Expensify raises $1M for online expense reporting

August 12, 2009 | Angie Chang | Comments | |

expensify_logoExpensify, a startup that offers tools for expense reports that “don’t suck,” announced today that it’s now possible for companies to add a customized, branded version of Expensify to their own websites.

For example, Expensify used their new application programming interface (API) to build an Expensify application for Salesforce, so you can track your expenses through a CRM tool that you already use. That application is a finalist in the Salesforce Cloud Computing Challenge; the winner of the contest will be announced tomorrow.

Expensify crossed the VentureBeat radar in June 2009 with Matt Marshall reporting live from Alley Insider’s Startup 2009 Competition. Offering expense reports that “don’t suck”, the San Francisco, Calif.-based company lets you take a picture of a receipt with your iPhone and send it to your expense report. The iPhone application has steadily been improving in terms of ease-of-use. You can now type “I just spent $54 on shoes” into your iPhone, snap a picture, and send both items to your expense account. Another useful new feature is the ability to export to QuickBooks, bringing the “expense reports that don’t suck” ethos to finance departments sick of typing.

Here is a screenshot of the Expensify Salesforce application with an expensed receipt sent in via iPhone:

Expensify raised a seed round of $1 million in May 2009 through Hillsven Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Red Swoosh founder Travis Kalanick. Expensify team members include most of the original Red Swoosh team (acquired by Akamai) and have received Wall Street Journal coverage on the company’s working trips to countries like Thailand, Mexica, India, and most recently, Istanbul for a month.

“Offshoring is a pretty awesome way to gel the team and get focused while in remote, exotic lands. By isolating ourselves from daily local distractions, we can actually be *more* productive than at home, while simultaneously traveling the world and having a ton of fun. After all, the internet goes everywhere. Why shouldn’t we?” said Expensify iPhone developer Curtis Chambers.

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About the Author, Angie Chang

  • My company has been using ExpenseBay.com. These guys sound similar but cannot put the expenses into the format my company requires. We use spreadsheets and Quickarrow. ExpenseBay allow you to load your companies excel format and export it with the receipts as a PDF. Or export it to an expense management system like NetSuite or Intacct. Worth checking out -made my life a hell of a lot easier.
  • Now this sounds like a winner!
  • Hi Clark! Have you tried Expensify? I think a few things that make us different are:

    1) Expensify Guaranteed eReceipts - Because we import directly from your bank (without any intermediaries) we can guarantee to the IRS that your expenses are for real.

    2) Online reimbursement - We're not just a "data in, data out" website, Expensify deals with real dollars. That means we can reimburse expense reports up to $10,000 with our online payment engine, to and from any credit card or checking account.

    3) PCI compliance - We are very, very serious about security, upholding perhaps the most rigorous security standard online; the same one upheld by PayPal. Granted, ExpenseBay doesn't deal in real dollars or actual financial data so they've picked an easier problem, but having an fundamentally secure architecture enables us to do a lot more.

    And there are lots of little things -- support for small business tax categorization out of the box, QuickBooks export, Salesforce integration, an open API, etc. There's plenty of room for the both of us and we're by no means trying to be everything for everybody. But if you're looking for the fastest expense report in the west, you could do worse than to check us out! If you do, please drop me a line at dbarrett@expensify.com or call me at 801.860.0540 -- I'd love to hear from you!

    -david
    Founder, CEO of Expensify