Expensify Blog

Expensify is used by companies of all sizes – from a few employees to a couple thousand – and so our training methods vary widely. But a few things remain the same: First, our top-notch support is always FREE. Second, we get way too excited about expense reports.

For Qvidian, a top provider of cloud-computing applications that improve sales effectiveness, we put together a tailored training process. Qvidian decided to host two online training sessions. Each session consisted of a:

• short introduction to Expensify
• viewing of our Using Expensify webinar
• presentation of specifics about company policy/use
• Q&A portion to round the training out

While their ideal procedure for using Expensify was simple, it differed in sequence from our “Using Expensify” webinar in a few fundamental ways. Rather than make a simple side note of these differences, we were happy to put together a personalized demo video to make their specific expense reporting process as clear as possible. To further ensure that their employees were comfortable with the system, one of our account managers even agreed to host the followup Q&A sessions… FOR FREE.

Are we tooting our own support horn? You better believe it. Are we getting too fired up about expense reports again? Probably.

The bottom line here is that we are glad to help make expense reports not suck faster by accelerating our users’ Expensify training.

Thanks to Qvidian for their participation in this chapter of ‘How Do You Expensify’. If you have any questions about how we can help train your employees or if you’d like to be featured in an edition of ‘How Do You Expensify’, please contact us via help@expensify.com and we’ll assist you in any way we can.

Welcome back to another riveting post in our How Do You Expensify blog series! This week we focus on Flurry, creator of the world’s leading mobile application analytics and data-powered advertising platform.

After working with John Iparraguirre at Flurry to simplify and optimize their expense reporting practices, we’ve found that the most cumbersome pain point in their expense reporting process was inputting expenses into QuickBooks. Prior to working with Expensify, John would have to spend 4 hours, twice a month keying his employees’ approved expenses into QuickBooks. Not only was this task time consuming, manual data transfer always carries the risk of mistakes no matter how exceptional the employee is. Enter Expensify!

Using our integration with QuickBooks, you can export reports from Expensify to QuickBooks with ease and speed. After connecting your Expensify account with QuickBooks, employees categorize their expenses using your QuickBooks expense accounts, submit their reports, and once they’re approved John can export reports, in bulk or individually, directly to QuickBooks. For those of you that have not had the pleasure of manual data entry, trust me this is way better. Don’t take my word for it, John Iparraguirre sums it up eloquently:

Transferring expenses into QuickBooks went from a 4 hour task to 15 minutes with Expensify.

That’s 1/16th of the time, not to mention increased automation that safeguards against mistakes in transit. Not too shabby.

Thanks to John and Flurry for letting us highlight their experience with Expensify! If you are interested in setting up your QuickBooks – Expensify connection or if you’d like to be featured in an edition of ‘How Do You Expensify?’, please contact us via help@expensify.com and we’ll be glad to assist you.

I first heard of Team Rubicon about one year ago when their Founder, Jake Wood, wrote in asking to get his direct deposit account set up.  I was so impressed with the work they are doing that when we started up the ‘How do you Expensify’ series they were the first group that came to mind.  

Made up of hundreds of military veterans, Team Rubicon takes the skills and strength forged on the battlefield and puts it to work saving lives around the world.  They have made a real difference in helping disaster torn areas such as Pakistan, Chile, Burma, and also back here in the U.S.  Currently they are hard at work in Haiti, (Remember that earthquake?  Team Rubicon never forgot) and South Sudan.  We couldn’t be more proud to count them as Expensify users, and we take great pride in any small way that we may be assisting them in their work.

Team Rubicon’s John Webster checks on a sick child’s heart rate. What did you do for the world today?

I recently had a chance to ask Jake about what works best for him and his team in Expensify and he was kind enough to take the time to share a few thoughts.

I’d say that perhaps the best example would be when we have a mission domestically.  We get a lot of spontaneous volunteers who are driving in from as far as 500 miles to respond.  Many of them need reimbursements rapidly since they are fronting the costs.  Expensify allows them to take a photo of their receipt from the field and save it, which is crucial.  Also, with the mileage tracker, it’s the easiest method we’ve found to reimburse miles. ~ Jake Wood, Team Rubicon

Whether you are traveling across the war torn African savana, or just delivering supplies to a local outlet of your business, Expensify can suit your needs equally well.  On our mobile apps, you have access to multiple means of mileage tracking – from manual entry, odometer readings, or even our newest feature, GPS tracking.  Whatever your needs, we have an option that will suit them.

Tracking Mileage: Whichever Way Works Best For You!

Team Rubicon’s Zach Smith saying good bye to his friends in Pibor, Sudan. How awesome is that scene?

So if you haven’t had a chance to try out our mobile mileage entry why don’t you give it a shot!  And also please do check out Team Rubicon and the amazing work they do around the globe.  As always, if you have any questions, or if there is anything at all Expensify can do for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us at help@expensify.com.

In our new Wednesday series, we’ve set out to explore the topic of “How Do You Expensify?”, highlighting how individuals or companies use Expensify uniquely. Our focus in this series is broad, but we’ll try to limit our scope to best-practice expense management processes, while also highlighting the amazing dexterity of Expensify’s feature set. To begin, we figured why not highlight our most familiar users, ourselves!

Yes, we love our jobs. Yes, that technically means we love expense reports, but we hate spending unnecessary time on them. In that spirit, we use a few nifty features to streamline our process: creating expense rules for recurring expenses and auto-titling reports.

Using Expense Rules for Recurring Expenses

Expense Rules allow Expensify to learn and replicate the way you categorize and tag your expenses. For example, I’m a sucker for a nice filet mignon and I end up at Ruth’s at least 4 days a week. (Thanks for lunch, Expensify!) I’ve set an expense rule to automatically categorize expenses as ‘Employee Morale’ and tag it as ‘Garrett’ if the merchant reads ‘Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse’. Once I snap a quick picture of the receipt with my Expensify mobile app and SmartScan it, my expense rules automatically take care of the rest. To show you how it’s done, I’ve included a picture of me tagging and categorizing my expenses below. (Get it? Because I’m not doing anything.)

Creating Custom Report Titles

To keep me from working too hard, we’ve also automated the naming of reports in our Free Lunch policy by using Custom Report Titles. For our title, we use a basic title (Free Lunch) followed by the date range for the expenses. Learn how to use any combination of report fields (dropdown or textbox) and formulas to create relevant, replicable titles for your policy on our Report Fields page.

These tricks simplify our process, but more importantly they make sure I’m reporting my expenses correctly. Correct expense reporting is a safety precaution here because incorrect procedure will get you a bout in the Expensify octagon with this monster and he’s way less cuddly than he looks.

If you have any questions about custom report titles, expense rules, or if you’d like to be featured in an edition of ‘How do you Expensify?’, please contact us via help@expensify.com and we’ll be glad to assist you.