimbursement, corporate card management, and integration options. This has a starting price of $5 per user.*
  • A Control plan is the most popular option. For a much deeper level of control and policy configurations, a Control policy offers multi-stage approval workflows, corporate card management, integrations, and more. This has a starting price of $9 per user.*
  • A FREE plan is ideal for small businesses. You will get a dedicated workspace to manage your Expensify card and reimbursement of expenses! Read more about the FREE plan!

*See this Deep Dive for more detail on how your set-up affects your monthly price per user.

All subscriptions are managed from the Settings > Policies Group page under the Subscriptions dropdown.

Remember, the subscription is relevant to policies for which you are the Policy Billing Owner. To be most cost-effective you will want to have the same person own all of your company’s policies!

Choosing the policy that’s right for you will depend on your teams’ needs. Go ahead and check out our pricing page if you’re not sure which policy is right for you. You can change your Plan at any time!

Activity-based billing

We offer two billing options -- Annual Subscription and Pay-per-use Billing. Both options are billed monthly and use the concept of an “active user”. 

We define any report actions as activity. So within a given month, if a user's account has taken actions on a report, they’re considered an active user. For example, editing, submitting, rejecting, deleting, approving, commenting on, exporting, or reimbursing a report and using chat will all count towards activity for the month. 

Note: Report actions include those taken by delegated actors such as a Copilot or Concierge automation.

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