Expensify.org/hunger to reimburse families in need during COVID-19 crisis
Comments
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Hello,
Thank you for the response. I have two receipts that I submitted, do I need to edit those? Previous question; "Do I need to edit my expenses to match $50 for my two receipts to be approved? I just listed the totals on both, but completely understand that the matching SNAP purchase is for $50." Thank you.
- Heather
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Hey @Heatherblondie would you mind rephrasing your question, just so I make sure I fully understand. Thanks!
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Hello,
I have two receipts, so I want to know if I have to edit their total to match $50?
Thank you.
- Heather
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Ted Harris Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 359 Expensify TeamOptions
Hi @Heatherblondie - you can either edit the receipt amounts, or simply add a new negative cash expense for any amount over and above $50:
You'd use brackets to signify this was a negative expense too:
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Okay I think I edited it correctly. Does that change my submission date from March 31st to today?
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Yes, your new submission date will be today.
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This question is for any EXPENSIFY VOLUNTEER:
Can you please tell me what date of submission you are currently working on? I submitted March 26th and it's been over 3 weeks...
Thank You!
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Thanks for your patience @Karenjane57 - the Expensify.org team is working through reports as they have been submitted. The date of submitted reports isn't relevant to the reimbursed time frame but rather the number of reports to process and the funds available. The number of families signing up for reimbursement has vastly outnumbered the limited funds available. Though we’re unable to provide a specific timeline on when your report will be reimbursed, we’re doing our best to drive donations and keep our fund moving forward. Rest assured, we’ll review every report that’s submitted per our instructions.
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Hello Stevie,
I think @Karenjane57's question was entirely relevant. If your team let everyone know what submission date you are currently reimbursing for, we (the submitters) will know approximately when we will get reimbursed. Your team should really be publishing that info on a daily basis to this thread. People need hope right now. Please don't dodge our questions with corporate boilerplate, as it reflects poorly on Expensify. Thank you.
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Have I been accepted into this yet
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Hello, I requested to join 10 days ago and got this message: "Your request to join the Expensify.org/hunger team has been sent! I'll reach out and let you know as soon as volunteer@expensify.org accepts." and also submitted my report but have heard nothing. Could you tell me about how long it takes to be accepted before receiving the reimbursement?
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Hi just wondering what dates your up to processing ? An if someone can check mine please ! Thanks
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Hello. I am just curious as to the payments and if they are still being issued out? I submitted mine March 23rd and haven’t seem to have gotten anywhere? I see a lot of confusion through the posts and would like to know if I will be receiving the reimbursement? Thank you for your valuable time and I appreciate all that you do.
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Hi all! Thanks for your continued patience while we work through the incredible number of requests we have received. We understand this is a stressful time for everyone, and we are working hard to get to everyone. If you have any specific questions about your request, please reach out to Concierge! 😊
@raysf I wanted to explain a little further why Stevie mentioned the knowing the date we're up to is not relevant. There have been some days when more donations were made than others, or days when more reports were submitted. Working backwards based off these dates will not give you a reliable timeframe for receiving this donation, as each day we make a different sized (as big as possible!) dent in the backlog.
Please rest assured we are working as hard as we can to reimburse every family that has reached out to us, and reimbursing as much as we can as fast as we can. You can help by encouraging people to donate to www.expensify.org/hunger, and continuing to spread the word about our efforts!
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Hello Kadie,
It will be a challenge to convince donors to fund this program considering the executives at Expensify have not allocated enough resources to manage it responsibility, which is evidenced by the fact that the Expensify employees working on this project are basically doing the reimbursement work "on the side", while also performing core job duties unrelated to this program. Expensify had the statistics prior to launching this project, statistics which stated how many people use EBT, and thus how many would require reimbursement, and thus the amount of reimbursement requests Expensify could accept before "pausing" the program until more funding was obtained. The fact that the executives at your company made so little effort to think this stuff through raises concerns that they created the program more for publicity reasons than for philanthropic reasons. I would suggest that they mend fences by placing more employees and company funds onto this project immediately. If word gets out that an expense reimbursement company cannot even manage its own expense reimbursements, that is not going to bode so well for Expensify. We poor folks may not have money, but we do have social media accounts which will be utilized if we are continually given the run around.
