Changes to report user interface to highlight important information!

Sheena Trepanier
Sheena Trepanier Expensify Team, Approved! Accountant, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 1,362 Expensify Team
edited October 2020 in Product Updates

Our report UI has served us well for the past decade but it’s time for a clean up. If you haven’t had a chance to see the new report, head to your Reports page now!

Let’s take a look at the changes.

You’ll notice that the report is cleaner as we moved some basic functionality and information to  a new Details section, which is collapsed by default. You can expand this by using the Details button at the top right of the report to see the following items:

  • Editing expenses - Pencil icon
  • Sharing the report - Person icon
  • Printing - Printer icon
  • PDF export - Download icon
  • Deletion - Trash can icon 
    • Please note you must be the report owner with the report in the Open state to delete it.
  • Report ID
  • Report type
  • Report’s policy
  • Report view options (formerly Layout)
  • Invoice markup (if applicable)
  • Currency Selector (if applicable)

In addition to these UI changes, there’s a few other changes worth noting:

  • The Add Expenses button is now located next to the Submit button at the top left of the report.
  • Now, you can add supporting documentation as a comment on the report rather than adding documents to a report.
  • Receipt thumbnails have been removed from the report view. To view receipts, click each expense on the report or export to a PDF where you’ll see full-page receipts by default.
  • Stars on reports are no longer used to indicate reports that need your attention. All reports requiring your attention (be that to submit, approve, reimburse or export) will appear in your Inbox.
  • The default order of reports on your Reports page will now be (newest on the top):
    • Submitted date if the report has been submitted
    • Created date if the report has not been submitted.

If you have any questions, take a look at our help docs, reach out in the Community, or email us at concierge@expensify.com.

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Comments

  • Jeremy Boniface
    Jeremy Boniface Expensify Team Posts: 202 Expensify Team

    Thanks for providing these suggestions -- we really appreciate it. I would recommend adding your individual ideas to the Ideas section, so that other users can upvote and discuss. This really does help us gauge interest and gather use-cases for consideration. Feel free to reach out to concierge@expensify.com to discuss any of these individual points further, as well.

  • Matt Moore
    Matt Moore Expensify Customer, Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 132 Expensify Team
  • Mark Louis
    Mark Louis Expensify Team Posts: 167 Expensify Team

    Hi @arvinagna – thank you for your feedback. Just to understand your situation a bit better, why is adding the report ID to the report title not ideal?

  • TravisW
    TravisW Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    So I am not a fan of the changes because our company relied on the fact when you logged into the website to approve expense reports the reports that needed your attention were at the top with a star. Now it seems like that is not happening and we had several approvers not approving expense reports. How are we suppose to know the reports that need to be approved?

  • Mark Louis
    Mark Louis Expensify Team Posts: 167 Expensify Team

    @TravisW - reports that need your attention are still displayed in your Inbox. You'll want to make sure the Inbox task isn't hidden if you don't see it by clicking "Show Hidden Tasks".

  • TravisW
    TravisW Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    @Mark Louis - That doesn't work for our account. We have way too many reports to approve and you cannot filter by person that would need to approve.

  • Mark Louis
    Mark Louis Expensify Team Posts: 167 Expensify Team

    @TravisW - thanks for that feedback on the Inbox task. I'll be sure to pass this along to our team so that is taken into consideration.

  • Sonia Liapounova
    Sonia Liapounova Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team Posts: 211 Expensify Team
  • arvinagna
    arvinagna Expensify Customer Posts: 6 Expensify Newcomer

    we can add the id to the title. while this is a good solution it's not ideal for the reason that we can't enforce or disable editing. The usual convention is users will rename the title into something that makes sense to them and to their approvers. "ex. meals, airfare, uber, etc".

    if you are a user or approver raising multiple expense report. Do you think you can easily identify which ER corresponds to what by looking at the ID added to the report?

    having the id on a separate field shown on the body of ER is the best way to go.

  • Sonia Liapounova
    Sonia Liapounova Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team Posts: 211 Expensify Team

    @dfricker Thank you for the description of your use case and why it would be helpful to be able to hide the comments section!

