Postponing sunsetting Statement Reporting to next year

Flavia Faria
Flavia Faria Expensify Team, Expensify Student Ambassador Posts: 39 Expensify Team

You’ve shared your feedback and we’ve listened. You helped us identify a few pain points that we would like to address, and so we've decided to push back sunsetting Statement Reporting until next year.

We believe the current solution of combining Scheduled Submit with the Reconciliation Dashboard works well for two types of customers: smaller companies, or larger companies that are not heavy users of company cards. For those that don't fall into either group, this solution might not be great as it may lead to a partial offset of reports, which can be hard to manage when dealing with several cardholders.

While we internally discuss the product changes necessary in order to make this process better for you, we have a few competing priorities that are keeping us from focusing 100% on this. In order to give us enough time to think about this product change so that it represents an improvement in your process, we have decided to push sunsetting Statement Reporting to the end of Q2 2019.

Thank you so much for providing all the valuable feedback on your reconciling processes and helping us make this decision! We’ll let you know as soon as we have any updates :)

Comments

  • Daveweez
    Daveweez Expensify Customer Posts: 146 Expensify Aficionado
  • SAOSBR
    SAOSBR Approved! Accountant Posts: 36 Expensify Admirer
  • jbaxter
    jbaxter Approved! Accountant Posts: 39 Expensify Admirer

    Great news on a Monday morning! Thankyou Expensify for listening.
    @Flavia Faria - I have a few card feeds that were set up after the ASR feature was removed - can I get ASR added to those ones now?

  • Brian_ISC2
    Brian_ISC2 Expensify Customer Posts: 10 Expensify Newcomer

    Thank you, This is the best news I've had is a few days:)

  • GLTJeff
    GLTJeff Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    I have to say this concerned me initially when announced... to the point of that I was starting to look at alternative products. The bottom line is if scheduled submit goes away and my AP people don't have exact reports tie out to statements for that user, then it's unlikely we can stick with the product. I personally would prefer you just leave it as it is.

  • ldouglas
    ldouglas Expensify Customer Posts: 1

    Thank you for this! I took the class on the reconciling and understand how to do it, I just still don't see how to get it to work for us without the Statement reporting. :/ This really needs to be addressed before switching over

  • GLTJeff
    GLTJeff Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    Well I have 7 domains registered via domain control. 3 of them we had managed to get working with Chase before they started getting greedy with feed issues. The remaining four were never completed until after we had new feeds commissioned by Chase which just went live 3 weeks ago.. as Im trying to finish the final four domains I am being told I no longer can apply ASR to them. So i have half of my users on a method that works PERFECTLY FINE for us.. and the rest are going to have to use an alternate method that at best will have them whining about how crappy the product is, and at worst is going to have the accounting department saying its causing them more headaches than the old method. ON TOP OF THAT.. I have the annoying response from Concierge tellimg me ASR is going away at year end.

    First off, update Concierge. Second, our accounts should have grandfather status.. period. To pick and chose between the domains on ONE account is not acceptable.

    I am not happy. Your alternative doesn't work for a lot of us. I have supported and recommended the product for years to colleagues and peers. If you're going to be this tone deaf to what we need, then we might as well go to Concur since that's what they've always been best at!

    WITHOUT ASR Expensify is Reporting that DOES Suck! 😡

  • Neal
    Neal Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    Thanks for delaying the retiring of ASR. I would have to agree with @GLTJeff on this one....

    ASR is vital for how we function with Expensify, we need to tie in credit card reports to Expensify. If this function is lost, Expensify would be useless to us..... and we would be forced to look at alternative expense management systems.

    The reconciliation dashboard does not work for us.

  • judy_oncore
    judy_oncore Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    We changed domains and lost our ASR functionality. How can we get it back? I too participated in a webinar to learn more about Reconciliation Dashboard and would echo the comment of @ldouglas above. I would happily participate in a call with folks from Expensify to educate them on how we use ASR and why it is important to the rest of our accounting processes. We are a construction company that utilizes several levels of coding within Expensify and exports that coding into our accounting system for Job Cost Level accounting as many of our projects are billed to our clients on a Cost Plus Basis.

