Clarification on using Expensify for vendor bills

gherkert

It appears from this post that we can route company vendor bills (or vendor invoices) through Expensify for approval. I am hoping to clarify a few things.

Our particular use case is that we would want one central individual who manages our A/P to submit vendor bills through Expensify and route them to department leads for review and approval.

Upon final approval, we would want to export these bills into our accounting system where they would be ultimately paid.

Is it possible to gain approvals in this fashion?

If we use this feature, do we have to also initiate the payment from within Expensify?

Thanks for clarifying!

Conor Pendergrast

Hey @gherkert, absolutely - the approval workflow is a key benefit of routing those through Expensify! From the page you linked, the key line is:

The bill will follow the primary contact's approval workflow

The primary contact is the email address set at Settings > Domains > [Domain Name] > Domain Admins. The bill will use their default policy's workflow, which you can see within your Group policy's People page. Does that clear that up?

Sonia Liapounova

Hi @gherkert thanks for writing in!

That's correct. Once a vendor sends the invoice to you it will land in your domain's primary contact's inbox. It will then go through approval, reimbursement, and export as described in the article you linked.

You can pay the vendor through or outside of Expensify. If you're paying via Expensify then you will need to have a business bank account linked to the company reimburser's Expensify account. The reimbursement can then either be done via direct deposit or by check.

I hope this helps, let me know if you have any further questions!

gherkert

Hi @Sonia Liapounova - really appreciate the response!

Are you able to share any other resources/docs your team has on how the vendor routing/payment will work? We are most interested in routing approvals in Expensify while paying our vendors outside of Expensify.

It's training/help material on the exporting of the invoices that is the bigger need.

Thanks!!

gherkert

Hey @Sonia Liapounova and/or @Conor Pendergrast ...

Just wanted to clarify before I test this out.

Above, in the first response from your team, you shared that approved bills can be exported and paid directly from QuickBooks (our accounting software). According to this article, it looks like we have to pay through Expensify if we want to use the vendor bill feature.

Is the article I just shared outdated or was the above information incorrect and we do have to pay through Expensify.

Thanks!

KorakTaylor

@Sonia Liapounova and/or @Conor Pendergrast

Question for you. How do you assign a bill to a department lead for review and approval? Is it possible to redirect it so it follows their workflow approval and not the primary contacts workflow approval?