Let's talk about weekly reminders from Concierge

Greg Schroeder
Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

If you’ve been using Expensify frequently as an individual user, employee, or administrator, you’ve probably received an email like this one:

This is Concierge’s Weekly Reminder Email, which is designed to remind folks that there are reports that need their attention. Generated every weekend, the reminder email works to provide you with a list of actionable reports at the beginning of each business week:

  • Open reports that need to be submitted
  • Open reports with violations that need to be fixed
  • Processing reports that are awaiting approval
  • Approved reports awaiting reimbursement
  • Reports that are awaiting export to your accounting software

This email is a pretty common point of contact from our customers, especially because many folks have reported that they don’t quite understand where this email comes from, how to resolve it, or how to just turn it off entirely.


So, where does this email come from? Concierge looks for reports that are being tracked in your Inbox. Look for the task that says "Here's the list of reports that need your attention.":

Once you’ve resolved all of the items listed in this task, you’ll no longer receive reminders from Concierge. It’s that simple!


All of that said, some customers have reported that the timing of the email might not work with their desired workflow in Expensify. For example, some users tend to submit their reports on a monthly basis and leave their reports Open for an extended period. As a result, the weekly reminder can feel a bit excessive.

In an effort to adjust the feature to be actionable and helpful for as many users as possible, we’re definitely looking into ways to improve reminders going forward. The Expensify team heavily values user feedback when molding the product, and we would love to work with you to improve reminders going forward.

Note: For transparency’s sake, it should be noted that weekly reminders are an extension of Concierge. We don’t currently have any plans to allow folks to disable Concierge at any point in the near future.

If we take a measured and collaborative approach, we can build the perfect reminder system that caters to all types of Expensify users. Please take a moment to share any ideas you have for improving how and when you receive the weekly reminder email in the comments below!

Comments

  • cbiow
    cbiow Expensify Customer Posts: 9 Expensify Newcomer
    edited November 2018

    Greg, it would be a significant improvement in Expensify to simply remove all misfeatures generating emails with Subject lines including "awaiting your action" and "Violations holding up," concerning the ordinary, routine expenses that haven't yet been submitted.
    Otherwise, if you can't remove it, perhaps rename "Concierge" to something representative of how it annoys customers. I've never had a human concierge run after me down the hall, shouting in my ear, demanding my attention to how much he's helping me. I've never had to implement two Gmail rules to silence a human concierge.

  • tylerzoll
    tylerzoll Approved! Accountant Posts: 430 Expensify Champion

    @Greg Schroeder Thanks for the opportunity to provide some input here. Sometimes I think that the concierge reminder creates a little bit of a barrier from folks adopting the automated processes. One of the things that in my mind would help would be for the concierge reminder to work based off of the scheduled submit date. For example, if I have a scheduled submit date of the last day of the month, send out the concierge message that there are x number of violations holding x number of dollars.

    This way if a user has weekly report submission, the reminder goes out a couple of days before the end of the week. If they have monthly submission, a couple of days before the end of the month.

    It would also be nice for something to go out a day or two after the end of the month with a reminder for approvers to approve reports.

    I'm pretty confident that all of my users dismiss every email that comes from Expensify because they get so many of them even with the reduced emails feature turned on. I think if there were fewer emails, the emails that get sent would have more of an impact and drive folks to action.

    I'm all for the reminders, but please just not email. The Expensify inbox is a great place for reminders as well as notifications on the app.

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hi @cbiow, appreciate you taking the time to comment!

    "It would be a significant improvement in Expensify to simply remove all misfeatures generating emails with Subject lines including "awaiting your action" and "Violations holding up," concerning the ordinary, routine expenses that haven't yet been submitted"

    Is the concern here that the copy on the email indicates that there's something seemingly dire to address? I know I've heard some folks say that "Violations" sounds too harsh or alarming, but that's just referencing what those items are called in the product. Do you have a suggestion for an alternative?

    "Otherwise, if you can't remove it, perhaps rename "Concierge" to something representative of how it annoys customers. I've never had a human concierge run after me down the hall, shouting in my ear, demanding my attention to how much he's helping me. I've never had to implement two Gmail rules to silence a human concierge."

    Ha, I certainly haven't experienced this either! Look, the intention certainly isn't to annoy folks, which is why we're here trying to make improvements. It sounds like this email in its current iteration isn't matching your expectations, so I'm all ears to any potential solutions beyond renaming the tool or turning it off completely. Thanks!