  • judy_oncore
    judy_oncore Expensify Customer Posts: 3 Expensify Newcomer

    In the midst of a very frustrating exchange with Expensify Concierge trying to figure out if I can get ASR functionality back. It feels as though your customer service reps are not truly listening to and responding to my questions. Instead they are providing boiler plate responses on how to use Reconciliation Dashboard and why it is so great. Direct quote: "With Domain Control and the new Credit Card Reconciliation Dashboard you are no longer reliant on reports to match traditional paper credit card statements exactly (which always creates big headaches for both users and admins alike!)."

    To be clear, this is a much bigger headache than I ever had in five years of using your product with ASR. It isn't that I don't understand how to use RD, I just prefer to use ASR. In fact, I can see supplementing ASR with RD, but since we changed domains in the midst of this potential phase out, we didn't get grandfathered and lost our ability to use ASR, which is very disappointing.

    I was a raving fan prior to this issue, now I feel frustrated and forced to look into other options.

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

    Hey @judy_oncore, I've sent you an email so we can discuss this further. Keep an eye out for it!

  • samuel
    samuel Expensify Customer Posts: 2 Expensify Newcomer

    We’ve added a new domain and would like the new domain to get ASR but it’s disabled for all new domains. If the idea to remove ASR is really on hold, then please re-enable (for us) it until such time we have a clear decision.

  • Julia
    Julia Expensify Customer Posts: 164 Expensify Pro
  • Karisa Latta
    Karisa Latta Expensify Success Coach - Admin, Expensify Team Posts: 147 Expensify Team

    Hey @samuel !

    We really hesitate to give anyone new access to ASR (Statement Reporting) because we're not sure when we will remove the feature just yet. If you start a year with one process and have to change in the middle, that's really not an ideal situation we want to put you in.

    With that in mind, if you are still interested in ASR, please reach out to help@expensify.com and mention this thread. We'll see what we can do for you.

  • Neal
    Neal Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    Hi there,

    I was wondering what the status of the transition was? Would it be possible for some of us to keep hold of the ASR feature?

  • Nicole Trepanier
    Nicole Trepanier Expensify Team Posts: 498 Expensify Team
    edited August 2019

    @Neal While we do still intend to remove ASR completely, we are looking into ways of making our current company card settings and reconciliation dashboard work the same way. Since you're already using ASR, you'll receive notice when we have any updates.

  • Neal
    Neal Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    @Nicole Trepanier Thanks!

    Does that mean we will still have credit card reports built automatically, that sync with bank statements when ASR is turned off?

    Is the date of the ASR switch off still 30th June 2019? It would be good to receive any updates sooner rather than later. Because, if the functionality that ASR is currently providing us is lost, I will probably need to find an alternative expense management system.

    I wonder whether the others in this thread are in the same boat as I am? @GLTJeff @judy_oncore @ldouglas @jbaxter @Brian_ISC2 @SAOSBR @Daveweez @samuel @Julia

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

    Hi @Neal, we're definitely not looking to just rebuild ASR using individual reports again, but we're definitely looking to solve the underlying problems of reconciling the monthly statement balance and submitting, reconciling and exporting to your accounting system in the correct period, in a timely manner.

    We'll keep you all posted as and when we come to any more decisions here!

  • LMS
    LMS Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    Please just keep it. It is going to be a nightmare for our company once you sunset the statement reporting feature. I really do not understand why you are getting rid of it. Don't try to fix what isn't broken.

  • LMS
    LMS Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    It's also funny that I am labeled as a "newcomer" and I only have one post. I have commented on this thread several times and seems like all my comments were taken down.

  • Neal
    Neal Expensify Customer Posts: 5 Expensify Newcomer

    I completely agree with @LMS, ASR does work really well, please don't fix what isn't broken..... It would be easiest for us if ASR was not retired.

