How do I print a pdf report with full-size images of the receipts?

hr_sbac
hr_sbac Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

Hello-

I used to have the option of printing full size receipt images when printing a pdf of the report, now they are only thumbnails. Is there a way to print a report with full size receipt images?

Thanks

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Answers

  • Victoria O'leary
    Victoria O'leary Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 110 Expensify Team

    Hi @hr_sbac

    Welcome to the community!

    It's not recommended practice to export full sized PDFs every time because Expensify was built to reduce the need to track copies of receipts. If this is for auditing purposes, I recommend setting up someone with the Auditor role so they can get view-access to all receipts.

    If this set-up doesn't work for you, I'd be intrigued to understand more about your use-case for needing full size receipt images in your PDFs.

    Thanks!

  • hr_sbac
    hr_sbac Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    Hi Victoria-


    Thanks for the response; I will see about setting someone us as auditor. I don't need to do it regularly, but I need the option to be there in the event of an audit or in the case I have currently which is simply sharing the report with another department.

    Thanks,

    Hannah

  • Rachael Hopkins
    Rachael Hopkins Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 904 Expensify Team

    In that case @hr_sbac (thinking out loud here) - you could just export the transactions the other department needs to look at, to a CSV and email it to them. And they can click through to the receipt images.

  • kziaei
    kziaei Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    I agree with @hr_sbac; I am having this problem now as well. Most companies will go through financial audits and it is usually preferred to give an auditor only the reports they've selected rather than have auditor access to everything in the system. A data extract to excel or CSV is more easily manipulated, so a PDF download is preferred to see the data, receipts, and audit history.

  • enimsaj
    enimsaj Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    I need to submit reports to the company we are billing with full receipts of the transactions (e.g. Hotel receipts, restaurant receipt with CC receipt, etc...)

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

    Hi @enimsaj! Do you think the CSV export option and allowing access to the receipt should work for you?

    1. Sign in to your Expensify account on the web app at www.expensify.com.
    2. Go to the Reports page.
    3. Click the checkbox to the left of the Report you'd like to export.
    4. Click the Export to drop-down list.
    5. Select Default CSV.

    Next, you'll want to enable Public Receipt Visibility for these receipts so that anyone who receives the CSV can view the receipts when they click on the link in the CSV. Let me know if you have any questions about this option!

  • Skygear
    Skygear Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    Being able to provide our client with full sized images in PDF form is an essential for THEIR bookkeeping. We cannot expect them to have access to our online account with Expensify for the 3 years they need for their accounting and legal purposes. This is a simple feature that's been removed but now adds a significant amount of time to our expense reporting.

  • Victoria O'leary
    Victoria O'leary Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 110 Expensify Team

    Hi @Skygear

    Just jumping back a little here, by using the approach suggested above, you'll be able to give your bookkeeper or auditor access to these receipts without giving them access to Expensify:

    1. Sign in to your Expensify account on the web app at www.expensify.com.
    2. Go to the Reports page.
    3. Click the checkbox to the left of the Report you'd like to export.
    4. Click the Export to drop-down list.
    5. Select Default CSV.

    Next, you'll want to enable Public Receipt Visibility for these receipts so that anyone who receives the CSV can view the receipts when they click on the link in the CSV.

    Or, if you would like to share just one report at a time, you could always export the report to PDF and share that.

    Let me know if you have any other questions.

  • ghostwriter66
    ghostwriter66 Expensify Customer Posts: 1 Expensify Newcomer

    These answers are unhelpful:

    I need to be able to scan the documents - save the file - make adjustments - and then save and send a pdf that has full size pictures of the receipts with my report via PDF. NO I do not want my accounting people to have to double click on 1300 receipts to see each one, one at a time, NO I do not want to give someone auditor permission, - I want them to be able to actually open the report and see all the receipts at once ... Expensify use to be able to do that - now it has stopped doing it ...


    Is there a solution or do we need to look for another vendor that can. Not being sarcastic but so many of these answers on this forum does NOT answer the direct question being asked.

  • Rachael Hopkins
    Rachael Hopkins Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 904 Expensify Team

    Hi @ghostwriter66 no, that is not something that Expensify does anymore as the output files are unwieldy. We recommend that you share your reports within Expensify and your accounting people access them on-screen, or as mentioned, export to CSV.

  • Hoologan
    Hoologan Expensify Customer Posts: 1 Expensify Newcomer

    Hi Rachael,

    To echo @ghostwriter66's concerns, the question is still not being answered. I'm in a similar position when I invoice a client that has strict travel guidelines such as itemized receipts, no alcohol, etc., I need to provide pdfs of READABLE receipts. Currently, the pdf contains thumbnails that are completely UNREADABLE. It is not my accounting people, (which, as a small business is myself) that I need to worry about, it is the accounting people that work for the Fortune 100 companies that we do business with. Those people are not going to log in to your application to verify my billing, they will simply deny to pay me if I can't follow their requirements. I understand your desire to go paperless, but that's not how the world works yet. Please speak to your team and give us back this option. Thank you.

  • hr_sbac
    hr_sbac Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    I agree Dan12321- I might start looking for a different solution. The increase in cost coupled with the loss of this functionality may not be worth it. I am disappointed because I have really loved this solution for the last 5+ years.

  • adammc
    adammc Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    I agree. We were just getting started with Expensify and excited about it but we need at least readable receipts in the .pdf. Current thumbs are useless.

  • DRye
    DRye Expensify Customer Posts: 2
    edited January 2022

    I 100% agree with all the above comments, i have started to use this app so that I can keep track of receipts and submit a whole pdf report to my accounts department/manager for approvale etc, as a single report with all receipts attached.

