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What happened to the Stars? Bring them back :(
I log into Expensify and the little yellow organizational "stars" that pushed all reports belonging to me (aka it is my turn to touch them) have disappeared, and now my expense reports processing page is a disorganized mess. The feature of "these reports need your attention" are not helpful for our process and as business ramps back up again, losing this feature is going to cause a huge mess.
I have spoken ad nauseum with the concierge and was told they were removed, but I cannot - for the life of me - understand why. They were so helpful as a visual cue to tell me "Hey look at me, time to get me done!!" and because I am owner of every policy, and final approver on all expense reports - the loss of this feature is going to make my already very difficult and time consuming job, that much more difficult to manage.
PLEASE BRING THE STARS BACK.
Thank you,
Desiree๐
Comments
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Hi @Desiree321 - thanks for the feedback. Could you please add some context around what specifically you used those stars for? Was it for approving reports one-by-one, reimbursing reports one-by-one, taking bulk report actions, exporting reports, or something else? The more details you can provide, the more helpful it will be. Thanks!
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Hi Sasha -
Essentially it was a visual cue. As the admin and owner of every policy and the person with the final say/final approval on every single report - the stars were a perfect visual cue for me of when it was my turn. Yes, I use them for approvals. Depending on the individual expense policy and particular customers requirements - expenses have to be billed out in various different ways. During our busy times - I can have anywhere from 150-250 reports to process in a week - and this is continuing to grow as our company grows. I already filter down by policy, but then I have to open every report that has been approved and forwarded to me - further separate by individual project (as many clients have multiple active projects) so those stars help me when I pull up my reports page. They moved all reports assigned to me and ready for me to process, to the top of the page, and gave me the first clue I needed that it is my turn. When I open my reports page, because I am owner of all - I see ALL reports no matter where they are located in the process. I do use the existing filter options, but even when I get down to policy and "processing" I still see all reports that have not yet been approved by PM's or team leads. Now my name is intermixed with all of those and I have to find my reports. And the "these reports need your attention" section does not filter at all so it is even more cumbersome to use than simply going to my reports page.
If a filter existed to filter down to "assigned to me" or something, then I would use that as an acceptable alternative. But, I have to say, when all you do is accounting all day and your brain feels like scrambled eggs, the visual alert that you need to do something is VERY helpful. The Yellow star and organization it provided to the process was exactly that. I think it was removed too hastily without a functional and helpful replacement.
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Hey @Desiree321 thanks for the context. In your Expensify Inbox, there is a task with the header "Here's the list of reports that require your attention." Clicking into any of these actions will take you into Guided Review, which will take you one-by-one through each report that requires your approval (learn more about Guided Review here).
Are you aware of Guided Review? If so, are there any reasons why Guided Review doesn't work for you, while the reports page does work? Thanks!
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It kind of seems like you didn't really read my post in which I explained that does not work for our process. But thanks.
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Hey @Desiree321, I did read your response, I guess I just didn't understand fully the difference for you between the Reports page list and the Inbox task list. You said:
When I open my reports page, because I am owner of all - I see ALL reports no matter where they are located in the process.ย
The Inbox task also shows every report pending your approval. If you go through each report individually, what specifically is better about seeing all the reports on the Reports page as opposed to seeing them in the Inbox task?
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Many of us don't use the inbox, simply because of the volume of reports we review.
I use the starts to export the reports to a csv, where I review a number of things, and then I use the stars to do a bulk approval.
Surely you must know that without this feature, the admin has NO way to separate out the reports in our current hands versus the multitude of approvers we have set up for the first approval in our workflow?
I never have and never will use the guided review function in my inbox.
First, I have to Exit past your barrage of credit card marketing before I can even see my guided review. ๏ปฟ
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๏ปฟ Or is that the point? To drive us all to insanity to look at your marketing even more?
Second, the guided review doesn't always show me the data I'm truly looking at, which is why I export to a CSV and then deal with about 90% of my reports that way.
Please bring back this feature ASAP.
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I agree with Julia. Please bring that Star feature back ASAP. The inbox is not going to work for our organization.
I am confuse if Expensify is trying to improve their process to make it easy for the customers or harder for the customers. Because when Expensify removed the credit card report feature made it harder for us to work with Expensify and now this...
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EXACTLY!!!!! Thank you!!!!!
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Yes yes yes thank you!!! I spoke to concierge and they keep trying to make it seem like I am the only person on the planet bothered by these changes. I need this feature back ASAP.
