contributed by James Ledoux [IT training consultant / travel enthusiast / dancing machine]
You don't have to talk to road warriors for long before their major travel complaints surface. Many will name frisky security guards, the ever expanding "customers of size" (à la Kevin Smith), and crappy hotel beds. I contend that while those are bad, they pale in comparison to the bane of my road warrior existence: expense reports. Not to get all Up In The Air on you, but I've traveled for work 40-52 weeks a year for the past 13 years. Aside from the tawdry relationships, the 1,000,000+ air miles, the bottomless reward points, and the extra pounds I’ve managed to put on while living off company expense accounts, I've logged more time than I care to imagine filling out mind-numbing expense report after mind-numbing expense report.
As a consultant, I often have the joy of doing one report for my client and a second for a subcontracting firm – on completely different form, mind you – and then bundling it all up to prepare an invoice. The frustrating thing is that all three items essentially contain the same information. My beef is that all the time that I end up using for this tedious, redundant paperwork I could be using to do just about anything else: learn Spanish, trade stocks, or – more realistically – catch up the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. Just typing this up summary is making my blood boil just a bit… Serenity now.
While we have had advances in computers, smart phones, iPhones, netbooks, and (most recently) iPads, for applications that take care of necessary business travel-focused tasks such as online booking and check-in, weather and traffic forecasts, and restaurant/hotel searches and reviews, nearly every facet of expense reports is stuck in the Middle Ages. You have to track paper receipts, tape them down, type them into finicky Excel templates, copy them, and wrestle with poorly designed software packages.
It was dealing with all of this that led me to buy and recommend NeatReceipts. If you haven't heard me talk about this portable scanner before, it is a godsend. NeatReceipts allows you to scan and discard paper receipts, create PDFs, and import business cards. At around $140, it is a great value.
But watch out NeatReceipts! There is a new kid in town. Meet my new favorite web app: Expensify. I still carry my little scanner for those occasions where I need to scan large documents, but I rarely use it for expenses these days.
Expensify promises to "make expense reports suck less." And while it is hard to get excited about any aspect of expense reports save getting reimbursed for them, you might actually smile when you try this service. Expensify integrates with your credit card and "pulls" the data in directly, drastically reducing data entry and the need to track paper receipts. In addition to the credit card import, you can e-mail receipts like flight confirmations, take pictures of receipts with your smart phone, or manually enter cash purchases. The service is easy to set up and uses the same level of security as your bank and credit card companies.
But what about cost, you ask? The service is free for individuals and costs a nominal $5 per employee fee per month for businesses. Additional features such as simple invoicing and direct deposit of expense payments are also available. Even if you are a sole proprietor design firm, you can start for free and add users and features as your business grows. It only takes a few lost receipts on a business trip to justify the small cost for a small business.
And how is it rated? On a scale of 1 to 10, Expensify rates a 9 due to it ease of use, affordability, design, and overall way of making expenses suck a lot less. But we are talking about expense reports here, so I can't give any service or device in this realm a perfect 10 simply out of spite. Yes, I hate expense reports that much.
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