Travel App Review - Expensify

Expensify is useful for business travellers, or for someone that likes to keep close tabs on what they are spending while they travel. You can scan receipts, add hours you have worked, add expenses manually, add mileage and create invoices and expense reports. Within all of the expenses you enter, you can choose to add them to an expense report or an invoice, you are also able to select from a very long list of currencies on all expense items.

 

Getting started
Once the app is downloaded you are asked to sign in, usually a pain but not with Expensify - the email address was already populated and all we had to do was click OK.  The simplest sign in ever!

Adding expenses
Scanning receipts was really useful; Expensify automatically populated the company name, date and amount; this was done accurately on the receipts scanned.  All you have to do is select the type of expense. You can also manually add an expense then later add a scan of the receipt, this is pretty quick and straight forward.


Adding mileage
This can be done in several ways, either from GPS which tracks how far you drive, you can enter the distance you have driven or you can enter the before  and after reading from the mileage counter.  You are able to add the mileage rate and whether the cost is billable or reimbursable.  The amount is then calculated for you.


Creating expense reports and invoices
You can create expense reports but to add items to this report you need to go into each expense separately and select the report you want to add it to – if you have a lot of expense items this could be time consuming, especially as the app takes a few seconds to update after each change.  Same thing happens if you want to add it to an invoice.  If you want to email an expense report you can’t send it the same day as you added the last item as the currency rates may change so the app won’t allow you to send it. The person receiving the expense report via email receives a summary of all costs and the category of each cost, plus all receipts which are clearly labelled.  Small companies could use this to report expenses (corporations would have preferred suppliers in place).

The app allows you to add items to an invoice but to actually create the invoice you need to sign up which will cost you $15 a month, unlimited invoices can be sent and you can cancel anytime.


Verdict: This app is pretty good but if you have lots of expenses you might find it frustrating.  The app locked us out a few times and made us sign in every day which was irritating.

Rating: 7/10

Like this post?  Share it on Twitter!

 

Back