Sticky report fields - option to be non-sticky

Daveweez

Report fields are sticky. Can you give option to admins to make them non-sticky?

We use a report field for "Purpose of expense report" to help managers understand and make a good approval decision. Often users forget to change the field, since it is sticky, and the old purpose from the last report is carried over. I would like to make it non-sticky, so that they have to fill our the field properly each time.

tylerzoll

@Daveweez & @Aussiebandit I like this idea. I ultimately decided against using these fields because of this issue. The only thing that I can see is that I'm not sure if reports are part of the long term strategy at Expensify. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't think this would be too hard to fix.

Daveweez

@Conor Pendergrast what do you think?

Aussiebandit

See my comments here too:

https://community.expensify.com/discussion/comment/499#Comment_499

Sdhile2

Agree, each new report needs to reset report field entries. We have so much confusion on this issue.

Daveweez

Can Expensify add a checkbox to "Make Sticky" or not?

lauramcj

This would be very helpful! Employees forgot to change it, especially when using the app.

Sheena Trepanier

@lauramcj - don't forget to vote for the Idea if you support it! The number of votes in support of an Idea directly correlates to its chances of being built or added.

This Idea is currently on our watch list and we're evaluating the demand for it every month. If you have other team members or colleagues who would vote for the Idea please share it with them!

Daveweez

Any update on this one?

Karisa Latta

@Daveweez No movement just yet, but this is growing in votes, so we're keeping an eye on it and starting a bit of brainstorming. We'll be sure to post here if things progress further!

If any report field is so sticky it's driving you bananas, don't hesitate to reach out. There are some tricks we can try.

If you're using Concierge Approval, the first trick is to turn that off for a bit, so approvers have to act manually. This gives them some time to actually look over the report before clicking approve. Once reports start looking sexier, you can turn it back on.

Another option is to reconsider the Report Field to see if using it as a Tag would better suit your needs. Direct accounting integrations heavily affect this option and might negate it entirely. Tags are not sticky, and the closest a user can get to sticky is Expense Rules. This doesn't help "purpose" header fields, though, and is more for classification data points.

For "purpose" fields, you might consider enforcing expense Descriptions. This is great if a report has expenses for different purposes and might reduce the number of reports you are processing each month. Enforcing expense Descriptions will generate an expense violation for any expense lacking a Description which will show up super clearly during Guided Review before approval. If that's less efficient than the report header field in your use case, feel free to disregard.

If none of this helps, we can dive into your specific use together and see if we have any other options that might help you out. Hit me up at [email protected] and mention this thread.

KAR

I have been looking through all the references to 'sticky' report fields and so far I have found 4 that basically seem to be about the same topic. (Are there any others?) Here are the links (which include this thread too):
https://community.expensify.com/discussion/comment/499#Comment_499
https://community.expensify.com/discussion/3150/disable-the-sticky-autofill-in-the-report-fields
https://community.expensify.com/discussion/340/sticky-report-fields-option-to-be-non-sticky
https://community.expensify.com/discussion/comment/12666#Comment_12666
It would be great if this could be pushed forward/voted up for development.  :-) Thanks.

Brigid Bello

Thanks for helping to aggregate things here, @KAR! It looks like this is the post where we've been keeping interest in this idea consolidated, so we'll be sure to make any updates we have on this here in the future  

KAR

Thanks Brigid.