FAQ: Everything you need to know about Bills and Expensify

Christina Dobryzynski
Christina Dobryzynski Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 267 Expensify Team
edited March 2022 in Getting Started

Questions about receiving a bill

Can I forward a bill to myself (or have a bill forwarded from a teammate)?

Yes, you have the option to forward the email of a bill sent to you to [yourdomain.com]@expensify.cash. You can learn more about the options to create a bill here.


What if I want to forward a bill to my @expensify.cash email address, but I want it to be created on behalf of my vendor?

This is also possible! In order to do this, you can enter the vendor's email address in the subject line of the forwarded email. This will create an account for that vendor if one does not exist, and otherwise create the invoice in the vendor's account if the account is active.

What email address should I give my vendors/suppliers to receive bills in Expensify?

You'll want to give your vendors/suppliers the domain at the end of your email address.

Example, if your domain is "example.com" your billing email is "example.com@expensify.cash", include the .com/.gov/.io/etc


Can I add bills to my account or does a bill need to come from a supplier?

Yes, there are three methods to create a bill in your account.

1) Ask your vendor to email all bills to you in Expensify.

2) Manually create a bill from the Reports page of the web app.

3) Foward a bill you receive to [yourdomain.com]@expensify.cash.

Check out this support article with details about these options.


Who is the primary contact for the bills?

It's the email address listed at Settings > Domains > [Domain Name] > Domain Admins.


Do I need to have a private domain to receive my bills in Expensify?

Yes.

A private domain is required.


Does my vendor/supplier need an Expensify account?

Nope!

We will automatically create an Expensify account for your vendor against their email address when they send a bill to you at [yourdomain.com]@expensify.cash.

You can learn more about how to pay your vendor here.

Can a vendor send me a bill for any amount?

Yes - assuming your vendor isn't billing you for a million dollars! 💰

There is no minimum or maximum amount that can be paid in Expensify.

Questions about creating or deleting a Bill


Creating a bill from the Reports page of the web requires an email linked to a private domain and a connected business bank account.

If you don't see the Bill option in the drop-down list and you are using an email linked to a private domain, connect a verified bank account at Settings > Account > Payments.



How can I retract/delete a bill?

As long as the corresponding Invoice has not been approved and/or paid by the recipient, you will see an Undo Submit button on your Bill. Click this button to retract the bill back into the Open state to edit or delete it.

If the corresponding Invoice has been approved then the recipient can Unapprove and then Reject the Invoice which will allow the submitter to delete the Bill.


Questions about paying a Bill

How do I pay a bill?

Click the Pay button in the upper left corner of a bill. Check out this support article with information about paying an invoice and bill.


Can I pay a bill that has a non-reimbursable expense on it?

The answer is no. You can never pay any report type that is non-reimbursable because non-reimbursable = non payable. 


Why can't I pay an invoice?

You can pay the bill.

If you have an invoice in your account that looks like this, it's because there is a bill associated with that invoice. Click the button at the top of the invoice to be redirected to the bill. You can Pay the bill.

How is my vendor paid?

Any vendor with a US bank account can be paid with credit/debit card or an ACH bank-to-bank transfer. If your vendor elects to not connect a bank account, Expensify will send a physical check to the vendor. The estimated delivery for the check is 5-7 business days.

More details about this here.


When will I get my payout?

Invoice payouts happen on a weekly basis, but the timing for when you may see a particular deposit will vary depending on whether your customer paid with a credit card or via ACH transfer. In general, ACH transfers may take up to 10 business days.


I received a payout deposit in my bank account but I don’t understand the amount.

The payout you receive is a sum of your week’s paid invoices minus the processing fee associated with credit card payments (2.9% +.30 cents per transaction). Feel free to contact concierge@expensify.com if you have any questions on a particular deposit.


When I pay the bill, where does it go?

After a bill is paid, it will be in a Paid state and searchable on the Reports page. It's always an option to export the bill to your connected accounting software.


Will you cover any late fees for the bill arriving after it was due?

No, we won't cover any delayed payments.

Questions about approval workflow/sharing a Bill

The bill must be approved by my finance team before it's paid, what's the approval workflow like for bills?

Great question! The bill will automatically follow the approval workflow for the primary contact who received the bill.

With each approval, it will be available for review from the Inbox. The final approver can click the Pay button at the top of the bill to pay it.

I just noticed the bill I received from my vendor/supplier is incorrect. How do I edit the bill?