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team
    edited November 2018

    Hi @tylerzoll, thanks for contributing in the Community as always. :)

    First thing's first, I like the idea of making reminders more specific to each organization's chosen workflow, especially when it comes to submission timing. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that a hard and fast weekly timing will work for everyone, so more customizable timing options seem to be an obvious win.

    As for reminders a day or two after the month for approvers is similar to how we handled reminders for Automatic Statement Reporting. I think that's another iteration of making the reminder more dynamic to the chosen submission timing. 👍

    "I'm pretty confident that all of my users dismiss every email that comes from Expensify because they get so many of them even with the reduced emails feature turned on. I think if there were fewer emails, the emails that get sent would have more of an impact and drive folks to action."

    This really rings true for me, especially as I continuously monitor customer contact about these emails. I was struck by how many folks tend to ignore emails from Expensify because they're too ubiquitous. I know that I tend to follow that in my own personal life, so I certainly can't blame anyone who follows suit.

    Ultimately it sounds like a bit more control over the reminder method so that it can match up with your chosen workflow and cutting down on emails overall are the main takeaways here. Thanks a ton for the input!

  • cbiow
    cbiow Expensify Customer Posts: 9 Expensify Newcomer

    @Greg Schroeder , I'll try to do a proper threaded response; this app doesn't seem to do that natively. (But Markdown does seem to do the right thing!)

    "It would be a significant improvement in Expensify to simply remove all misfeatures generating emails with Subject lines including "awaiting your action" and "Violations holding up," concerning the ordinary, routine expenses that haven't yet been submitted"

    Is the concern here that the copy on the email indicates that there's something seemingly dire to address? I know I've heard some folks say that "Violations" sounds too harsh or alarming, but that's just referencing what those items are called in the product. Do you have a suggestion for an alternative?

    "Violations" is certainly too harsh. Specifically, it's "crying wolf" which is one reason users will respond with rules to ignore it, or everything from Expensify.

    But my point is more general. These notices are primarily generated by ordinary use of the system and are therefore primarily crying wolf. Disable them all by default, and you'll do your users a great favor.

    Otherwise, if you can't remove it, perhaps rename "Concierge" to something representative of how it annoys customers. I've never had a human concierge run after me down the hall, shouting in my ear, demanding my attention to how much he's helping me. I've never had to implement two Gmail rules to silence a human concierge."

    Ha, I certainly haven't experienced this either! Look, the intention certainly isn't to annoy folks, which is why we're here trying to make improvements. It sounds like this email in its current iteration isn't matching your expectations, so I'm all ears to any potential solutions beyond renaming the tool or turning it off completely.

    Unfortunately, annoyance is the primary result (of this and most automated "reminder" emails). This is where a zero-based review is warranted. Turn in all off, and let users turn on the specific cases where it actually helps them. Study that user behavior, and perhaps you'll find others that might help.

    Always, provide a prominent unsubscribe to messages like these link. Make it single-click, so users don't have to navigate a laundry list of your in-house terms (like "Violation") to figure out what you thought you should have users try to do. Just turn it off when the user clicks. That user behavior will also indicate, for those users who haven't just created a rule to suppress them, how they regard your messages.

  • jbaxter
    jbaxter Approved! Accountant Posts: 39 Expensify Admirer

    Hi @Greg Schroeder I also appreciate you asking for feedback.

    I can agree with both the posts from @cbiow and @tylerzoll as I have certainly experienced the same feedback. My clients REALLY have an issue with both the frequency and the language in the emails, to the point where one of our junior staff was yelled at by a frustrated CEO because she had to reject his report after he submitted it before the end of the statement period. The only reason he submitted it was because he is getting nagged by the Concierge to do so!

    The other point I would like to make is that the emails are trying to drive behavior that is not consistent with the process we have implemented for clients having card feeds. For clients using Expensify for cash expenses, having the concierge push them weekly is not as much of an issue as it helps them to ultimately get reimbursed faster. But for clients with a Corporate Card feed this approach just doesn't work.

    Before all these changes and when statement reporting was still an option we were able to successfully manage clients with card feeds on a monthly process. The reports always got created as per the settings, transactions for the month always landed on the right report and reconciling to the statement was simple.

