Deep Dive: Best practices for before you get started with credit card import
Thinking about importing your personal credit card? There are a few things you will want to know before you get started!
Company Cards
If your card is a proper company card, and your business has more than a small handful of users, I suggest adding this via Domain Control. This means you will need to have a Control policy, but I promise the extra dollars you spend per user will be with it for your Admin's sanity!
Assigning cards via Domain Control means only one set of credentials and a central dashboard of all transactions even if users do silly stuff (like deleting unmerged card transactions because they think they are duplicates). Humans… so unpredictable.
Scheduled Submit
If your credit card is a legit personal credit card, and you use it for both work and personal purposes, watch out for Scheduled Submit! Whether this is set on your Personal Policy or your organization’s Group Policy, this adds all imported expenses onto reports.
Even if you don’t submit the reports, if the expenses are under your Group Policy, your organisation’s Policy Admin can see them. Which may raise all sorts of questions when your Netflix and Hello Fresh payments start turning up on your Admin’s expenses page!
SmartScan
It’s worth noting that only SmartScanned receipts will automatically merge with imported card expenses, so if you are just using Expensify for free, privately, you might want to set up a personal subscription to get unlimited SmartScans. If not, the web app is a great place to manually merge receipts and card transactions in three clicks!
Duplicates & Icons
If you have duplicate expenses importing, check the icon next to each to see where they came from! A Cash icon denotes a receipt only, a plain Card icon is an imported personal card and a Card+Lock icon is a card which is assigned to you by an Admin (a Company Card).
Importing for the first time
When you first connect your card, we’ll pull in 30-90 days of transactions - as many as we can!
If you have older transactions you want to import, you can get a CSV or OFX file from your bank, usually from your online statement. Here’s mine, to give you a feel for what to look for:
If you need to remove rows, go for a CSV. If you want to import everything, download an OFX file - it’s the fastest to import!
Fixing card
Keep an eye out for warnings which say you need to fix your card. From time to time your bank might tweak something, you might update your password etc. You just click the Fix button on the web app under Settings > Account > Credit Card Import, update what needs updating and. You are good to go.
Not fixing card
Sometimes the issue cannot be ‘fixed’ if it’s a new card number, a major bank change or we’ve released a new connector. In this case, add your card as if new!
Removing cards
It’s important to realise that when you remove a card, all Unreported and Open expenses will be removed with it. The receipts will not be deleted, but they will lose their SmartScan data. So if you have an old card, or are replacing one, make sure that you have processed ALL the expenses before removing it from your account!
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