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@Julia Regarding identifying who the report is waiting on for approval, you might find the filters a useful feature here. If you filter for the desired report status, here I'm filtering for Processing reports, you can then see which approver has the report by looking at the "To" column. If you click on the column name then it will be sorted alphabetically which will allow you to quickly see all reports waiting for action from a specific admin.
Second, the guided review doesn't always show me the data I'm truly looking at, which is why I export to a CSV and then deal with about 90% of my reports that way.
Could you tell me a bit about which data are you looking for and how the staring of reports aids you in this?
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@JessicaLe @Desiree321 were you using the stars in a similar fashion to Julia, i.e. to identify which reports are waiting for your action? Or did the stars serve another purpose for you?
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Hi Sonia,
When there are 200-300-400 reports and your name won't hit at the very top or very bottom, the sort feature is useless. What you have done is SORT the items, not actually filtered them. IF there was an actual filter for that section, it would be a viable and helpful option, however, there is not.
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Hi Sonia,
I used them in a similar fashion. If you read my original post and comments above, I wrote out a very detailed explanation. I hope this helps. :)
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I am familiar with sorting the reports based on the 'to' function. Unfortunately, we have several hundred reports to process, so this does not help us when we have to go across multiple pages.
I already spelled out what data I use, and why putting it in an excel document makes the data much more meaningful than the guided review. I see this is a common trend among us admins who have a high volume to get through.
Please bring back this feature ASAP, or add a feature that allows us to filter (not just sort) who the reports are currently submitted to in the approval chain.
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Thanks @Desiree321 and @Julia, that feedback is very helpful.
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Expensify - Are you going to bring the stars back or not?
The past week or two, you all have made several changes that are not beneficial. In fact, they are making our job harder. Stop it!
Sonia, Desiree, and Julia are not the only ones. I just got an email from another one of our users wanting me, as Admin to fix it. I can't. Will you please fix it?!
In the past week, you have made changes that causes us to do extra steps to:
1- Find reports to approve (no stars)
2- To view receipts (no thumbnails)
3- To print the report (icon gone)
There's more but these have been the most disruptive!
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THANK YOU this has turned into a nightmare
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@acctsupport we've heard customers loud and clear, and we are actively discussing how we can support the workflows and processes that customers used these stars for. This Idea post has been incredible helpful in helping us understand how customers used those stars, so thanks again for your input.
We will be sure to keep this thread updated. If anyone else has additional feedback or use cases that haven't been discussed already, please add your thoughts here!
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Please move the print to pdf section, policy change box, and receipts back to the main page as well, This change really created MASS confusion in the company and also made it more cumbersome to process reports. AND the options give employees WAY to much freedom to choose how the reports look. We need them STREAMLINED AND UNIFORM. I should not have to be spending so much of my time fighting to be able to do my job easily. I really do not understand why anyone thought adding more steps to the process was a great idea.
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Thanks Sasha -
How about the receipt thumbnails and the shortcuts on the reports (to edit, print, etc.) We need those back too!
Thanks to your 'upgrade', it now takes me longer to:
1 - find the report to view
2 - view the receipt
3 - change the policy
4 - edit categories
5 - print the report
Processing hundreds each work, you just added a LOT of time to my workload. ๐
The point of using Expensify is to streamline the process and be more efficient. You all are going in the wrong direction.ย
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Couldn't agree more! I just said pretty much the same thing. This is way too many extra steps and too much freedom for employees to mess around with how reports look. All around it was bad.
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You're welcome @acctsupport!
Regarding your other feedback, we'd love to hear more about how you used those other features in your workflow, but let's keep this particular idea thread focused on starred reports. If you'd like to provide feedback around other changes to the Reports page, I'd recommend creating a separate Ideas post. Thanks!
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๐คจ You need 'feedback' on how we used shortcuts? You guys don't understand that more clicks to access stuff takes more time?
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@acctsupport I totally understand that! Our goal when changing the reports page was to clean up the interface, and we did that in part by moving items into the Details screen that were used less frequently by most users.
If you feel like some of those things should stay on the main reports page, it would help us to know (in a separate Idea post) how you use each of those elements in your workflow.
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Thank you @Desiree321! This feedback and use case description is very helpful.
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Can't vote up on either of these posts because both are marked as "duplicate ideas"?? Shouldn't we be able to vote for at least one of these?
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Hi all - after hearing from the customers on this Ideas post, along with many other customers who relied on this feature, we have decided to bring back starred reports. You'll notice them again in your Expensify account as of today.
Thank you all so much for your feedback on this feature and the product as a whole, we really appreciate your input!