    Now that this feature has been removed we have the following problems:
    1. Reports are getting submitted before the end of the statement period, causing us to have to reject.
    2. When reports are submitted before the end if the statement period and have status = 'Processing' new transactions for the same period are added to either a new report or a separate existing report. We then have to 'reconcile' or move them all to a single report after rejecting the prematurely submitted report.
    3. If we were to change the process to weekly instead of monthly and get on board with your new card reconciliation process, instead of having to do an integration to GP monthly I would have to do it weekly. So, my workload would quadruple. As we charge our clients a flat fee for this I now have 4hrs of work per month but the client is still only paying us for 1hr. How can we explain to them that their fee has to increase because Expensify is trying to make them submit reports weekly?

    My suggestion for all of this is that you really need to have flexibility for users to control how much communication they get and when they get it. I know you don't want to hear this but I also think you should also let them decide if they want to get it at all. Personally when something becomes annoying I just don't want it anymore. I worry that we are heading this way with our clients and they may insist that we either move to use other software or go back to the manual way of using excel and scanning receipts on a printer. This would be such a shame as there is so much about Expensify that is really great and it does overall really make our lives easier.

    In life we get bombarded with so many things we cannot control. If we can give people some control in this regard shouldn't we try to do it?

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hi @cbiow, just getting back to your most recent comments!

    'Violations' is certainly too harsh. Specifically, it's "crying wolf" which is one reason users will respond with rules to ignore it, or everything from Expensify. But my point is more general. These notices are primarily generated by ordinary use of the system and are therefore primarily crying wolf. Disable them all by default, and you'll do your users a great favor.

    First thing's first, I just want to be candid and reiterate that Concierge is a core feature of Expensify and can't be disabled. And since these reminders are an extension of Concierge, our discussions here won't result in that outcome.

    Ultimately, I'm not sure I agree that reminder emails are an instance of "crying wolf". Let's take the violation reminder as an example. If a user has expenses that aren't matching up with rules of the company policy they belong to, those expenses are in violation of the desired workflow set up by the company admin.

    Can we agree that expenses that fail to meet the prescribed policy rules need to be resolved before they're approved/reimbursed/exported to accounting? The violation reminder should help end users use Expensify most optimally by guiding them to complete needed actions that have been left dormant for an extended period.

    As for the word "violation" itself, within the Expensify app and website, the term "violation" is used to notify both employees and administrators that something isn't quite matching up with the policy. This term is transported directly from in the product into the corresponding reminder email.

    Do you feel like it's also too harsh in the product? It seems to be quite an apt term to describe an out-of-line expense in relation to the policy settings.

    Unfortunately, annoyance is the primary result (of this and most automated "reminder" emails). This is where a zero-based review is warranted. Turn in all off, and let users turn on the specific cases where it actually helps them. Study that user behavior, and perhaps you'll find others that might help.

    Always, provide a prominent unsubscribe to messages like these link. Make it single-click, so users don't have to navigate a laundry list of your in-house terms (like "Violation") to figure out what you thought you should have users try to do. Just turn it off when the user clicks. That user behavior will also indicate, for those users who haven't just created a rule to suppress them, how they regard your messages.

    Feedback definitely received! I absolutely recognize that automated emails just aren't that valuable to you. That being said, I would say that a baked-in unsubscribe link is almost directly counter to our desired approach here. Our goal isn't to improve the reminder email by just allowing folks to turn it off; I don't think that solves the underlying problem. Instead, we want to limit superfluous noise by fine-tuning reminders to be more timely and appropriate across a broader swath of customer workflows.

    I'm confident we can find a middle ground here, though. There is planning underway to add in more user control over email timing (besides just turning it off :wink:) which should help address some of your concerns in this space. For example, one option being considered is to allow users to "Snooze" certain outstanding actions for a period of time; which, to your point, would give us a chance to scope which tasks seem most important to folks.

    Really do appreciate the contribution, as always! Thanks for taking the time to keep the discussion rolling. 👍

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team
    edited November 2018

    Hi @jbaxter; thanks for reaching out!

    My clients REALLY have an issue with both the frequency and the language in the emails, to the point where one of our junior staff was yelled at by a frustrated CEO because she had to reject his report after he submitted it before the end of the statement period. The only reason he submitted it was because he is getting nagged by the Concierge to do so!