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Rachael Hopkins Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 904 Expensify TeamOptions
Hi @raysf, thanks for your feedback, I really hope it does not appear that way to everyone! I’d like to be really transparent here, and fill you in completely:
Expensify is a small company, there’s only about 130 of us, and you are correct that we are unlikely to be able to give $50 to every SNAP user in the continental US. But we didn’t feel that not being billionaires should stop us from helping as many people as we can. We are not a huge non-profit or a tech giant, we are just a small group of humans trying to help as many other humans as we can.
Expensify.org has been in the pipeline for about a year or two and was officially born just before the Covid-19 outbreak. We started it without any fanfare because we wanted to slowly ramp up and use the leverage of a large customer base to be able to contribute more. Our team is very passionate about helping the world be a better place, and aside from our own individual charitable endeavors, we wanted to do something bigger. We also set up our Expensify Credit Card offering to donate money to Expensify.org rather than giving traditional ‘points’ to cardholders. At that stage, the Hunger policy was set up to reimburse volunteers for paying school lunch debt for others.
And then there was mid-March, and everything changed. We all watched in disbelief as economies globally started shutting down. On March 16th, our team suddenly kicked into overdrive ‘what can we do, how can we help people, how can we help our customers help people?’. We brainstormed, donated a pile of Expensify’s money to Expensify.org, donated our own money, contacted everyone who had registered interest in donating and started getting funds into the Expensify.org bank account from them too, diverted all of Expensify.org into the Hunger Policy and repurposed that policy. We had no idea how many SNAP users would take us up on our offer of $50 per household, but we wanted to help as much as we could, using the technology we already have (software with built-in ACH funds transfers). Within 48 hours we had let our customers know that SNAP users could get a donation from Expensify for $50 per household (until we ran out of money), and hoped the word would get out so we could help some people.
We put together a team of people from executives, to salespeople, to operations managers, to customer service, and they worked around the clock processing these initial $50 donations to SNAP users until the Expensify.org bank account ran dry. We then repurposed our pre-booked advertising to get more donations and make people aware of the program. As it stands now, we get more and more donations to Expensify.org every day, and each time we have money in the bank we process more reports.
To be completely transparent, I would like to give you an idea of the timeline:
- First thing in the morning, US Eastern time, the Expensify.org bank account is checked
- Whoever is ‘rostered on’ for Expensify.org that day takes that balance and calculates how many $50 donations can be funded that day
- That person, and as many people as are needed, then transfer those $50 amounts into people’s bank accounts until there are no funds left
And we repeat that every day.
While each and every one of us wish we did have the billions of dollars it would take to help every SNAP user, the truth is we don’t without more donations. If you do want to use those social media accounts to help drive donations, please feel free to direct your followers to expensify.org/hunger to sign up for a monthly donation.
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Good morning,
I submitted my report on March 25th and it's still processing. I've been following the comment sections and have seen people receiving their $50 when they submitted their report days after mine. I don't understand the explanation of why you cannot let us know the dates you're currently working on. If you're processing reports in the order received the available funds and some reports being sent back for corrections shouldn't effect the dates (the reasons I read for not being able to give us the dates currently being reimbursed) If the dates were listed I'm sure it would cut back on the messages and comments you're receiving. I'm not trying to be ungrateful because I appreciate the willingness to help those in need.
