Expensify

Running a small business isn’t easy. Many business owners get frustrated with tracking expenses to ensure their business stays on a profitable track.

Fortunately, there’s no need to manually jot and track expenses. Expense management tools like Expensify let you do it seamlessly from a browser interface or mobile app. 

Expensify offers two plans - Collect (1-10 users) and Control (10-10000 users) - based on the size of your team. You can view the full pricing details on Expensify’s website. This guide will explore why businesses choose Expensify and how to use it productively.

Below are some of the best use cases for Expensify:

• Expense tracking: Expensify lets you track every expense your small business incurs. You can issue Expensify debit cards to employees, and every expense will be automatically recorded on your dashboard. This way, you don’t need to stress about missing or redundant expenses.
• Employee reimbursement: Small businesses often need to reimburse employees for costs related to work events, e.g., transportation and hotel stays. Expensify, with its SmartScan receipt scanning feature, easily verifies the expense before reimbursement. When employees scan a receipt for a corporate purchase, Expensify automatically identifies the receipt's merchant, date, and amount (in over 150 currencies). Then, the employee confirms the details and submits an expense report. An admin later approves (or rejects) the reports for reimbursement.
• Budgeting: Small businesses often have little capital, so budgeting is non-negotiable. Expensify lets you set strict monthly or annual budgets on corporate cards, ensuring employees don’t spend beyond what your business can afford. You can set budgets for specific expense types, such as travel and food, for the whole organization or specific employees and teams. You can also choose to receive notifications when a budget has been spent to a specific percentage, e.g., 50% or 80%.
• Maximizing tax deduction: Small businesses can deduct certain expenses against their tax liabilities. You’ll only know what’s tax-deductible when you keep accurate records of every expense. Expensify keeps these records and prepares you to maximize tax deductions. 

• Software bundles: Small businesses use software for payroll and accounting. Some payroll and accounting tools have bonus expense management features e.g., QuickBooks and FreshBooks. Understandably, these expense trackers are less sophisticated than Expensify because accounting is the main focus, not expense management. However, if you already use QuickBooks or FreshBooks, adopting the built-in expense management tools makes sense instead of paying extra for Expensify.
• You need advanced features: Expensify is a simple expense management tool for small businesses. It does its job well but lacks some advanced features small businesses might need. For example, users often complain about the receipt scanning feature being inaccurate, especially for languages other than English. There's also no way for users to automatically submit reports at a later date, and currency rates are not always updated. If you fall into this category, you can choose an alternative like Rydoo and Shoeboxed. However, these tools are costlier than Expensify. 

Registration: Head to expensify.com to enter your email address or phone number and click 'Get Started'. Then, click 'Join' on the popup menu, and you’ll be redirected to your Expensify dashboard. On this dashboard, select Business, and you’ll be issued a free trial immediately.

Expensify initially offers a free trial of just a few days. However, if you schedule a call with Expensify staff, your trial will be extended to 42 days. The call includes a brief introduction and product demo. Expensify displays a visible button for this option. 

Expense tracking: Expensify’s core function is tracking expenses. You’ll give employees access to an Expensify account, and they can add their expenses anytime. On the admin dashboard, you can view all expenses added by your employees. You can easily confirm the expenses or identify discrepancies.

Corporate cards: You can request Expensify Visa cards connected to your business bank account. You’ll give these cards to employees for corporate expenses, and every transaction will be automatically recorded on your Expensify admin dashboard. This card lets you track corporate expenses meticulously and ensure no one racks up unnecessary costs.

You can request a physical or virtual version of the Expensify Card. Your Expensify Card is a debit card tied to your business bank account; employees can only spend what you’ve deposited earlier into the account. You can set custom spending limits for each employee's card, ensuring no one overruns your total budget. All card purchases run through the Rogue Agent Detection system to ensure adherence to your business policies and prevent fraud.

Requesting an Expensify Card requires an email address tied to a private domain; generic emails ending with “Gmail.com,” “Yahoo.com,” and the like won’t work. You must also verify ownership of the domain by adding a DNS record.

Expense approval and reimbursement: As a business owner, you can designate some accounts to approve or reject expense reports filed by employees. This task is usually given to an accountant or financial manager. You can reimburse employees directly from your Expensify-linked business bank account or handle it outside the platform. Expensify reimburses via ACH transfers, which take one to three days to complete.

Reporting and insights: Expensify gives detailed reports and insights about your business expenses. Based on the data collected from each employee’s account, you’ll get a complete overview of corporate expenses to guide your decision making. For example, you can view a pie chart of your spending for every category: transportation, travel, lodging, mileage, etc. You can generate graphs and charts that indicate your business's financial health.

Expensify also lets you generate custom expense reports, such as candidate spend, mileage reports, travel spending, foreign currency transactions, expense reports by country, etc. 

You might already have an expense management tool but may decide to migrate to Expensify for its features. You only need a valid email address to create an account and a private domain for the Expensify Card.

Unfortunately, you cannot directly migrate your expense policies from another tool to Expensify. You have to set them again after migration. On the bright side, Expensify offers a user friendly interface that gives no trouble when setting policies. You can understand it quickly and begin utilizing its complex features.

Expensify has integrations with several accounting and HR software tools, which is expected because expense management is closely related to these activities. It directly integrates with QuickBooks, the widely used accounting tool for small businesses. You can seamlessly export data from Expensify to QuickBooks and vice versa, ensuring all expenses are recorded in your financial accounts.

When employees spend money with different merchants, Expensify automatically matches the merchants to your QuickBooks vendors, enabling you to track spending for each vendor. Suppose you’ve added your electricity provider as a QuickBooks vendor. Then, an employee uses their Expensify card to pay the electricity bill. The payment will be automatically recorded in your QuickBooks account, enabling you to keep tabs on your utility bills.

Sage Intacct is another accounting tool you can integrate with Expensify. This integration offers helpful features, such as VAT and GST tax tracking for employees' purchases, real-time expense updates, and precise expense categorization.

Expensify is integrated with Gusto, a popular payroll platform for small businesses. This integration enables you to automatically create Expensify accounts for all new employees and remove former employees' accounts. Zenefits is another HR tool Expensify integrates with. You can set up the initial integration in a few steps. 

Limited third party integration is a common complaint of Expensify users. It only has direct integrations with a few accounting and HR software tools; many seem to be missing. For example, there is no integration with Zoho Books, FreshBooks, and Wave, which are popular accounting tools for small businesses. You won’t find integrations with Zoho People, BambooHR, and Rippling, which are prominent HR tools for small businesses.

However, don’t be discouraged by this lack of integrations. You can use Zapier to create a custom integration between Expensify and the above apps. Zapier offers dozens of integrations that are a few clicks away.