Reach out to the vendor.

You'll want to reject the bill in Expensify, reach out to the vendor/supplier and request a revised bill be sent to [yourdomain.com]@expensify.cash.

Once you reject the bill, you can delete the invoice associated with that bill. When the vendor/supplier sends you a new bill, we'll automatically create a new invoice for that bill.

Where is the PDF of the vendor invoice I usually get?

The PDF is available on the invoice associated with the bill.

The invoice is available in the primary domain contact’s Reports Page.

If others would like to view the PDF, you can share the invoice or add the others as a copilot to your account so they can access all future invoices and bills.

How do I share a bill or invoice with others?

Click the Share button on the invoice or bill.

Sharing a bill or invoice with another member of your group policy can be done by clicking the Share icon on the bill or invoice.

Another option is to add a user as a copilot so he/she can access your Expensify account and view the bill and invoices from your Reports page.


Questions about exporting a bill to a connected accounting package

Can I add GL codes to my bill?

Yes!

The bill can be coded based on the GL codes importing from the connected accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, NetSuite, QuickBooks Desktop). The bill can be exported to the connected accounting software (just like any expense report).

Can I export a bill to be paid in QuickBooks Online?

No, you can't. You're required to pay the bill within Expensify; however, once it is paid within our system, you can export the invoice to QuickBooks, where you can mark it as paid on that side to avoid duplicate payments.

Have any additional questions, reach out to Concierge!

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Comments

  • Bexouce
    Bexouce Expensify Customer Posts: 1 Expensify Newcomer

    This is very exciting - How can we see this in action?

    • I'd like to see how an invoice can be categorized by GL Account and Department, so that it then follows a unique approval flow based on the type of expense and budget bucket before getting processed
    • I'm not understanding why your note says you currently pay by check when SVB uses Bill Pay and that's possible to make payments via ACH. Perhaps I've misunderstood, but how do we keep all this electronic and in the 21st Century?
    • Very interested to see the audit trail and how it exports to Xero (eg: is the invoice itself also exported and attached in Xero?


  • Lauren Schurr
    Lauren Schurr Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 137 Expensify Team

    Thanks for your feedback @mainspring! We're currently working on implementing the first part of your feedback to allow users to send invoices in themselves. That will be one of the first things we implement now that we've launched the Bill Pay feature.

    Regarding approval workflows, if you don't want to use your normal approval workflow, you could check out category approvals as an alternative.

  • Lauren Schurr
    Lauren Schurr Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 137 Expensify Team

    Thanks for your feedback and questions @Bexouce!

    -Regarding categorization, the bill is placed on the recipient’s primary policy and can be coded accordingly just like any other expense or report. Just as I mentioned above, if you don't want to use your normal approval workflow, category approval is something to consider.

    -Bill Pay is checks only for launch, but we’ll be looking into ACH in the future.

    -Bills will export to your accounting platform just like reimbursable expenses currently.

    Let me know if you have any other questions!

  • DavidDS
    DavidDS Expensify Customer Posts: 9 Expensify Newcomer

    I really like the idea of consolidating our non-credit card expenses in one place.


    How do you code a bill to multiple cost codes? For example, right now we have to split charges to use multiple cost codes and customers. This happens rarely and it makes reconciliation in quickbooks more difficult (but manageable with only 2-3 instances of this per card per cycle).

    We have bills that might include cost codes for trim carpentry, flooring, tile and exterior wood decking all on one customers invoice (though we also get bills that are 100% one cost code).


    Being able to upload bills ourselves is also necessary before we can implement this, our vendors are a diverse group and this may be hard to get them all onboard with (some use paper receipt books still)

  • Zany Renney
    Zany Renney Approved! Accountant Posts: 171 Expensify Team

    Hey @DavidDS

    Are you saying you need to subcategorise the Bills? If so, I'd suggest multi-level tagging. You can find out how to do this in this step--by-step guide here.

    Have a read of that article and let me know if it would suffice for your use case. Otherwise we can dig deeper to understand how we can support you.

    If you have an idea of how to make this better, please do add it as an "Idea" so we can gather use cases for this!

    Thank you.

  • DavidDS
    DavidDS Expensify Customer Posts: 9 Expensify Newcomer

    I can see how this would be useful, but it looks like you can't break out different dollar amounts to different tags (ie cost codes), only add additional cost codes.