    @arvinagna Could you share an example of when you'd need to check the report ID? What are you checking against? Reimbursements/exports to accounting systems/other?

  • arvinagna
    arvinagna Expensify Customer Posts: 6 Expensify Newcomer

    I've already mention it on my first comment. I would assume you either missed my first comment or you are just not taking into account all the comments in here.

    Please read through my first comment, you'll see the answer to your question.

    Thanks,

    Arvin

  • Kirk Barrett
    Kirk Barrett Expensify Success Coach - Admin Posts: 128 Expensify Team

    Oh, sorry about that! Thanks for your suggestion! This will be shared with the team.

  • Cheryl Walsh
    Cheryl Walsh Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 107 Expensify Team

    @acctsupport thank you so much for your feedback, it is really helpful to get an understanding of how our customers use our product and featuers. I've raised this with the team for review! Thank you once again.

  • evgeniya_a
    evgeniya_a Expensify Customer Posts: 22 Expensify Newcomer

    Couldn't agree more! Especially re Stars & Report Policy being always visible. This is like the first thing we look at for each report (ex. Billable vs non-billable policy).

    I really enjoyed using Expensify in the past, but over the past couple of years it's just gotten worse somehow, starting with them removing proper customer support, no heads up on important updates (great, I gotta re-do our company's Expensify user guide AGAIN), and so many marketing emails.

    And yet other things don't get fixed.. like being able to modify exchange rates, remove/inactivate tags when they're deactivated in NetSuite (I have to manually update these in NS and in every policy? so much work!), and combine the domain/policy controls - do we really need both?

  • jpolanco
    jpolanco Expensify Customer Posts: 1 Expensify Newcomer

    I do normally like improvement, but you can't fix what is not broken. Thanks to those changes we now have to change the way we do things, also called MANUAL. Not sure what's wrong having the report ID visible, and what was done in one click now becomes a nightmare starting to change our internal Manual, policy etc. Good job guys!

    I REALLY HOPE YOU REVERT THIS ASAP.

  • Cheryl Walsh
    Cheryl Walsh Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 107 Expensify Team

    @jpolanco thank you for your comments, I can assure you our team take feedback seriously and are continuing their assessment of the changes. Thank you!

  • Kid
    Kid Expensify Customer Posts: 21 Expensify Newcomer

    We are relying on the id on the printed PDF to identify our users' expenses. So if you remove the id on the generated PDF, this will be a nightmare for our financial working!!!

  • Julia
    Julia Expensify Customer Posts: 164 Expensify Pro

    Not that it matters, because I agree wholeheartedly with @ExpenseMaster's comments regarding your overall unwillingness to listen to your customers and users, but these changes are no bueno for me too.

    The UI was perfect before. Have you all been watching or reading too much Marie Kondo during Covid? You should NOT get rid of things that spark joy. The stars spark joy, because they are a necessity, especially for companies with larger volumes of reports.

    The report ID is a necessity, for audit purposes. Otherwise, we have no way to distinguish that the repot being provided ties out to the actual selection pulled for audit.

    The policy is a necessity. Even though we mainly have one policy, I can only imagine the heartburn this causes for admins with multiple policies.


    In your overall quest for simplicity and UI favorability, you've failed miserably because it was perfect before and you've added additional work for your users.


  • Daryll
    Daryll Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    Changes = Epic Failure

    Customer Service = Sadly Lacking

    Solution = Find an new program/product.

  • Cortney Ofstad
    Cortney Ofstad Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 173 Expensify Team

    Thank you all for responding! I can assure you our team takes the feedback seriously and are continuing to asses the changes. I appreciate you all taking the time to share your feedback on this!

  • TMF5012
    TMF5012 Expensify Customer Posts: 6 Expensify Newcomer

    Awful. Where is the bulk edit. Changes are more click = time wastage.

  • Sophie_Pinto
    Sophie_Pinto Expensify Customer, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 133 Expensify Team

    @TMF5012 - did you see this help article on how to bulk edit expenses? Is that what you were after?