I have to submit expense reports at my work. Typically I do it on a bi-weekly basis, but that's on'y because I hate the process.
My expense reports primarily deal with a log of miles I've driven to client's sites. One of the most tedious things about using your own car for business use is keeping track of the miles you drive so that you can get reimbursed.
I've used a variety of tools on my Android phone to keep a milage log of my daily driving, some are easier to use than others. Most had some sort of shortcoming. I'ver finally found an all in one expense tracking phone app with a web companion... Expensify.com
They key to the ease of Expensify is the ability to add expenses from both your mobile devices as well as from their website.
The App allows you to add receipts (just to deal with later) via a simple picture, you can add expenses on the fly (and take pictures of the receipt in that same step. No need to cary around a binder clip of receipts), Capture a picture of a business card (and scan the details to your online Expensify account, and Track the milage you've driven in your car (using a delta on the miles between start location and end location, which is promptly uploaded to your online account.)
The browser based online account offers a multitude of useful functions. You can:
- Enter receipts (via scan or upload of the image)
- Enter expenses or view previous expenses
- Create an expense report and email it to an approver
- Run analytics to see how you are spending your money
- Set up mulitple policys to speed up the process of expense entry
I've only been using this tool for about a month or so (I refused to use it initially until they built in proper milage tracking with a delta between start and end locations) and I typically use it only for milage tracking right now (my current project only requires car travel and they provide me with meals) but I'll see how this tool works with my next project, which might include air travel, hotel stays, rental car usage and meals.
I'm going to start giving my cloud tool reviews a 1 to 4 cloud ranking (with 4 being high praise.) Over all, this is a handy tool, and I'm giving it 3 clouds since I haven't had too much of a chance to run though all of it's features. If the general expense tracking and receipt tracking works as well as the Milage and Reporting features do, I suspect I'll be updating this review with a 4 cloud rating in the near future.
BTW... They run a pretty awesome blog over at http://blog.expensify.com/
