Deep Dive: How the Zenefits connection works with Expensify
When you integrate Zenefits with Expensify, we will:
- Provision new employees automatically — We'll create Expensify accounts for all your full-time, active employees as soon as they're hired.
- Update approval workflows instantly by importing and updating each user's direct manager. If a manager switches teams or an employee is promoted, we'll update the approvers in Expensify automatically.
- Deprovision employees automatically on their termination date — Every time the Zenefits integration syncs, we check if an employee has been terminated in Zenefits. If it's on or after their termination date, we'll removed that employee from your Expensify policy automatically after the integration syncs.
In a nutshell, this HR integration automates the process to create and update employee records and approval workflows in Expensify based on changes to Zenefits employee records.
Integrate with Zenefits
How does it work? Simply connect to your Zenefits account, and Expensify will be updated to reflect any changes made in Zenefits. As long as the work email address in Zenefits matches existing employees' email address in Expensify, we'll recognize that they are the same individual and nothing will be duplicated, nor will accounts need to be recreated for any reason. The integration takes minutes to set up, is ready out-of-the-box, and will save your HR team hours each month!
Important Notes
- You'll need to be an admin in Zenefits and in Expensify to complete the prerequisites on this page.
- You must have a Control or Collect policy in Expensify to integrate with Zenefits. If you do not, you'll be given the opportunity to upgrade to Control or Collect during the integration setup.
- Every employee record in Zenefits must have a work email address since we use this as the unique identifier in Expensify.
- Zenefits will add all your employees to one Expensify policy. If your company uses multiple Expensify policies, you'll be given the option to choose which policy to connect to when you're setting up the integration.
Understanding Approval options
Basic Approval - Each employee will submit expense reports to one final approver. By default, the final approver is the policy's Billing Owner.Manager Approval - Expense reports will first be submitted to each employee's direct manager, and then forwarded to one final approver. By default, the final approver is the policy's Billing Owner.
Configure Manually - Use the people table to manually configure how employees submit reports. In this case, you're choosing to not import an employee's manager. You will need to set and update the approval workflow for each employee manually. If your team has a highly complex approval workflow, this option will allow for multi-tiered approval chains. For more information regarding the Expensify People table, read more here.
Note: If you're setting up an Expensify policy as an admin for the very first time and have initiated the connection from within your Zenefits account, you will be set up with a free trial of our Control policy. We recommend attending the Admin Onboarding Webinar.
All set! - What's next?
Now we'll import any new employees from Zenefits into Expensify, keep track of their approval workflow and remove them when the time comes!
After you've successfully connected, you will be able to see a time-stamp on the Connections page that shows when the last sync was. Click Settings > Policies > Group > [Policy Name] > Connections > scroll down to Zenefits:
View all the newly imported users on your policy, or update your Approval Mode at the bottom of the page, by clicking Settings > Policies > Group > [Policy Name] > People:
What about my employees?
Each employee will receive a welcome email at their work email address along with a request to validate their account and choose a password. They can also download our mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
Please note that there is no way to disable the welcome email.
If employees have questions, they can use our Community to search for answers or talk to other Expensify users.
Related articles:
- How-to: Connect Zenefits to your Expensify group policy
- How-to: Manage your approval workflow when connected to Zenefits
Have a question or want to know more? Start a discussion here!
