How to add an additional travel date field to an expense?

fourprinciples
fourprinciples Expensify Customer Posts: 3
edited March 2020 in Day to Day

Hi community,

I am currently running a pilot project for our company to see if Expensify is suitable for us in combination with QuickBooks Online.

Since our employees buy especially flight tickets for months in advance, we need to invoice them at the purchase date, but the accounting system has to consider the travel start date as well. Currently I am struggling to figure out how to add both dates to an expense.

Can someone please help me here?

Thank you!

Answers

  • Sheena Trepanier
    Sheena Trepanier Expensify Team, Approved! Accountant, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 1,362 Expensify Team

    Hi @fourprinciples, great to have you in the Community while you're trying out Expensify!

    There isn't a way to create an expense with two dates; one for purchase and one for travel date. If you're simply looking to track the travel date, this could be added to the Description field of the expense.

    The description is exported to the Description field in QuickBooks Online along with the merchant name.

    Do your employees use a travel provider to book travel? We offer many travel integrations that you might benefit from.

    Lastly, if you haven't connected with our Sales team you can send them an email at sales@expensify.com. They'll have a couple questions about your company but they are also a wonderful resource when you're getting started.

    Cheers!

  • fourprinciples
    fourprinciples Expensify Customer Posts: 3

    Hi Sheena,

    thank you for your quick reply.

    Adding the travel date as a description will unfortunately not work, since we use the description field for a project code. The tag field is still not used, however, I doubt that QuickBooks can recognize a date entered here and use this for the accounting accordingly.

    I saw that expenses in my local currency can have a future date and reports can be submitted for review/approval with these expenses. However, half of our staff expenses are in foreign currency, which is not accepted by Expensify.

    Is there a chance to link the exchange rate to the purchase date instead of the travel date? The future expenses are not working due to no FX rate available for a future date. By using the purchase date or a per policy defined exchange rate, I could avoid this issue.

    Thank you,

  • Nicole Trepanier
    Nicole Trepanier Expensify Team Posts: 498 Expensify Team

    @fourprinciples When you purchase a flight and scan the receipt, it should be using the purchase date and not the flight date on the expense. Do you have any examples of expenses being created using the flight date?

  • fourprinciples
    fourprinciples Expensify Customer Posts: 3
    edited March 2019

    Hi Nicole. You are right, it does scan the purchase date, which is fine with me. However, our accounting requires to add also the travel date.

    We currently use the Description as well as the Tag field for project code and cost center. I unfortunately don't have any field available to add this additional date.

    Is there a chance to add a second date somehow to an expense?

  • Nicole Trepanier
    Nicole Trepanier Expensify Team Posts: 498 Expensify Team

    @fourprinciples Right now we don't have an option add additional fields to an expense apart from tags, which are dropdown only. Since this would need to be a text field in order to enter the date, the only option is the description.

    If you are using the connection to QuickBooks Online, you should be able to use tags for both cost center and project. Can you tell me a bit more about how you are importing these?