Custom-built Expense Reporting Solution API with Expensify Enhances Industry-niche ERP

At SPRCHRGR, we are always looking for ways to enhance efficiency and streamline operations for our clients. Our latest project involves a custom-built integration to connect Expensify, a widely-used tool for tracking employee expenses, to a variety of ERP software and industry-niche project management applications.

What is Expensify?

Expensify is a leading expense management software that helps businesses track, manage, and report on employee expenses. Its widespread adoption is due to its robust feature set and user friendly paperless smartphone app + web-based companion interface. Business accounts on Expensify can have multiple workspaces, each with unique rules and tracking options, known as policies. The solution facilitates semi-automated, detailed categorization and tagging of expenses, which drive increased accuracy + efficiency in downstream classification and financial reporting.

The Challenge

Without proper integration, companies rely on time consuming and error-prone manual data entry processes to transpose data between systems. This not only causes delays and wasted labor hours, but it also increases the potential for mistakes which lead to inaccuracies in financial reporting. It also exposes the business to potential fraud risks.

Our Solution

To address this, the SPRCHRGR tech team has developed an integration that automates and enhances 2-way data flow between Expensify and various other applications. Here are some key features of our solution:

• Automatic Workspace Generation: Workspaces in Expensify can now be generated automatically, with exact match category (GL Accounts or Expense Item) and tag (Project/Customer, Vendor, Class) lists.

• Tracking List Updates: As source of truth data in the back-end system updates, such as new GL accounts being added or vendor names being modified, Expensify categories and tags are updated. This ensures that the data remains current and accurate.

• Automated Expense Report Integration: Approved expense reports are automatically imported into the backend system. Admin users can specify the point in the expense report approval process when transactions should be imported into the target ERP or PM system on the other end.

• Seamless Data Flow: The integration ensures that all expense data from Expensify flows seamlessly into the financial system, properly classified for tracking and reporting.

• Managed Queue: A queue manages transactions ready for import, allowing admins to review and approve transactions before they are allowed through, into the back-office system.

• Receipt Management: Receipts from expenses are imported and attached alongside the expense transactions in the connected system, ensuring complete end-to-end documentation is stored in a “single source of truth” for robust audit trail.

Initial Rollout

The first rollout of this integration enables our client to automatically record Vendor Bills, Credit Card Charges, and Expense Entries in their PM software, precisely allocated to the specific project budgets that each expense belongs to. From there, our client can easily pass certain costs through to their customer as reimbursable expense invoices, complete with digital images of each individual receipt so their customer’s own accounting department can validate the charges and pay out client on time. This integration promises to save time, reduce errors, and improve our client’s cash flow in the process!

Future Plans

With the API and user interface already built, we’re ready to implement the same solution for other clients who work with different ERP software and industry-niche project management applications that don’t already have an integrated, paperless, semi-automated expense reporting solution. If that describes you, we’d love to chat. ;)