I’ve always found keeping track of my expenses a tedious chore. Keeping all the receipts in my wallet, then remembering to transfer them to the folder on my desk and finally, after I run out of procrastinating ideas, sitting down to log them all in a spreadsheet in preparation for doing my accounts.
After looking at possible solutions to make it all less of a chore, I found Expensify and I think it might be a keeper.
It’s a website and an app (iOS and Android) and this is important, because a key part of keeping on top of receipts is the ability to log them straightaway, wherever you are. It has a simple interface to quickly enter the main details.
One fantastic feature is the receipt scanner – take a photo of a receipt and it will scan it, finding and correctly logging the merchant name, date and total (although in one case it did categorise a Ryman stationery receipt as being a meal, so some tweaking might be necessary). The free version only allows 8 scans a month, but that’s probably enough for my needs.
If you receive an invoice for goods or services by email, you can forward that email straight to receipts@expensify.com (as long as the email address you forward it from is the one associated with your Expensify account) and it’ll log all the details for you.
Finally, it takes seconds to prepare expense reports and either email them to someone straight from the app or website (with all the receipts neatly attached), or download them as a PDF or customisable spreadsheet.
It has a lot more features that I haven’t explored fully yet. You can customise the categories and tags. I found it useful to match them to the categories that HM Revenue and Customs use. You can see different charts for your expense categories, import expenses directly from your bank account or credit card, add mileage or even logging your work hours (although I prefer Toggl for that) or get the expenses you submit paid directly to your account. It’s a very intuitive application so I’ve barely felt the need to look up how to do anything, but when I have, I’ve always found the answer clearly explained in their very useful support site.
Give it a go and let me know how it goes, or comment if you’ve found a hassle-free system that works for you.
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