Expensify Card - Honest Review

coltonshaw06
coltonshaw06 Expensify Customer Posts: 27 Expensify Admirer

We are a church and decided to implement the Expensify card in December 2019 because we have a strong desire to move away from credit cards. Our goal was to simplify the spending purchase, have more control over our card usage, and ability to have better reporting.

We implemented Expensify in June 2019, and made the official switch to Expensify Cards in December of 2019. We learned a lot from this process and I hope that the below helps when making a decision on this. We have about 14 expensify cards in circulation right now.

Pros:

  • Easy to issue a card, easy to remove a card, and simple to control the limits on each card. Much better than our previous Wells Fargo cards.
  • Record speed getting from transaction to Expensify for reporting. Our employees love this. This used to take 2 - 7 days with Wells Fargo.
  • Daily settlements make it so we don't get too out of touch for our credit card spending. We never have to cringe and thing "Dang, that's a lot on our cards..."
  • E-receipts are great and it's a pro with the added value, but we have entirely disabled this because of policies requiring us to have a bit more insight into purchases.


Cons:

  • Lack of general documentation. You're on your own. There is very little documentation to support the expensify card outside of a few high level deep dives. We had to figure most of this out on our own or by asking support.
  • The "unapproved card limit" is great, but can be very confusing because employees have no way to know how close they are to their limit.
  • Daily settlements are difficult to reconcile in other accounting platforms outside of Quickbooks. For example, i have to match 5 - 25 transactions per daily settlement manually. There are a few other bugs in it with matching.
  • Our employees get a lot of unrelated emails ever since signing up for Expensify cards.
  • The general expensify support is horrible. If I had the time on my hands, I would have transitioned out already. If we don't see an improvement in support, we may transition out this summer.
  • Splitting expenses are not supported, which makes reporting a pain. It requires separate transactions.
  • No mobile management ability, not even a mobile website.


At the end of the day, our expensify cards have been an interesting implementation and have saved time in some areas and created huge headaches in other areas. In hindsight, I would have waiting 6-12 months before implementing this as I know expensify is improving this every day. It does not seem like it was ready to go public at a large scale when it did. I believe that this will become a great product, it's just not there yet.

Comments

  • Sophie_Pinto
    Sophie_Pinto Expensify Customer, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 133 Expensify Team
    edited April 2020

    Thank you @coltonshaw06 for your honest thoughts - I'm glad that we have been able to save you some time but sounds like there's definitely room for improvement; let's talk through some of the points you raised!

    Lack of general documentation. You're on your own. There is very little documentation to support the expensify card outside of a few high level deep dives. We had to figure most of this out on our own or by asking support.

    Would you mind going into a bit more detail on where we're lacking in documentation? We are always keen to hear places where we can fill the gap in terms of product knowledge; sometimes we need a prompt to get what's in our heads out into proper documentation.

    The "unapproved card limit" is great, but can be very confusing because employees have no way to know how close they are to their limit.

    This feature has been added and users can see their current limit under their Settings > Account > Credit Card Import.

    Splitting expenses are not supported, which makes reporting a pain. It requires separate transactions.

    Daily settlements are difficult to reconcile in other accounting platforms outside of Quickbooks. For example, i have to match 5 - 25 transactions per daily settlement manually. There are a few other bugs in it with matching.

    Great news! We are currently exploring ways to make these features happen - I recommend subscribing to Product Updates to keep an ear to the ground on this.

    Feel free to add your vote to the Expensify Card - split expenses into multiple categories idea.

    No mobile management ability, not even a mobile website.

    There is some mobile management ability available however it is intended by design that the mobile is meant to compliment the web application, so therefore there won't be full functionality. What sort of management abilities were you looking to have on mobile?

    The general expensify support is horrible. If I had the time on my hands, I would have transitioned out already. If we don't see an improvement in support, we may transition out this summer.

    This one we are aware that we can do a lot better into this space, so rest assured that we are over-turning every rock to reorganise the way we approach our support for the better. This isn't a quick fix but we are committed to making some leaps and strides here so I'd just like to thank you for your patience while we continue to improve!

    Thanks again for your honest thoughts, please feel free to continue the discussion here or let me know if you have any more questions!

  • coltonshaw06
    coltonshaw06 Expensify Customer Posts: 27 Expensify Admirer

    @Sophie Pinto-Raetz ,

    For Documentation, this is mainly centered around reconciliation. But also, things like what do I do with a fraudulent charge? Export errors, etc? I can find most answers after digging on the community page for a few minutes. But with something as widespread as this the expensify card, I would expect true how to's located within https://docs.expensify.com/en/ for easy access & increased clarity. I would never tell my team to make an account on the community, search for this in order to figure out how to do X. That may be personal preference.


    I would be ecstatic to see the items you mentioned are in the pipeline added. Those are the bulk of my time allocation.


    For mobile management, being an admin I would expect to be able to modify card limits, see what our ability to spend for the organization is, view others unapproved reports & approve reports, and more. There is a mobile 'user' application, but for domain admins it provides no additional value.