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Kimber , I am currently going through the exact same thing with them. They refuse to tell me when, at the very least the "processing" will be done. Mine has been , steady at a standstill stating "processing" since March 25th as well.... They're very own ,Concierge even helped me with the report,to get it uploaded,an done properly. I'm very grateful as well, during this trying time, however I'm scared at the same time, beings people are getting stimulus checks deposited in there accounts, an now this company has ,all our info for our banks....... idk , I just dont understand how it can take so long ,an why my report is still a month later , still in processing status. With no explanation, except were sorry, due to Covid 19 ,an the overload ,its taking longer then expected. I get that,I've understood that, BUT a whole MONTH later,an still Nothing,an still at same status.......... I dont get it!
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I am so confused. When I submitted I followed all directions and received message that successful but now it says closed out but I never received the deposit to my account. I have been checking every day as it would be so helpful. Our family is in a motel room. We list our home before governor passed the no evictions.
I don't know why it says closed. I have been waiting and it definitely had gone through. Help please
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Hey @Kimber , @Futurebeck2014 and @Nevergiveuporshutup, thanks for posting to the Community! Due to the high demand and lack of funds, reports are taking several weeks to get processed and reimbursed. We are doing everything we can to reimburse every single report, but it might take some time.
If you have questions about your report, please reach out to concierge@expensify.com, and the team will be happy to help! Thanks!
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Can someone from the hunger policy accept my request to join already? Its been a week and haven't received a response. I can't submit anything until you accept me into the policy
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@Anthony23 We are currently working through the existing reports and reimbursing as funds become available. We won't be accepting anyone new to the policy until we've processed more of the existing reports. We do plan to get to everyone as soon as we can.
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Rachael Hopkins Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 904 Expensify TeamOptions
Hey @Nevergiveuporshutup I just saw your comment about your report being Closed. "Closed" means you have not sent it anywhere, so the only person who can see your report and the comments, is you.
Unfortunately you're still waiting on being added to the Expensify.org/hunger policy - step 5 on the guide here.
Once you get an email saying you have been added, you will be able to submit that to Expensify.
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Rachael Hopkins Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 904 Expensify TeamOptions
Hi @Futurebeck2014 - I just want to put your mind at rest on the point with bank accounts! While your account is connected to Expensify, we can't actually get into your account in any way, or deduct anything from it, or even see your bank account number. All we can do is use the connection to deposit money.
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Kimber,I have been processing since March 23rd
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@Lheskett, I'm about ready to give up. Weeks ago they said they were working on reports from the 21st. They're just giving everyone the runaround, same generic responses over and over. I'm still waiting for my unemployment and stimulus check, so this money would really help. I'm diabetic and have to test 3x a day, insurance only pays for enough strips to test once daily, so I have to pay for the extra. I realize everyone is in a tough spot right now, I just wish they would let us know something besides be patient. I read a comment weeks ago from someone who submitted their report on the 23rd and received the money the next day. I'm normally not one to complain, especially when a company is trying to do a good deed. If I hadn't read comments from people receiving their money who submitted after me I wouldn't have spoken up, frustrating to say the least.
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@Kimber I submitted my report on March 28th and Expensify exported it to a CSV file on April 7th. I know a lot of us are in difficult situations, but you're right, it just plain sucks. It's the hope that 'MAYBE' it's going to get better, but it's just not yet. Then we feel almost ungrateful for being "impatient" about the money bc it's a good deed they are doing. It's a freaking horrible cycle. As for the stimulus stuff, I know some in my family have a deposit date for April 29th and April 30th, which they didn't find out about until today and they've been checking daily. So I hope you are one of the ones that has a deposit date. Much love and I hope things get better💕
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I guess you have went silent and don't intend on addressing all of these people's questions? I just want to know if I should just give up on waiting, because at this point it's been more than a month and I've lost hope in your company.
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I was just thinking the same thing
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I put my receipt through on March 12th..i haven't received my reimbursement yet. I'm assuming I'm going too at this point in time. It was nice to think I was gonna get $50 to spend for my family, but lost cause. I was one of the first to put a receipt through. And it wasn't the system going by the first ones first, that's for sure!!!!! VERY DISAPPOINTING!!!!