    The other point I would like to make is that the emails are trying to drive behavior that is not consistent with the process we have implemented for clients having card feeds. For clients using Expensify for cash expenses, having the concierge push them weekly is not as much of an issue as it helps them to ultimately get reimbursed faster. But for clients with a Corporate Card feed this approach just doesn't work.

    Shoot, sorry to hear about this example! As previously noted in this thread, this exact issue is at the center of the improvement process for us. We're definitely aware that the timing of the reminder emails could be improved to fit workflows at a monthly scale or longer.

    Before all these changes and when statement reporting was still an option we were able to successfully manage clients with card feeds on a monthly process. The reports always got created as per the settings, transactions for the month always landed on the right report and reconciling to the statement was simple.

    Not to stifle the discussion here, this section of your response is a bit out of scope for this discussion about reminders. I'd recommend discussing the ASR deprecation process here. Thanks!

    My suggestion for all of this is that you really need to have flexibility for users to control how much communication they get and when they get it. I know you don't want to hear this but I also think you should also let them decide if they want to get it at all. Personally when something becomes annoying I just don't want it anymore. I worry that we are heading this way with our clients and they may insist that we either move to use other software or go back to the manual way of using excel and scanning receipts on a printer. This would be such a shame as there is so much about Expensify that is really great and it does overall really make our lives easier.

    Oh goodness, I can't imagine Excel and printers would ever be preferable over an automated solution like Expensify, but I definitely take your point here! "Annoying" is not a term we want associated with Expensify, but I appreciate the candid feedback.

    I think the most common point throughout of all of the replies in this thread is that having more control over the timing of the reminders would go a long way. That's at the top of my list in terms of future improvements so far. 👍

  • cbiow
    cbiow Expensify Customer Posts: 9 Expensify Newcomer

    @Greg Schroeder I think your view of "rules of the company policy" may be predicated on an abstract model of a customer that understands all of your jargon, has a business process aligning with your ideals, and perfectly configures everything.

    Keep in mind that nowhere here has anyone complained about notifications that an expense amount exceeds policy limits. What we're complaining about is emails like [Expensify] Violations holding up $XXX.xx of expenses when:

    • There are no violations
    • Nothing is being held up

    Other than that part, sure, the email Subject line is spot-on! :s

    What is happening is that ordinary monthly expenses have been forwarded to receipts@, have undergone the usual categorization, and will be reviewed, updated, and submitted at end of month. Is there some internal mechanism of "violation" triggered by this situation? I should neither know nor care.

    In practice, these rules may be default settings or the least-bad configuration a rushed accounting person was able to quickly set. This is a pretty standard antipattern, where the user role absent from business process modeling becomes the victim of the resulting solution.

    Bottom line: if something called a "concierge" is mostly an annoyance, it's broken.

    I'm a bit passionate about this because it's such a disappointment. Expensify started as a quantum leap in ease of use for what's traditionally a painful chore. But now it's getting "enhanced" the sort of excresences that dilute this proposition.

  • Daveweez
    Daveweez Expensify Customer Posts: 146 Expensify Aficionado

    We had a good convo about a similar issue here:

    https://community.expensify.com/discussion/comment/935#Comment_935

    My thoughts:
    It would be nice to get a summary e-mail once a day with a summary of all of the requisitions/approvals you have to do as opposed to getting an e-mail for each one of the approvals. Keeping in mind users’ comfort with e-mail notifications.

    Options on My Notification Preferences should be:
    • Online
    • Email
    • Email Summary Digest (once per day)

    Similar to how Google Groups allows you to choose how you want to receive emails:

    Don't send email updates
    Send daily summaries
    Send combined updates
    Send me an email for every new message

    Thanks

  • Ian_Thorne
    Ian_Thorne Expensify Customer Posts: 13 Expensify Newcomer

    Here's my two penn'orth. I run a two person company. I do however value Expensify as it makes my life easier.

    I do not need features appropriate for those folks that manage hundreds of expense accounts. So I need to be able to turn those features off. . I use Expensify to capture my expenses on the go. I take a photo of my receipts on my phone as I get them and once a month I spend a happy couple of hours correcting the many errors concierge has made (that's another story for another thread) and I submit my invoice to my clients. It does the job. I don't want or need concierge to remind me every week and certainly most of the "Violations" I have allegedly made are not violations at all.

