Once you go #realtime you can’t go back
[Original post date: January 11, 2016]
This is a huge announcement. After more than *a year* in active development, we’re finally turning on RTER (Realtime Expense Reports) as the default for all new policies. This is a big, big feature, touching every single aspect of the product. Most of the changes are too subtle for you to even notice, but the sum of it all is that now Expensify works like this:
- Just take a picture of your receipt
- It’ll be put into your accounting package of choice
- And you’ll be paid the very next day
When properly configured (which starting today is the new default configuration), you literally just take a picture of the receipt and we take care of *everything else*. Click below to start your free trial, or upgrade your existing account (at no additional cost):
https://www.expensify.com/admin
On the other hand, if you want more detail on what is actually being automated, let me break that down further:
- It all starts with SmartScanning your receipt with the Expensify mobile app. Do it the moment you get the receipt — right there at the cash register — and then throw it away.
- There’s no need to stand around waiting for the result: just put your phone back in your pocket and forget about the expense entirely. If we need anything from you we’ll let you know.
- While you are enjoying your coffee, we’ll scan the information off the receipt with a higher accuracy than you typing it yourself, and even assign it the correct category and attach it to the right imported transaction.
- We’ll then add it to the right report — creating a new one if necessary — without any employee training.
- Next we’ll submit your reports for you, nightly, weekly, monthly: up to your admin. No more getting nagged (or nagging) about submitting reports: it’s just done for you, automatically.
- Then we’ll analyze the report with a host of algorithms to find anything fishy. If everything checks out (as most do), we’ll automatically approve it and deposit the funds to your account the next day.
- If something needs human review (eg, is a duplicate, or doesn’t match the receipt), we’ll put it into your admin’s Inbox — there’s no need to look at every single report, we’ll highlight those that need it.
- Similarly, we’ll highlight exactly which expenses need review — you’ve got better things to do than look at small, correctly-coded expenses with matching receipts.
- Finally, everything will be exported to your QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Intacct, or any other accounting package perfectly.
This means Expensify is now a truly “one click expense report” experience, where every SmartScan kicks off a large chain of automated events to make your life easy. Obviously you can still dial back the automation to maintain the old, “classic” flow where you and your employees do everything by hand. But why would you want to?
This is a lot to digest, I understand: like most things, it’s better experienced than explained. So go ahead and give it a shot, or if you’d still like more explanation, please join us at our webinar dedicated entirely to the magic of RTER:
Sign up for our webinar here.
Thank you to our many beta testers for helping make this perfect, and to everyone else for your patience. This is a major development for the industry, as 2016 is the year expense “report” died as a noun, even while it lives on forever as a verb. Let me know what you think!
-david
Founder and CEO of Expensify
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