  • Jenica
    Jenica Expensify Customer Posts: 10 Expensify Admirer
    edited June 2019

    @Karisa Caudill @Sheena Trepanier

    Our company has been using Expensify since June of 2017 and we loved the ASR, but we created new domains at the beginning of 2019 and lost the ASR. It has been PAINFUL ever since the change. We have multiple users that mange more than one credit card and it lumps all expenses into one big report for those users (rather than separate reports based on card as the ASR automatically did for us).

    Do you have any updates as to when this feature will be returned or available to all users again? If not, can you please contact me and let me know if there is something we can do to turn this feature back on for our domains?

    Thank you,

    A loyal, but frustrated Expensify Admin

  • GLTJeff
    GLTJeff Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    I'd like to circle back to this thread to first thank support for listening to my organization's grief of having half on ASR and the other not. You gave us a life preserver to continue using and actually add more users than initially planned by our leadership.

    I had genuinely hoped that we would get into 2019 and there would be some sort of general resolution available to all customers - new and old alike that would keep the tenets of ASR and monthly structure that my Accounting group has told me has to remain in place. I am the lowly IT Manager - it's not my job to dictate to the Accounting Department how they should process their transactions, anymore than it is their job to dictate to me how I should subnet our networks.

    Expensify - you guys are in the Metric Dilemma. The entire planet uses the metric system. It's generally regarded as more accurate and more logical than US Imperial. US scientists, military and even beverage makers use it, but the general population does not, nor are many inclined to want to change or even listen to why it's better. Many of us remember when the NFL decided to go metric and then did a swift about-face. ASR isn't all that different.

    If you want to truly understand what we are talking about as customers of the product, then read this article from Sciencing as to The Reasons Why the US Should Not Use the Metric System. The 3 bullets are the same when applied to leaving ASR - its Confusing; it will be Expensive (time to retrain people who have done it this way for YEARS) and Custom... people don't like change.. even when it may eventually make it better for them. The answer you will get from them is telling people like me to go find a new package to use.

    I don't have droves of colleagues who are accounting professionals, but the ones that I do have seem agree that ASR is more traditional with how most corporate accounting departments seem to function. I get that it's a pain for you guys to support... printers are a pain for me to support, but I still have users that are convinced that they have to have a personal printer at their desk and when they are the ones that sign my paycheck I sort of need to listen to them.

    I've searched the forums to try to get a sense of what percentage of the userbase is using ASR and I can't really find anything. My sense of it is we aren't a small percentage... that there are a great number that are using it with one domain that is currently grandfathered so they've never really felt the impact of losing ASR yet.

    When asked if I have a recommendation for expense reporting platforms I no longer give any answer. While I'm happy with the product as it exists today for my organization, that's not the same product that they will have access to if they sign up 10 seconds after reading this sentence.

    @Flavia Faria @Karisa Caudill @Sheena Trepanier - So do we lose ASR in 10 days as the amended post suggests? Or are you folks at Expensify still chewing on how to fix the situation so that everyone can keep using the product happily and productively? Let us know...

  • LMS
    LMS Expensify Customer Posts: 4 Expensify Newcomer

    Thank you @GLTJeff!!!

    Expensify, We will shop for a different expense reporting platform if you get rid of ASR. I am sure I am not the only customer you'll lose. Also, get better customer service. The fact that we have zero idea when or if this is going to happen is a joke. We are all just sitting here waiting. Your AI chat bot thing is terrible and it takes DAYS sometimes WEEKS to get the right answer (if there is one). The canned responses are frustrated especially when we pay $200/month for your service. Again, give us the option to use ASR or not. Why is that such a big deal?

  • SAOSBR
    SAOSBR Approved! Accountant Posts: 36 Expensify Admirer

    @Flavia Faria


    Hey guys - how do I have two separate report for a client who has two different types of CCs (one with Amex and one with BOA)? With Statement Reporting, I used to be able to do this but now without it, I can only have one report per each user for a period of time? Please advise and bring back statement reporting!!!!!