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on expense reports, such as Kayak, Lyft, and Uber. manage ongoing subscriptions or using a unique
About the One of my favorite features is the email automation card number for online purchases.
author to capture the receipts. Simply forward the email As you would expect, these solutions usually
receipt to a specific email address, and 85% of the integrate with your typical general ledger account-
Byron Patrick, CPA/ work is done. ing software, and some options even integrate with
CITP, CGMA, is An additional benefit of these software solutions popular bill-payment and payroll solutions.
general manager is their mobile apps. The savvy user can capture, Making the transition to a next-generation
at Botkeeper. categorize, and submit expenses right from a phone. corporate card solution can eliminate the burden
Simply take a picture of your receipt on your phone of the monthly expense reporting routine, improve
to capture the expense. The steps look like this: your ability to manage business expenses, and
Order your coffee, take a picture of the receipt, take offer some unexpected benefits such as premium
a sip of your coffee, provide a few minor details in rewards programs.
the app, and you’re done. Below are a few popular options for replacing
The benefits of the mobile app go beyond just your current outdated expense report process:
the camera and extend to mileage capture. At the
beginning of your trip, you can open your app, initi- Expensify
ate a reimbursable trip, and automatically capture This is the classic option for those of us who have
the mileage as you drive. been in the automated game for a while. There’s
We’ve been focused on the employee experience, a reason Expensify has been around for so long.
but the back-of-the-office benefits are huge as well. Small companies can move away from paper
A streamlined manager interface for reviewing tracking and get by with options starting at around
employee expenses eliminates the paper shuffle by $5 per user per month.
organizing all submitted expense reports in a single Features: The Collect tier of Expensify (the
view. When reviewing the expenses, a reviewer tier I recommend for small businesses trying
can submit questions within the portal that are to automate the entire reimbursement process)
delivered immediately to the employee for their includes automatic mileage tracking, categorizing,
explanation. Once approved, it will be forwarded and report submissions for employees, along with
to the next step in the process, i.e., payment. The an automatic syncing feature to the accounting
payment process occurs automatically and (when software you choose.
configured) gets entered into the general ledger Expensify’s corporate card offering is a bit dif-
without any additional human effort. ferent from the industry standard. Everyone in the
company can get an Expensify Card free with no
Next-level corporate cards obligations, but once you use the Expensify Card
Historically, the use of corporate cards has been for more than half of your company’s monthly
reserved for a small group of trusted executives/ expenses, your entire Expensify subscription cost
owners due to the lack of oversight and control is cut in half. This is a great operational move by
associated with issuing a credit card to an “au- Expensify and an easy win for most businesses
thorized user.” However, some new solutions are because once employees see how easy these cards
changing the way we think of corporate credit are to use and manage, businesses will want to use
cards. They can eliminate the employee expense them for everything.
reimbursement process altogether.
With these solutions, setting up a new employee Divvy
is a simple process that also allows granular rules to Recently acquired by Bill.com, Divvy’s specialty is
be set up to combat the “trust” concerns typically corporate card management and offering an online
associated with corporate cards. Users can be set up portal for you to monitor expenses as they’re com-
with a monthly budget as well as vendor limitations, ing in. The best news of all is that Divvy’s standard
if desired. Also, making any changes to employee offering is 100% free.
cards is simple and immediate. Features: Every employee in the company can
Similar to expense reporting software, these get a Divvy card (which is just a Visa, so it works
corporate cards typically include a mobile app anywhere; see the screenshot on the next page),
for employees. The mobile app includes receipt and limits can be set, tracked, and monitored in
capture functionality using the camera and the real time using the Divvy online portal. It’s simple
ability to create virtual cards on demand to but amazing.

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