What's the advantage of using a policy?

craig

I get that we can configure policy specific categories, tags, and other stuff. But aside from that, as an individual sole proprietor what's the advantage of configuring policies and not just working with our base profiles?

Aussiebandit

@craig I would imagine that as a individual sole proprietor that policies wont be of benefit to you. Our company is a global company and therefore we use policies to categorize our employees and what is their base currency, taxes etc.

Sheena Trepanier

@craig -- There are ways that both individuals and groups/companies can utilize the different policy types in Expensify. Let me go over the different plans available!

For an individual using Expensify, you'd want to use an Individual policy. There are two plans available on an individual policy:

• The Track plan is best for tracking expenses for individual purposes. The most common purpose is for self-employed individuals who need to track their business expenses for tax reasons.

• The Submit plan is best for individuals that want to submit expenses to their company but their company hasn’t adopted Expensify (yet!).

By default, individual policies are free and include 5 free SmartScans. To utilize Unlimited SmartScans with an individual policy, you'd want to activate a monthly subscription under Settings > Policies > Individual > Subscription:

For a group or company using Expensify, you'd want to use a Group policy. There are two plans available on a group policy:

• The Collect plan fits best for a company that needs simple receipt collection rather than full-fledged expense reporting. It’s about creating an easy way to collect receipts from people, code them, and have them put in your accounting software.

• The Control plan is best for a company that needs to collect expenses and control how and when employees submit them; think expense violations and approval workflows.

Sheena Trepanier

Hi @craig - No worries, this is what the community is for!

When your Expensify account is a member of multiple policies, you'll see that a single policy can be set as the account default. (below)

The default policy for your account means a few different things. First, it will be the policy that all new reports are created under. Second, when coding unreported expenses, it dictates which policy's categories and tags you see by default to apply to the expense.

If you have multiple policies to select from as a default, I recommend selecting the one that you use most often. Then, when you create a new report you can select the policy the report should be submitted on in the top right corner of the report. (Below)

If you wait to code expenses (apply categories and/or tags) until they are on a report under the correct policy, you'll be sure that the categories and tags are from the right policy.

The policy the report is listed under in the top right corner is the policy the report will also be submitted under. The report will follow the approval workflow that is set up in the report's policy.

I hope this helps provide some clarity to the question but please reach out to [email protected] if you want to chat about account specifics.

Thanks!

craig

Ah, I have two defined policies. I see that one can select a policy from the Inbox tab on login, but it's unclear to me how individual expenses/receipts are associated with a policy. May expenses be associated with multiple policies? If we do have multiple policies defined, do we then have to be careful as to which policy an expense is associated? Thanks. Sorry, it's just not too clear to me.

vmaas

This is great info, thank you. Is there a reason why you wouldn't have the option of selecting a default policy, or even change to a different policy within a report, if you are part of multiple policies? I am a member of six policies, but I don't have the option to set a default policy, or even see the other policies. Thanks!

Aussiebandit

Hi @craig - you can only associate a receipt to one report on one policy. You can choose the policy (if you have access to multiple policies) from within the report itself.

Once you have selected the correct policy, all the right settings for that policy will display eg currency, tax etc. Then add your receipt here.

Sheena Trepanier

@vmaas - So sorry for the delay here! Generally, when an Expensify user is a member of multiple policies, the option to select a default policy or apply a policy to a report is available.

If you do not have the option, it would be because your domain admin (at your company) has restricted your policy selection. If this is in error, your best option is to reach out to an admin and let them know you can't select a different policy when you need to be able to.

Your domain admin will have the ability to move you from a group restricted to a single policy to an unrestricted group.

Cheers!