Deep Dive: Best practices for using multi-level tagging

Christina Dobryzynski

Big picture question 

Do you want your employees to designate specific departments or projects on their expenses? 

Yes? You're looking to set up multi-level tags in a Group Policy. 

Once multi-level tagging has been set up, employees will be able to choose more than one tag per expense. Based on the choice made for the first tag, the second subset of tag options will appear. After the second tag is chosen, more tag lists can appear, customizable up to 5 tag levels.

Best Practices

• Multi-level tagging is available for companies on group policies and is intended to help accountants track additional information at the expense line-item level.
• If you need to make any changes to the Tags, you need to first make them on the CSV and import the revised Tags into Expensify. 
• Make sure to have a backup of your tags! Every time you upload a CSV it will override your previous settings. 
• The easiest way to keep the old CSV is to download it from the Tags page by clicking Export to CSV, editing the list, and then importing it to apply the changes.

Create multi-level tags

Would you like your second tag, say ‘Project’, to populate different options depending on the first tag, say ‘Department’ selection?

If yes, you'll want to use dependent tags.

• Would you like to capture GL codes associated with your tags to export to your accounting software? 
• If yes, then choose GL Codes. Dependent with GL Codes
• If not, then choose No GL Codes. Dependent with No GL Codes

If no, then you'll want to choose independent tags.

• Would you like to capture GL codes associated with your tags to export to your accounting software? 

• If yes, then choose GL Codes: Independent with GL Codes
• If not, then choose No GL Codes: Independent with No GL Codes

Import the CSV

Once you've downloaded the above CSV and created the tags you'd like to import, go to  the Tags section of the policy editor by going to Settings > Policies > Group > [Policy name] > Tags.

Click the toggle button here to enable multi-level tags, then click "Import from Spreadsheet" to import your CSV.

Choose the import details based on the following considerations

1. Select whether or not the first line contains the tag header.
2. Select whether the list is independent or dependent. Examples of each are found above and should correspond with the CSV file you upload.
3. Select whether or not your tags list has the GL codes in the adjacent column.
4. Choose either to upload your tags as a CSV or TSV file 
5. Select your file and update your tags list!

Manage the dependent and independent tags

The table on your Tags page should look like the following, where the "List Name" column will display the column headers from your CSV. The example below shows dependent tags.

Below is the same list uploaded as independent tags. Note that you have the additional functionality now to change the order that these display in the expense edit screen for users. Use the arrows shown on the right to move each tag to the desired level.

You'll have the option to enable and disable independent tags. Click Edit Tags next to the tag level you would like to edit. You will not have the option to enable/disable dependent tags! Instead, you will need to make the changes in the CSV and then re-import the file. 

How to require tags 

If your tags are dependent, you will not be able to choose which tags are required. However, if your tags are independent, you can enable the tags you'd like users to use. 

Finally, if at any time you need to switch back to single-level tags, click the toggle here to disable the multi-level option. Important: This action will delete any tags that currently exist!


Related Articles:

• How-to: Setup and add single tags