Reports and Tags structure for self-employed

JJLond0n
JJLond0n Expensify Customer Posts: 17 Expensify Newcomer

Hi there,

I have just joined and I wondered if anyone here is self-employed and using expensify for both business and personal expense tracking?

I am new here and trying to work out the best structure between reports and tags.

I will be sending my business data into Xero.

A couple of my credit cards do not have direct feeds here, so I'm wondering if they need tags to make reconciliation easier?

I'll post again when I've watched the video, but I just wanted to get topline thoughts and I'm sure I'm not alone here so I figured someone else might already have done this?

Thank you all in advance!

best, Jenni

Answers

  • Sara Jacobson
    Sara Jacobson Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hi @Jenni 👋

    Welcome to Expensify!

    You can definitely use Expensify to track both your business and personal spend. What you will want to do is set up a group policy to connect with Xero and track your business spend and use your individual policy to track your personal spend.

    You can find directions to connect your group policy to Xero here, along with links explaining how to configure your setup.

    For more in depth questions that you can't find answers in the Community for, please reach out to concierge@expensify.com!

    Thank you!

  • JJLond0n
    JJLond0n Expensify Customer Posts: 17 Expensify Newcomer
  • JJLond0n
    JJLond0n Expensify Customer Posts: 17 Expensify Newcomer

    @Sara Jacobson - a lot of the written info suggests using tags as personal and business. I think in principle your idea of having two policies works better but just wanted to check what the difference is? Thanks!

  • JJLond0n
    JJLond0n Expensify Customer Posts: 17 Expensify Newcomer

    Also curious as to how tags appear when you export a spreadsheet - can they have their own column?

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hi @JJLond0n!

    Q: A lot of the written info suggests using tags as personal and business. I think in principle your idea of having two policies works better but just wanted to check what the difference is? Thanks!

    Well, typically we just recommend that folks manage their personal spend via their individual policy, and then use a group policy for their business spend (if there are multiple users involved, or you need the functionality that's only available with group policies). Using two policies is a common practice when mangaging spend for two different purposes.

    Q: Also curious as to how tags appear when you export a spreadsheet - can they have their own column?

    Sure - you can export to a CSV template that breaks down expenses by Tag if you want. The default Tag Export template does this already. 👍

  • JJLond0n
    JJLond0n Expensify Customer Posts: 17 Expensify Newcomer

    Great - and also wondered how the reporting works between categories and tags. Can I have pie charts for categories by tag? Can I have pie charts purely of tags? I was thinking to use tags for projects.

    Now I'm wondering if I want to see categories reported after project costs (allocated across multiple categories) are removed or are defined as their own category. Wondering if here I need multi-level tags? (this may be a ridiculous question!) thx for entertaining me

  • Brigid  Bello
    Brigid Bello Expensify Team Posts: 77 Expensify Team

    Hey @JJLond0n,

    There isn't a way to view a pie chart of categories by tag directly in Expensify, but you can totally see a pie chart of your tags. If you scroll down on the same page where you've been viewing the category pie chart, you'll see the tag pie chart there :) If you need to, you can also export your expenses to a CVS and then use a program like Excel to further analyze your expense data. You can read more about exporting your expense details here.

    I'm not sure I totally understand what you mean when you say "see categories reported after project costs (allocated across multiple categories) are removed or are defined as their own category." Would you be able to go over what you're hoping to do in a little more detail? What I can say is that there isn't a way to make tags dependent on categories or vice versa. You can find general information about multi-level tagging here.