Archives For November 30, 1999

Three big things going on:

– Can’t use Expensify because your company requires you to use some lame Excel template? We’ve got your back. Sign up for the SmartReport beta and we’ll learn your company’s Excel template and *fill it out for you*. So you can create your expense report using all of Expensify’s features (SmartScan, card import, mobile apps, etc) — but then submit a totally standard Excel expense report. Your company needn’t even know you’re using Expensify under the hood (though I can’t see why they’d complain). Free. Click here to learn more:

https://expensify.com/smartreports

– Wish our Salesforce integration were better? We did too, so we totally overhauled it to provide central employee management and tagging to both Accounts and Opportunities. We also added FinancialForce PSA integration (so tag to Projects and Milestones), and FinancialForce Accounting (so you can submit to Salesforce and use its awesome workflow features). Sign up for the ExpensiForce beta at this link to get early access — we’d love your help making it perfect.

http://expensiforce.com

– If you haven’t heard of Concur, they’re the Microsoft of expense reports. (They’re even in Seattle.) We don’t really compete because they’re primarily for huge enterprises while we’re all about SMB. But we’re being pulled into ever-larger customer deployments, and we’re getting compared to them more and more. Can you help us figure out how we stack up? Price, features, everything — if you have any thoughts, please share them at this link:

https://docs.google.com/a/expensify.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGY4OUpoMzF6LW1SWGRLQkdzbE1ZVUE6MQ

Thanks, I really appreciate your help with Concur, and am excited to get your feedback on the betas. Big things underway, it’s great to have your help!

-david
Founder and CEO of Expensify
Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/expensify

As you might have seen on the site, we’ve done some serious reshuffling.  To give you some quick background on each, the major changes include:

  • More free scans! — It’s always free to upload receipt images without using our premium “scanning” feature.  And previously we gave every new account 10 free receipt scans, period.  But we’re raising the bar and now all accounts get 10 free scans every month.  Our data suggests that that’s adequate for about 98% of active users, with only a 2% of “power users” going beyond that (and they go *way* beyond that).
    • And to celebrate just how awesome things are going, we’re giving away unlimited free receipt scanning through the rest of 2011.  Have you got a box of receipts you want to organize before the new year?  Now’s the perfect chance — scan away to your heart’s content and it won’t cost you a dime!
  • 50-State Reimbursement! — We’ve made some very difficult and expensive but extremely boring legal changes that now allow us to reimburse via direct deposit in all 50 states (previously we only did 12). We’ve also dramatically changed the setup process to do away with “voided checks” and instead just have you enter your own information and confirm it with a series of “test deposits”. The result is a more seamless setup experience with universal coverage.
  • New tiered account plans — Until now, every Expensify user had the same account with the same capabilities.  This worked surprisingly well, but as our user count skyrockets, we’ve found that it’s useful to have different “tiers” of accounts targeted to different users with different requirements.  All the functionality you’ve come to know and love is still there (and a bunch more), but now not all of it is thrown into everybody’s face all the time.  To change your plan, just go to https://expensify.com/upgrade and read all about it.
  • New “Corporate” features — Recognizing the needs of some of our larger customers, we’ve added:
    • GL Codes – Advanced, highly-customizable accounting integration with a wider variety of ledger systems.
    • Domain Control – Central administration of accounts while protecting the privacy of users.
    • Digital Signatures – Enhanced audit trail with signed snapsohts of the report stored at key points.
  • No more Personal policy — just personal settings.  In the past, the “policy” is what defined your tags and categories.  Every new account included a “Personal” policy, such that everybody could configure their own categories and tags.  However, a policy also does a whole lot more than that, and the rest of the policy functionality was confusing users who just wanted the basics.  So, lesson learned!  Now you configure your categories in tags in a “Settings” section called, that’s right, “Categories and Tags”.  Brilliant!
  • No more People page — Along the top of every page is a “nav bar” that has such items as “Expenses”, “Receipts”, and so on.  It previously had a “People” section that showed essentially everybody with who you’ve interacted.  However, it’s completely redundant with the “People” section inside each policy, has been a big hassle to maintain, and almost nobody used it.  So in the interests of staying focused on building the tightest, simplest product possible, we removed it.  I don’t think you’ll miss it, but if you, do — I apologize for the inconvenience!
  • “Billable” and “Reimbusable” flags are now hidden — Specifically, you no longer see these flags unless you’re using a shared policy.  (The theory being that those flags only make sense in the context of groups, so let’s not confuse people individuals who are using Expensify.)
  • And tons of smaller changes that you probably won’t notice.  Our general strategy is to make small, continuous, unannounced changes across the board, making the whole site a little better every day.  But when we do something big like this, we figure it’s best to just let give you a heads up to alleviate any potential for confusion.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for using Expensify.  Please contact help@expensify.com if you have any questions at all.  Keep on Expensifying!

-david
Founder and CEO of Expensify
Follow us at http://twitter.com/expensify