    So, please allow me to switch this off. Others need it, some may even like it, but not everyone does. I'm one of them.

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hey @Daveweez, thanks for the contribution! The Google Groups notification preferences setup certainly grants some pretty granular control over what you see. 👍

    It's interesting that you're looking for a more frequent reminder system in the form of a daily digest; I think so far we've mostly had our focus directed towards improving reminders for longer-term workflows. That said, the currently weekly reminders (which do direct you to an aggregated accounting of outstanding items in the Inbox) might not have as much utility for folks who manage larger numbers of tasks in Expensify on a daily basis.

    If we did implement a daily digest, I'm not sure how it would interact with the current notification system. Many folks aren't actioning reports daily, so a daily reminder system could cause even more noise for those users than the weekly system already does.

    It's tricky to figure out a way to make it work across the board. For example, which reports should be captured by a daily digest? Just reports submitted in the last 24 hours, or anything still outstanding regardless of timeframe? There's definitely some questions to work through with this one.

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hi there @Ian_Thorne; I accept your two penn'orth with open arms!

    Your feedback is absolutely in line with what we've received thus far; users who tend to submit their reports on a monthly basis (or longer) struggle with the weekly reminders because it feels incessant.

    I get that; if I'm a user that's clearly made a decision to leave a report open, I probably don't want to be reminded about it, and again the next week, and the next week, and so on. There should be a way to honor this decision given that it's a viable way to use Expensify. Rest assured that the solution we come up with will prominently factor in this use case. 👍

  • Daveweez
    Daveweez Expensify Customer Posts: 146 Expensify Aficionado

    Thanks @Greg Schroeder - I totally get your point.

    I think there are two different things:

    • Transactional emails (Approvals, Comments, CC, etc.)
    • Concierge’s Weekly Reminder Email (the topic of this conversation)

    I don't want to hijack this convo, so we can def take this back to this topic if you want:
    https://community.expensify.com/discussion/comment/935#Comment_935

    But my point is for you to think about these transactional emails as well. Some people would like to choose how they receive these similar to Google Groups:

    • Online (Concierge Inbox only)
    • Email (Current behavior: Concierge Inbox + Email for each item)
    • Email Summary Digest (Concierge Inbox + Email once per day)

    Even if a user chooses their settings for the above, you can still have Concierge’s Weekly Reminder Email. Not mutually exclusive.

    If we did implement a daily digest, I'm not sure how it would interact with the current notification system. Many folks aren't actioning reports daily, so a daily reminder system could cause even more noise for those users than the weekly system already does.

    If a user doesn't action things daily, that OK, they don't need to. They would only get the Summary Digest that first day,

    It's tricky to figure out a way to make it work across the board. For example, which reports should be captured by a daily digest? Just reports submitted in the last 24 hours, or anything still outstanding regardless of timeframe? There's definitely some questions to work through with this one.

    I envision that the Summary Digest email would have any Concierge Inbox items that came to be in the last 24 hours + a list of outstanding items that are still in the inbox (this 2nd section is only added if needed). If nothing happened in last 24 hours, then don't sent the Summary Digest email. They will then only get another email when the Concierge’s Weekly Reminder Email come by on the weekend.

  • Ian_Thorne
    Ian_Thorne Expensify Customer Posts: 13 Expensify Newcomer
    edited November 2018

    @Greg Schroeder - Not quite the same thing but definitely related: can we loose the concierge nag box on the reports pages as well - same reasons. My reports are monthly or even annual submission** and /or customer based - not weekly/fortnightly etc.

    ** Annual - collation of routine monthly bills (such as the Expensify monthly invoice, my ISP etc) No invoice or reimbursement takes place but I can print a simple report to keep my accountant happy.

    (apologies to @greg I was trying to tag @Greg Schroeder but the editor wouldn't let me, even though I copy pasted his name from a message above)

  • User_R
    User_R Expensify Customer Posts: 2

    I consider this "feature" to be spam, plain and simple. I get hundreds of emails a day. I don't need this weekly reminder.

    I set up a filter to send these emails straight to trash, but why should I have to do that?

