6:00 AM
Paul B
Let me start out by saying this is definitely not a paid endorsement. My company recently made available a tool to make expense reporting more simple, and also make it easier for managers to approve expenses.
You see, I work remotely from my home in Colorado, but my company is headquartered in San Diego. It's a pretty sweet gig, and has proven to be very flexible. Occasionally though, I have to fly back for one reason or another. Most of the time it's pretty nice, but the thing I dread about it is keeping track of all of my expenses!
Up until recently, every expensable purchase I made (Meals, gas, plane tickets, rental car, hotel, etc) I had to keep the receipt with me until I got back home. I would then spend about an hour separating the receipts by date, scanning them to PDF on my scanner, then filling out an Excel spreadsheet to submit as my report. What a pain in the ass!
Enter Expensify! From their page:
Whether you're a road warrior with pockets full of receipts or a busy accountant buried in paperwork, Expensify automates the entire receipt and expense management process.Here are their features:
- One-Click Receipt Scanning - Expense reports are finished with one click. Take a picture of your receipt and Expensify automatically fills out and submits an expense report for you!
- Next-Day Reimbursement - As soon as reports are approved, rapid reimbursement delivers the money right into the employee's bank account within 24 hours via ACH direct deposit.
- Automatic Approval Workflows - Admins can customize expense policy rules for their organization and configure Expensify to flag any expenses that actually need a manager’s review. The rest — like that $3 coffee receipt — are automatically approved.
- Automatic Accounting Sync - Any changes made in your accounting system are automatically synced with Expensify in realtime for constant visibility into your organization’s finances, making audits and tax season a breeze.
To see it in action, check out this video:
It was so easy. Every time I purchased something that I could expense, I would snap a picture of the receipt using my Android app, and boom! Done! When I flew back, my report was pretty much ready to go already. I just had to submit it for approval. My company already had the workflow setup so my boss could approve it. So easy!
If you are going to use it as an individual, it's free! You get 10 free SmartScans per month (You can also manually enter information for anything over 10), you get the free mobile app, unlimited receipt storage and email and chat support!
If you are going to use it for your team, you get additional features for only $5 per user per month, and corporate users can get even more features for only $9 per user per month. With the time it saves though, it will easily pay for itself when your employees don't have to take an hour out of their day to fill out their reports!
Do you use Expensify? Do you use something else to manage travel expenses? Let us know in the comments!
