Why We Love Expensify and Why It's Great for SMBs

All business owners and bookkeepers know the organizational nightmare that expense tracking can create. Aside from the endless and time-consuming data entry, receipt organization alone is enough to make anyone crazy. Until now, all business owners and bookkeepers have had to deal with envelopes, shoe boxes and files literally bursting with disorganized, smudged receipts.

Expensify virtually eliminates data entry and paperwork for tracking, reporting and reimbursing company expenses.

How Expensify Improves Operational Efficiency

The traditional method of expense reporting requires lots of time and an endless amount of paperwork. The old way of expense reporting, tracking, and reimbursement requires saving receipts, manually categorizing expenses, filling out spreadsheets, manual approval, and then usually writing a check. Throughout this process, receipts often go missing, reports must be tracked down and the bookkeeping department has to wait for employees to cash their checks for reimbursed expenses before the accounts will reconcile.

According to their website, "Expense reports with Expensify take 83% less time."

With Expensify, you and your employees use the Expensify mobile app to easily capture receipts, track spending, and record expenses. With a single click, employees can create and submit expense reports, which, depending on company policy, go straight to approval or land in an administrator's inbox for manual review.

Expensify's Feature-Rich Platform

Clients can choose from a variety of different price levels and features. Expensify's complete list of product features is quite impressive, but these are some of our favorites:

• SmartScan - Expensify's patented technology reads scanned receipts, automatically recording amount, date, and expense category.
• Real-Time Report Creation - Capture receipts, integrate travel spending, and track expenses on the go.
• GPS-Powered Mileage Tracking - Track miles put on your car for business purposes with the click of a button. Expensify's GPS capabilities, track your location from start to finish, create a Google map of the trip and quickly calculate mileage expense.
• Automatic Submission - When all receipts have been scanned, users create and submit expense reports with a single click, using the mobile platform from any location.
• Policy-Based Automated Approval - Administrators have the ability to allow automatic approvals with spending caps and threshold limits based on specific expense categories and employees.
• One-Click Reimbursement - Approving and reimbursing expenses with a direct deposit is as simple as clicking a button.
• Accounting Sync - Integrate the platform with your accounting software to eliminate repetitive data entry when using multiple systems.
• Corporate Credit Cards - Sync Expensify with corporate credit card accounts for easy account reconciliation, expense authorization, and budgeting.

Beyond Convenience: Why We Love Expensify

We not only love Expensify because it makes your job easier; we also love it (and you will, too) because it makes a noticeable difference in your company's bottom line. On its surface, Expensify appears to be a tool of convenience, but taken a step further and used to its full capabilities, Expensify has the features to be used as a high-powered accounting and strategic planning tool in your business (whether you are self-employed or manage a full staff).

Automatic Job Costing

With its categorization capabilities and GPS-powered expense tracking, Expensify automatically allows you to track and accurately measure job costing. The system features particularly astute expense tracking when it comes to business travel, allowing the user to group all expenses from the same locations. This means you can automatically track the entire cost of a business trip, including airfare, lodging, transportation, meals, coffee shops and more.

When compared to the revenue generated by the trip, you can improve your financial metrics. With more accurate key performance indicators from job costing, customer acquisition costs, and expenses, you can make the data-driven decisions that will grow your business, improve cash flow and increase profits.

Save Time and Save Money

Expensify seamlessly integrates with travel booking technology to improve price shopping on hotels and airfare, making it simpler for your employees to save company dollars when booking travel. With the option to kick savings back to employees, Expensify also allows you to reward employees for spending less on plane tickets, hotel rooms and transportation.

On top of its built-in price comparison and incentive features, Expensify greatly reduces the amount of company time that your employees, bookkeeping staff, and you have to spend on expense management. The system dramatically reduces time dedicated to data entry, receipt filing, expense report generation, receipt sorting, expense approval, and reimbursement. This means Expensify automatically generates a noticeable ROI when all of your time-driven expense metrics improve.

Built-In Audit and Compliance Alerts

Expensify features a smart system, Concierge DoubleCheck, which saves you and your administrators time by performing receipt audits and compliance checks on your behalf. Expensify sifts through receipts, bringing more organization and clarity to the auditing process.

The Expensify system checks receipts against others, looking for duplicates, unusual activity, mistakes or other issues which could potentially signify fraud. These suspicious expenses are flagged within the system for your attention and require manual review before they are even submitted to you for approval on a report.

Synced to company credit card accounts, Expensify also allows you to automatically reconcile expense reports with credit card statements, which ensures all expenses are accounted for and properly reimbursed.

In addition, Expensify lets you better control expense spending by setting dollar limits and thresholds based on expense categories and employees. If an expense exceeds the limit, Expensify automatically notifies you and the employee.

Full Accounting System Optimization with Expensify Integration

One of Expensify's best features is its ability to fully integrate with widely used accounting software applications including QuickBooks. Expensify's simple platform integration allows for one-click account reconciliation, expense reporting and tax preparation. In addition, the platform offers a variety of customizable features, pricing options and in-platform customer support, giving you the ability to easily adapt the system to your company's unique needs.

With its vast list of features, Expensify virtually eliminates the need for almost any data entry, turning your business's back office into a financial powerhouse.

Expensify is a key component of GrowthForce’s Tech Stack - the Smart Back Office. There are many other expense management apps out there, but none combine the features and ease of use at a reasonable price point that Expensify provides. If you’re interested in automation and integration of your financial systems for your small business or nonprofit, have a look at Expensify.