    I wish there was a way to have a sandbox account to test these advanced features without impacting our workflows

  • Zany Renney
    Zany Renney Approved! Accountant Posts: 171 Expensify Team

    @DavidDS Could you try creating a Sandbox Policy?

    We bill based on active users not number of group policies so you can create a new group policy for testing.

    Let me know how you get on!

  • Nicolette_A95
    Nicolette_A95 Expensify Customer Posts: 1
    edited October 2020

    Is there a feature that remembers what GL codes were keyed in previously for repeating bills?

    Regarding the approval workflow, is it possible to send suppliers to specific approvers?

  • Christina Dobryzynski
    Christina Dobryzynski Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 267 Expensify Team

    Hi there, @Nicolette_A95!

    Great questions!

    Is there a feature that remembers what GL codes were keyed in previously for repeating bills?

    GL Codes (Categories in Expensify) are implicit (aka 'sticky'), which means if you receive a bill from the same vendor each month, a category set on a past bill expense should automatically assign to the future bill expenses. 

    Another option is to create an expense rule for that vendor expense.

    Regarding the approval workflow, is it possible to send suppliers to specific approvers?

    A bill will follow the approval workflow for the person paying the Bill is Expensify.

    It is an option to create an approval workflow for specific Categories and Tags (as long as you don't use multi-level tags). Take a peek at the details of this approval setting here.

    Do you think setting a specific Category approval workflow would work for your bills?

  • Carolyn_GSA
    Carolyn_GSA Expensify Customer Posts: 7 Expensify Newcomer

    The day after I reimbursed an employee for an expense report, he told me that the vendor refunded the state sales tax. I canceled the reimbursement and the expense report was modified to the new amount. How do I find out if the cancellation of the reimbursement was successful?

  • April Bekkala
    April Bekkala Expensify Customer, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 117 Expensify Team

    Hi @Carolyn_GSA ,

    If the "Cancel Reimbursement" button was visible to you then that indicates you were within the window of opportunity to cancel the reimbursement transaction. When successful the report returns to Approved state. At this point you can make necessary changes and the report can be re-initiated for reimbursement.

  • Knyazev
    Knyazev Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    It is so unfortunate how limited approval process of the vendor bills is. Overall, it is a great idea to have this function so companies can use vendor bills automation together with expense reimbursements in one software, but I do not see what company (besides very small ones) would have only one approval workflow when most of the companies have multiple departments and bills do go to different department heads for approvals. Approval by categories doesn't make much sense either as different departments use the same expense accounts. It is unfortunate we have to look for another software to solve this business need for us. Maybe in the future this will be an option.

  • RI_matternet
    RI_matternet Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    Hi, does this bills processing function support PO matching to invoice?

  • Sasha Kluger
    Sasha Kluger Expensify Success Coach - Admin Posts: 126 Expensify Team

    Hi @Knyazev - You can set up approvers by department by utilizing our Tag Approvers functionality. If your departments are set up in QuickBooks as Classes, then just update your QuickBooks configuration to import Classes as Tags, and then you can set up tag approvers based on this help doc.


    @RI_matternet - I'm not 100% sure what you mean by PO matching, but it is possible to add a "PO Number" report field to every invoice so that a PO number can be included on the invoice.

  • Alreadyhere
    Alreadyhere Approved! Accountant Posts: 12

    If I have multiple policies under a domain, can I associate bill pay with a non-default policy? So that the bills that get emailed in go directly to the correct policy and don't need to get re-assigned?

  • FrederickM
    FrederickM Expensify Customer Posts: 2 Expensify Newcomer

    Can I pay a bill that has a non-reimbursable expense on it?

    The answer is no. You can never pay any report type that is non-reimbursable because non-reimbursable = non payable.

    You have gotten your terminology mixed up and created a senseless barrier. Also, your answer is unnecessarily snide.

    Expensify started as a system for employees to report their expenses to their company; so the reimbursable expenses of the employees were company expenses that the employees had paid with their own payment method (cash, a personal card, etc), and the company needed to reimburse them. A non-reimbursable expense is one that the employee incurred for the company, using the company's payment method (like a company credit card), which thus does not need to be reimbursed to the employee.

    A bill from one of the company's vendors is certainly "payable" - the company has a legal obligation to pay its vendor - but it's not "reimbursable" - nobody has paid it yet, there's nothing to reimburse.

    Expensify should talk to an accountant and fix this terminology mix-up.