Cash Conversion Surcharge - Makes little sense

cuthbei
cuthbei Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

Hi, I have a Cash Conversion Surcharge set in my account to match my credit card charges for transactions out of currency. For the last year I have been assuming it applied after the currency was converted. I.e. correct about in shown in amount field and then the total field is increased by the % shown after conversion. Only today I have managed to work out that it applies after smart scanning and therefore changes the amount I'm claiming in the spend currency. This makes little sense to me
1) If I choose not to smart scan it won't apply
2) If smart scan fails it won't apply
3) The admin checking my expenses thinks all the values I'm claiming are wrong

Any way this could be updated to make more sense? It would be ideal to show it in each expense line. I.e. original amount, converted amount, total amount after credit card uplift.

Of course, this doesn't help if the exchange rate between Expensify and the card issuer isn't the same, but it is a a start.

Thanks

Answers

  • cuthbei
    cuthbei Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    As smart scan fails to select the correct currency quite often it does cause a common issue. Surprising not be able to detect a currency when it has my location from the app (at least I assume it does)

  • Ted Harris
    Ted Harris Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 359 Expensify Team
    edited March 2020

    Hi @cuthbei, you're right in your understanding of how the current Currency Surcharge feature works.

    • A surcharge will currently only be added if a receipt is being SmartScanned.
    • The % above is applied to the original amount in the original currency. That new original amount is then converted back to the Policy Default
    • The note added to the expense report stating that "Applied X% conversion surcharge" will only show as long as the expense amount isn't modified further. If the amount is modified, this note will not appear and may be replaced with the "Expense amount is X% greater than the receipt amount of Y" note.

    Finally, we actually should take your GPS and IP location into account if you have location services enabled on your phone for Expensify. Whilst this can be overridden by SmartScan if a unique currency symbol (ie, £ or €) or an ISO code (ie, USD, GBP, EUR etc) is visible, if this isn't visible and there's no location data to choose from, the expense will be populated with the Policy Default anyway (and thus the Surcharge won't be applied!)

    Note as well: The Surcharge is only added once at the importing stage for the receipt. It cannot be added automatically afterwards by updating the currency.

    We definitely know that some of these quirks aren't ideal or in fact, useful_or up to scratch for most of our users. In fact, considering we'll automatically merge SmartScanned receipts to a matching card transaction with a +/- 5% difference, we think arbitrarily applying an amount that most of the time, _will not match any charge applied by your bank, isn't the way to go.

    Add to this that it's just not a feature commonly used, so we'd definitely love any more feedback you have here. What problem are you currently solving using the Currency Conversion Surcharge feature?

    Would a working connection for your credit card or bank with automatic merging facilitate your use case even better?

  • cuthbei
    cuthbei Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    Hi Ted, thanks for the detailed response.

    • On the GPS feature - I do have GPS enabled but it doesn't reliably work. Of course it is only available when I'm using the iOS app (that is the iOS setting restriction). As I smart scan and then normally switch away from the Expensify app whilst it scans, it may be not available at the right time I guess. Would be interesting to know when it searches for location in the Smartscan process.
    • The problem I'm solving is that I'm loosing money on expense claims, which is quite a large amount given my travel profile. Of course, it would make much more sense if it matched my card transactions, but as an Amex UK account holder it appears you don't support my account. Any idea when other accounts will be added for import?

    Thanks

  • cuthbei
    cuthbei Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    One more thing. I just imported a new expense into a report and the comment is "ΔExpense amount is greater than the amount read by SmartScan" even though I didn't alter the amount at all - So again I have to add a comment as to why it doesn't match,