    Lastly, please please please fix your support. I even get notifications now that say 'we typically reply in 1-2 hours' and rarely is that the case. For example, today at 10am I opened something with no response (2.5h). On the 27th I opened a ticket at 9am with the first response on the 28th at 11am. The use of a chat tool makes our expectation of at least a 'Hey, i'm working on this' response much sooner.

  • Alejandro Paz
    Alejandro Paz Expensify Team Posts: 87 Expensify Team

    Hi @coltonshaw06 ,

    Thanks for going into more detail here! While we do have some posts addressing fraud, I'd love to learn more about what information you're looking for and are having trouble finding. Regarding export errors, could you write in to concierge@expensify.com?

    When it comes to using docs.expensify.com vs community.expensify.com, what are some of the features within docs that you prefer in regard to clarity and easy access? If there's something specific that you'd like to see improved, can you add it as an Idea here?

    For mobile management, could you also add how you'd like for that to work within the Ideas section? That way, we can share your idea with other customers and bring attention to my team. On a side note, what do you prefer about managing via the mobile app vs the web app?

    As for support, we definitely understand and appreciate that feedback. We're constantly working on improving the support process, and feedback along the way helps us to understand where we can make your experience better.

  • coltonshaw06
    coltonshaw06 Expensify Customer Posts: 27 Expensify Admirer

    @Alejandro Paz

    Your first comment goes back to my point about documentation. I appreciate that the information exists, but in order to get to it I have to do some digging on the community. This seems a bit counter-intuitive. Information like this should be readily accessible on docs.expensify.com or right in the transaction page. It also doesn't include what to email concierge. I assume just "Hey, this isn't my purchase."

    With the docs vs community. It's purely that information needs to be easy to find, official, and straight forward. If I'm looking for the answer to reconciling my expensify card. I shouldn't have to search the community questions, answers, deep dives to piece together my information. I should be able to go to docs and find one called "Month end - Reconcile your Expensify Card".

    For mobile management, it's about accessibility. If i'm out and a staff member needs to have their card limit raised for a large purchase I shouldn't have to load up a hotspot, connect, increase, etc. The tools exist to make it easy. Your website is even mobile friendly, it just doesn't allow me on it.

    By improving support, are you expanding your team? Or improving processes.

  • Maddy Lewis
    Maddy Lewis Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 120 Expensify Team

    Hi @coltonshaw06 - When we talk about improving support, we hope to do both of the things you mentioned! We're always look at ways to improve the product so it's more intuitive for our users. Were also actively improving our support model.

    That said, the full functionality of the website will likely never be available via a mobile browser. The engineering behind the website is complex and cannot be properly supported on a mobile browser. Additionally, the mobile app is meant to be complimentary to the website. Again, this has to do with engineering capabilities.

    I agree with you that our resources and documentation could be easier to navigate. That is absolutely something we're working on improving. This is a work in progress but improvements are being made.

    Please let us know if you're still currently running into issues with your Expensify Cards. I want to make sure we hit all of the items you mentioned.

  • coltonshaw06
    coltonshaw06 Expensify Customer Posts: 27 Expensify Admirer

    @Maddy Lewis @Alejandro Paz @Sophie Pinto-Raetz

    We have ran into a new issue surrounded around reconciling this expensify card with daily settlements. I'll run through the example below, and any suggestions to fix this would be great.

    We go to buy something at samsclub for 223.59 on Jan 14th. That transaction stays pending until 1/21 in which it's exported to our bookkeeping software Sage Intacct. During that hold Sams Club refunded $0.38. Which means the transaction now sync'd to Sage for $223.21.

    When I go to reconcile the daily expenses that Expensify provides us it looks like the below. These are screenshots of the export from Expensify.

    So, now i have to match every transaction for the 14th with the bank charge on the 14th to make it equal $8,205.99, and the same for the 22nd. The issue now is that within my accounting software I have a SINGLE charge for $223.31 synced, not two separate charges.

    This normally wouldn't be an issue because with Wells Fargo it wouldn't sync until it was done pending. But because the money was taken out at the start of the pending and adjustments made once it posts, your reconciliation process makes it look like two unrelated transactions to an accounting software.

    How would we go about adjusting this to make it work properly? I wouldn't be opposed to having it break into separate transactions within Expensify and have to code each. As it stands right now, I cannot finish my January bank rec until I have this fixed.

  • Rachael Hopkins
    Rachael Hopkins Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 904 Expensify Team

    Hi @coltonshaw06, you must have emailed in at almost the same time as posting this - I'm literally looking at your other message too! I'm going to go away and talk to my team and I'll keep troubleshooting via email, then will update this thread once we work it out.

  • STML
    STML Expensify Customer Posts: 11 Expensify Newcomer

    Hello,

    Was this ever resolved for you? I'm interested to know as I am experiencing issues with the Expensify Card Liability Account and Expensify Clearing Account.

    Thanks,

    Sandra

  • Michelle Niemi
    Michelle Niemi Expensify Team Posts: 104 Expensify Team

    Hi @STML Our Customer Success tam will be happy to look into your specific account if you would please write into concierge@expensify.com.

    We look forward to hearing from you!

    Michelle