    I find that Expensify is an excellent service, except for your engineers who seem to have too much time on their hands and like to add "features" that I can't imagine anyone wants, that degrades customer experience, and surely must cost you money to add and maintain. (Don't even get me started about notifications about flight changes for flights, especially since everyone already gets flight change notifications from the airline directly on their phone already. For heaven's sake, who wants concierge to ping them about flights? Not to mention, did you know that people sometimes change their flights after they expense them? Getting notification from Concierge about flights you're no longer even on is a lot of fun.)

    Remember: Expensify is an expense software. It's a utility software. That means that you want it to be as unobtrusive as possible. We don't want to even think about Expensify if we're not using it. We certainly don't want to be annoyed by it every week.

  • jbaxter
    jbaxter Approved! Accountant Posts: 39 Expensify Admirer

    Hi @Greg Schroeder I wanted to share the latest complaint I received this morning from another client with you. This is starting to affect our relationship with clients so the need for change on this issue could not be any more urgent.

    The client writes:

    Hi Jodie,

    Looks like I’ve fallen for the same issue ABC has where we receive an email from Expensify prompting you to follow the link, with a “Submit” button. It sounds like XYZ also has the same problem.

    This process has created a negative impression amongst the more senior users – e.g. why bother getting spurious emails that we need to ignore. Once we start ignoring some emails, we’re likely to ignore them all, or miss the important ones.

    So Jodie - not off to a good start.

    Regards,
    The Client

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hi @Ian_Thorne,

    Definitely agree they're related, but I'd say the "Next Steps" banner at the top of individual reports is a bit out of scope for this thread; those banners aren't really actively notifying folks like the reminder email (which is the main source of feedback here).

    I'd recommend opening up another thread if you're passionate about those as well, though!

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team
    edited November 2018

    Thanks for taking the time to post, @User_R!

    I consider this "feature" to be spam, plain and simple. I get hundreds of emails a day. I don't need this weekly reminder. I set up a filter to send these emails straight to trash, but why should I have to do that?

    This is feedback we’ve heard before; sorry to hear this feature has gone the wrong way in your experience. I hate to see folks feeling like they need to set up spam email rules for Expensify; that’s a dubious association that we want to turn around.

    I find that Expensify is an excellent service, except for your engineers who seem to have too much time on their hands and like to add "features" that I can't imagine anyone wants, that degrades customer experience, and surely must cost you money to add and maintain

    Not to be argumentative, but I do want to point out that many, many folks that use Expensify find weekly reminders to be a valuable part of their workflow. When the email was down for maintenance in the early stages of 2018, we had plenty of customer contact inquiring about where they went. Let’s keep in mind that some changes that may seem obvious to us might not be so obvious to others.

    Remember: Expensify is an expense software. It's a utility software. That means that you want it to be as unobtrusive as possible. We don't want to even think about Expensify if we're not using it. We certainly don't want to be annoyed by it every week.

    100% agree that "annoyed by Expensify" is not the ideal scenario here. I'll be updating the thread in the near future with an update on some possible improvements, so I'll be sure to tag you when that's ready to go. 👍

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team

    Hi @jbaxter,

    Thanks for the note; that’s a powerful example that I’ll definitely use to push for change.

    I'm hoping to post an update in the very near future with some possible improvements to the reminder structure that I've been mulling over, so I'll make sure to tag you when I update the post. 👍

  • User_R
    User_R Expensify Customer Posts: 2

    When the email was down for maintenance in the early stages of 2018, we had plenty of customer contact inquiring about where they went.

    OK, fair point, but I wonder what % like it vs not liking it.

    There really should be a link at bottom of each concierge email "click to unsubscribe from this type of notifications"

    There is what I see as a fundamental flaw in your company's attitude toward email notifications, in that you assume most people want more emails rather than less.

    I know very few people who want more emails.

    For example, here is an email I just got:

    "Expensify Community
    Greg Schroeder mentioned you in Let's talk about weekly reminders from Concierge
    Check it out"

    (Yes, I figured out how to turn those notifications off. But this is really strange, how many message boards have this type of notification ON as a default? I don't think I've ever seen that.)

    Having said that, I can understand that people won't seek out features they don't know about so I can see how you'd want to default to more rather than less.

    But emails you don't want that you can't turn off is spam.

  • Wordna
    Wordna Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    First, I hate getting work emails on weekends. I have no idea why these reminders are currently being sent on weekends.