    The app obviously has the ability to add the receipts, so i don't see why they can't be provided in a resolution that is readable, in the current form it is absolutely useless to have them attached at all, it provides maximum frustration and zero information/validation.

    If this is not adjusted I will likely be looking for an alternative app to manage my expenses as having multiple people having to access individual receipts as auditors or run a parallel process of preparing a report with the original receipts seems completely inefficient.

    I note that there are a lot of responses on this thread from expensify and they all seem to fail to understand what everyone seems to be looking for here.

  • robertjordan
    robertjordan Expensify Customer Posts: 1 Expensify Newcomer

    Essentially echoing everyone on this, (and many other threads), will expensify return the full image feature for reports? It is obviously a need, and while expensify does not think this is "best practice" or where "expense reporting is going", it obviously is a requirement in the real world.

    Will this be added or do we all have ot go to a different supplier?

    Thank you

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

    Thanks @robertjordan and @DRye for the thoughts. Expensify does understand the request that is being made here, however, it is an intentional design philosophy to not generate full PDF reports. It's been mentioned earlier that you can create an Auditor role if someone needs to have view only access and/or limited actions - you can read about that role further, here.

    Otherwise, there is not a plan to introduce this feature in the near-term - we want to make sure the platform runs as fast, and as smoothly as possible...and PDF reports does not allow for us to do so!

  • hr_sbac
    hr_sbac Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    Good news- you can actually do this now!

    1. Go into the report your wish to print out
    2. Click on details in the upper right corner
    3. Click on the download icon
    4. This will generate a pdf with full size receipts

    YAY!!!

  • Klinksk8
    Klinksk8 Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    How can this be when they just said on 2/13 that the PDFs are unwieldy and slow and this option is not available? I hope it’s true.

  • Corinne Ofstad
    Corinne Ofstad Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 21 Expensify Team

    @Klinksk8 If the report is large with lots of expenses/receipts, you may experience slows. But the option does exist. However, it's not a recommended practice to export full sized PDFs every time because Expensify was built to reduce the need to track copies of receipts. 

  • hr_sbac
    hr_sbac Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    @Klinksk8 I thought it wasn't true...but then I got a survey from Expensify and scored it low because of not having this feature. Then, within minutes I had a response with those instructions. Even if it is slow I am super happy to have that option because sharing log in information within our organization would not have worked. I don't need it every time, but if my department is audited I would have had to print out the reports.

  • brucedc
    brucedc Approved! Accountant Posts: 1
    edited February 2022
  • popk1d
    popk1d Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    Thank you for making this available - it is important to our business. It's very weird to me that the initial answer was 'you don't need them, stop asking.' I am the owner of my business and I wish to be able to review the receipts that are submitted for reimbursement purposes. Don't tell your users how to run their businesses!

  • DRye
    DRye Expensify Customer Posts: 2

    I follow the above steps and still only get the thumbnails in the report. Is there some other setting that I need to change?

  • JeffB
    JeffB Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    There is a special kind of stupid here ... Expensify doesn't understand the request??? This is (was) simple. No full size receipts in PDF means no Expensify. I will be changing to another vendor since Expensify clearly can't understand their users. How is it difficult to understand that some of us NEED full size receipts in our PDF????

  • JeffB
    JeffB Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    This did NOT work for me and just downloaded small and illegible images (see below). This is simply absurd.


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

    Hi @JeffB - did you view all of the pages of the PDF that downloaded? After the receipt thumbnails, there should be full-size receipt images.

  • KevinExpensify
    KevinExpensify Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    Hi @Mark Louis,

    I want to bump this. In reply to your last message, I have generated a report and can confirm there are in fact separate pages dedicated to showing each receipt. However, the quality is still very poor and you cant see the details of the receipt, even when you zoom in. I've attached examples.

    It looks like the compression is set too high. When I download the images from the expensify site directly, each image is natively already compressed to around 100kB. I would suggest that this remains without further compression when generating this report.

    I also want to put my hand up and say, for the general use case as an employee and an employer ... I need to follow best practice in record keeping. This means that any expense report submitted MUST ALWAYS HAVE the full copy receipts attached, regardless of an audit. I don't make this rule - the AUSTRALIAN TAX OFFICE (ATO) defines this. This is expected at all companies i have worked for. Previous responses do not make sense, whereby Expensify is effectively telling us as customers that their proprietary system/product works best by removing the need for receipts...? This doesn't make sense at all... we are telling you we need full copy receipts... why are you telling us that your system gets rid of the need for that? ... Am I to tell the tax office (ATO) this? Or tell my company that Expensify says I don't need to submit receipts?.... very confusing and frustrating ....


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

    Hey @KevinExpensify - could you elaborate a little more on this:

    any expense report submitted MUST ALWAYS HAVE the full copy receipts attached, regardless of an audit

    Are you finding that some reports in Expensify don't have the copies of receipts you attached showing? Is there a requirement that these need to be stored as PDF's somewhere instead of just in the cloud, accessible by your account? Remember, Expensify accounts are free and you always retain access to it, even long after you may leave a company policy.

    For the most part, compression is required so the PDF can be generated before we experience a time-out when generating it. For this specific example, the issue isn't that the image has been compressed, it's that an already small image of a screen has had to be upsized to a PDF page. I would highly recommend for these expenses that you use the native PDF as the expense itself, rather than taking a picture of the screen which shows the PDF of the expense on it. When you export that, because it doesn't need to be converted for the PDF, it will be shown in all of it's original glory.

  • JamesPD
    JamesPD Expensify Customer Posts: 2

    Is there a misunderstanding still going on here - people have asked for 'full size' images, not 'full page' images. I would just like the thumbnails to be readable, they don't have to be that huge! Most things I scan are just small POS slips, which look crazy when blown up to a whole page. If only I could choose 4 to a page, or 6 to a page, or...