Archives For November 30, 1999

We lead.. with our thoughts.
Just kidding, but we do have some thoughts we’d love to share with you.

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One of the greatest perks of working at Expensify is that you are surrounded by passionate, mature people naturally motivated to do the right thing.  This works because we hire people who have three key characteristics:

  • Extreme natural talent
  • Long term ambition
  • Deep humility

All three matter in different ways, but the third is particularly relevant here because it’s what ensures everybody has an appreciation for the limits of their knowledge — which translates into a low-drama, super collaborative environment.

Now, when people hear “collaborative environment”, they typically think about the various off-the-shelf management techniques, like Scrum, Agile, Holacracy, or whatever the pop-business gurus are selling these days.  We don’t use any of those.  Rather, we try to live by two main principles:  Continue Reading…

There are no shortage of challenges and problems running a startup, but by far the most difficult of all is hiring.  Attracting, retaining, and inspiring truly excellent people is the lifeblood of any startup, and Expensify is no exception.  But what I think is exceptional about Expensify is our commitment to maintaining and even raising the bar on hiring as the company grows.

That might not sound exceptional.  Indeed, it might even sound cliché.  But make no mistake: despite how easy it is to make this claim, it’s very difficult to actually put it into practice.   Continue Reading…

Last week Expensify hosted its very first conference, eponymously named ExpensiCon.  We are still stunned and humbled by its tremendous success, and I need a bit more distance before I can really talk about it in a broad way.  (Read “Expensify is the Slack of Accounting” if you want a taste.)  But I wanted to quickly share a chart that was created at the very last moment, and which became the central focus of the entire conference:

ExpensiCon-Infographic

 

There’s a lot in that graphic, so let me unpack it:  Continue Reading…

This guest blog post is brought to you by our friends at Intuit QuickBooks. Happy Holidays!

The Gift of Time Intuit guest blog post for Expensify

The best way to carry success into the New Year is to move down the checklist and make sure everything is wrapped up — figuratively and literally — for the holiday season. For business owners, this means final expenses, deductions, and tax preparations.  Continue Reading…

no cockroach signI won’t lie: it’s flattering and vindicating for the low-burn, efficient-growth strategies we’ve been championing for years to come into vogue.  For years we’ve watched quietly on the sidelines as low-interest rates and market doldrums have fueled massive investments into “Unicorn” startups, operating unsustainable business models at a massive loss.  And I can’t deny we’ve envied their shocking valuations.  So I’ll admit satisfaction that the mythical creature’s shine is wearing off, and that there’s enough appreciation of our sustainable, profitable models that startups of our class have finally earned a name of our own.

But “cockroach”?  Seriously?! Continue Reading…

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around Common Table Expressions for a while, and all the tutorials I’ve read started out with “simple” examples that were way too advanced for me to follow. Here’s my attempt to write a tutorial that starts as simple as possible.

Continue Reading...

[Our CEO, David Barrett, was asked to speak in front of the U.S. House Of Representatives Committee On Small Business about how apps like Expensify can impact small businesses in America. We wanted to share his written testimony. Link to the spoken portion is here: David Barrett speaks before Congressional Small Business Committee Enjoy!]

What Congress Can Do to help SMBs

  1. Help create awareness by working with the SBA and Chamber of Commerce to educate small business owners as to what mobile apps are available.
  2. Support the “gig economy” by strengthening employees’ freedom to choose when and how they want to work.
  3. Welcome legal immigrants to start more small businesses and to enable existing SMBs to compete more effectively with large enterprises.
  4. Simplify internet tax collection by centrally aggregating and publishing per-zipcode sales tax rates on a defined schedule.
  5. Encourage crowdfunding by reducing the risk and overhead for business owners to solicit funds from a broader range of investors.
  6. Reward true innovation by creating tough software patent standards to invalidate frivolous claims and stop patent trolls.

Continue Reading…

This guest post is Part 2 in a 3-part series discussing taxes written by Christopher Remus, author of Tax Pain Relief.

In Part 1, I talked about the different sources of tax season pain such as stress, tension, and anxiety. This pain is compounded by our attempt to avoid the pain by procrastinating, which only serves to add more pain to the process of getting our taxes filed.

The good news is, it’s possible to break the tax pain cycle using the system outlined below. How do you get started? Simply follow these five manageable steps outlined below. Continue Reading…

This guest post is written by Dave Anderson, Inbound Marketing Specialist at Xero.

When You need to hire an accountant for your small business

Running a business often requires making some tough decisions. And the decisions only get tougher when they impact your bottom line.

Fortunately an accountant will help during these times. Many people believe they are limited to doing the books and preparing tax returns, but an accountant can help you with so much more.

They can advise you on the best course of action of your business, based on their expertise and a deep understanding of your finances. Here are some common situations small businesses face where it makes sense to hire an accountant:  Continue Reading…

This guest post is Part 1 in a 3-part series discussing taxes written by Christopher Remus, author of Tax Pain Relief.

The Primary Cause of Tax Season Pain 

According to the the American Psychological Association’s 2014 Stress in America survey, “Paying with Our Health”, money is the most significant source of stress in our lives. So much that money has “consistently topped Americans’ list of stressors since the first Stress in America survey in 2007.”

The hard-and-fast tax season deadlines associated with tax filing dates make it nearly impossible to avoid coming face-to-face with this major source of stress in our lives.

The same study states that “nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of adults report feeling stressed about money at least some of the time and nearly one-quarter say that they experience extreme stress about money.”  Continue Reading…