    Second, there has to be a way to opt-out of these emails rather than having to use a Gmail filter to skip my inbox. I don't want reminders. I will get to my expense claims when I choose.

    Finally, STOP SENDING ME MARKETING EMAILS! I don't want any more emails with subject lines like "Do you think your company should use Expensify?" or "Would you recommend Expensify to a friend?" The weekly reminder emails are annoying, not having an opt-out of these marketing emails is illegal in some countries, mine included.

  • Ian_Thorne
    Ian_Thorne Expensify Customer Posts: 13 Expensify Newcomer

    Hi @Greg Schroeder - you've hinted a few times there's a solution being developed - any idea of an ETA ?

  • Greg Schroeder
    Greg Schroeder Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 64 Expensify Team
    edited December 2018

    Hi @Ian_Thorne, thanks for the ping!

    As an update for everyone in the thread, I can give you an idea of where we're headed here. As a first step, I'm working with our product team on two improvements to reminder emails:

    1. Updating the copy for reminders that reference "violations" to make sure they are less alarming to recipients and also more accurately describe the outstanding action that needs to be taken

    2. Adding a new setting that allows users to control the timing of the reminder email instead of just sending it to everyone on a weekly basis

    Both of these options are in development, with the first being more likely to be completed sooner than the second (since it's a smaller change).

    For transparency's sake, there is still work to be done to organize the resources required to make these changes a reality. That said, I can't share a firm ETA for when these changes will be live, but I'm working them into the product roadmap as we speak. 👍

  • Ian_Thorne
    Ian_Thorne Expensify Customer Posts: 13 Expensify Newcomer

    Thanks - I do hope one of the reminder timing options is "NEVER". It is also does not fill me full of confidence that this item is only "being worked into the roadmap" - that could mean anything in terms of timing.

  • bradb
    bradb Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    Just to leave my two cents.

    There needs to be a way to turn of Concierge emails. Leave them on the home page dashboard, but I don't need them in my inbox. I don't need or want to use rapid reimbursement. Telling me about it weekly isn't going to change that. From what I can tell it's for reports under $100 so I think that's a pretty small slice of users. I can't imagine putting all these tiny reports through our approval process and annoying managers.

    Second, I need not be reminded to submit an open report when I literally just created it. it's not late, overdue or necessary. We have a process and I don't need to be prompted, especially not weekly. So far concierge has not told me anything I need to know and I can't seem to find a way to turn it off.

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

    Hi @bradb - this thread is related to the weekly reminder email. I think what you're referring to is related to one of your policies having reimbursements only partially set up. If you set your PA Policy back to Indirect, this message should stop.

    The weekly reminder is simply to let you know everything that is in play at the start of the week. Essentially the same as the Inbox Task labelled "Here's the list of reports that need your attention" but emailed. As per Greg's note above, we're looking at the timing of these.

    Here's a guide to 'turning off' Concierge.

  • bradb
    bradb Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    Thanks @RachCHopkins. But changing the setting to indirect disables ACH reimbursement. We definitely use it, but the Rapid Reimbursement seems to be for reports under $100 which basically never happens for us (we're a fairly large company). Yet I get reminded weekly about it regardless.

    I see your note about the Concierge emails. "Emails - when you have reports to fix or to review, Concierge will email you weekly to let you know you need to do something. These can't be disabled as many of the tasks are crucial to you and your team."

    If a report needs review since it was submitted or was rejected, I can see an email being triggered. But I just get told I have an open report. We pretty much have open reports across the company on a continual basis. It's as if Google Docs emailed me to tell me I have a document that I could edit. I don't get it and there is no way to turn it off. I think it needs fixing.

  • Sheena Trepanier
    Sheena Trepanier Expensify Team, Approved! Accountant, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 1,362 Expensify Team

    Thanks for the extra information @bradb, we appreciate you taking the time to follow up on our response and provide clarity. I've made sure your feedback is added to the tracking we're doing for the weekly reminder emails and if thing change you'll be updated via this thread.

    Cheers!

  • Harel
    Harel Expensify Customer Posts: 0

    Hi @Greg Schroeder, it's been more than a year since the last update on this matter.

    Could you please update on the status of this item "Adding a new setting that allows users to control the timing of the reminder email instead of just sending it to everyone on a weekly basis"?

    Our company has a monthly report submit period and having non-actionable weekly reminders is annoying.

    Thanks.