Why doesn't Expensify export merchants as vendors when exporting to Intacct or NetSuite?

Nicole Trepanier
Nicole Trepanier Expensify Team Posts: 498 Expensify Team

We've seen a lot of requests for vendor mapping across all of our integrations and have some mapping available for QuickBooks Online and Xero, however, we don't offer this for non-reimbursable credit card expenses for Intacct and NetSuite.

The reason behind this is actually more of a question for our users.

What is the vendor information used for?

The responses we've received have been about budgeting and tracking how much is spent on fuel vs. meals. Most accounting professionals that we've discussed this with simply use their available categories for reporting their employees spending.

As long as your chart of accounts/expense categories are broken down properly, this information is easy to gather and generate without the need to see exactly how much was spent at one gas station as opposed to another.

If there is a need to see how much was spent at a specific vendor like amazon, you can create an expense category to specifically track those purchases.

We'd love to know if we are missing any known use cases so please comment below!

Comments

  • ali_ramz
    ali_ramz Expensify Customer Posts: 2 Expensify Newcomer

    This is actually a very important feature for us. We have been asked the same by our accountant(s) - why track the vendor?

    The short answer is that, for many companies, our transactions are used as metrics (on many levels).

    The long answer goes like this:

    There is a fundamentally flawed philosophy of the "bottom line" when it comes to understanding one's business. A sale is a sale, and an expense is an expense! This concept was founded around high volume transactions in a world where software (much less physical binders) did not speak to each other; where it was far too time consuming to spend time being detailed and meticulous, because that level of detail would have been, rightfully so, a waste of time.

    Today, many companies want to understand the patterns of their money, more than just documenting the i/o for the legal/tax/baseline business procedures. Also, we like to trust that our staff is being conscious of their spending on the company card. Some questions that are answered by simply having the vendor field could be:

    •When refueling, do employees lean toward proximity vs price when using a company card?

    •If our staff tends to get coffee at {indie shop} vs {corporate shop}, they may appreciate a giftcard to {indie shop}. This - compared to - we spend a lot on "meals and entertainment" - our staff must like "meals" as well as "entertainment."

    This is by no means an exhaustive list.

    Then perhaps, as an API/SAS Dev company, the real question may for you:

    Why would you not implement a feature that is asked from your customer base?

    Not to be crass, but there are more vendors than Amazon in the world - and some accounting software limits the number of accounts you can have on your chart of accounts.

    As far as I can tell, Expensify is positioning them as a tool to make certain tasks easier for their customers, and should continue to do so for their customers.

  • evgeniya_a
    evgeniya_a Expensify Customer Posts: 22 Expensify Newcomer
    If we think in terms of gas stations - perhaps at this point we don't care so much whether our employees prefer Shell over Esso. We do care to see how much money we spend with other recurring vendors. For example, Expensify charge that goes through our corporate credit card. We want to be able to review Expensify vendor record and see how much was spent on Expensify and how that amount is changing from month to month as our company is growing. 
    Or, let's say there's two vendors providing similar services. We might want to compare which one of those vendors provides cheaper services. 
    If the merchant field already exists, why can't it be mapped to NetSuite for those who need it?

    Thanks!
  • BillyH
    BillyH Expensify Customer Posts: 2

    This is a ridiculous copout answer by the Expensify team. It is extremely necessary for us to be able to export the merchant as a vendor to Netsuite when it's a non-reimbursable expenses paid on a corporate credit card.

    It is very bad that our accounting team has to printout Expensify expense reports, trace the reports in NetSuite, then manually open every transaction and tagging who the vendor is in that transaction. It takes away why we use Expensify in the first place - to provide streamlined automation and reduce the administrative burden on our teams.

  • Ted Harris
    Ted Harris Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 359 Expensify Team

    Thanks, @BillyH. I'm sure you're aware by the comments here that it's not been a widely requested feature addition, but I'm still keen to understand what your accounting team is doing with that Vendor information after they've gone to this extent - what critical need is that data used to fulfill in your business?

  • rmads
    rmads Expensify Customer Posts: 1
    edited December 2021

    Hey @Ted Harris this is a an important feature addition and its something your competitors in the space are resolving.

    For non-T&E expenses that go through credit cards (i.e. the myriad of SaaS apps that may be bought at the user vs. full enterprise level), it would be very helpful to see the vendor in Intacct. Right now, transaction detail for a P&L account will have neatly listed vendors for each invoiced transaction and a big old blank for all spend synced through Expensify. How do we track the blank? What's in the blank? Why did the blank go up or down?

    It's a fair point that the last thing we want is a Vendor record in Intacct littered with 4,000 different McDonalds vendors across the country. To me, this would just seem like an administrative rule, where expenses to certain accounts (Travel, Food, Lodging) would not require the vendor sync, while others such as Hosting Expense or Software licenses would.

    Even if the above improvement would be made, the inability to write expense rules for the Enterprise (rather than the individual level) would still make the administration of this process a headache.