The first highly requested enhancement went live today - editing existing expenses! Plus a few additional changes…
Based on popular demand, the account owner/administrator can mark Paybackable expense reports as paid, whether s/he is the manager or not.
Thanks to some great user feedback (props to Rachel for first bringing it up), we have added the ability to change the category (or expense account, in QuickBooks and accounting parlance) that Paybackable tracks mileage expenses under. Until now, we simply defaulted it to “Car/truck expense”, as that was a very common expense account used in QuickBooks. However, you may now change the category/account to whatever you wish.
To make the change, simply log in, go to the “Settings” tab and click on the “Categories” link on the left hand side. You will then see a screen like this (the key section is circled in red):
Simply change the name of the category/account to the one you want (copying and pasting is probably a good idea if you’re trying to use a specific category from QuickBooks) and click the “Update mileage account name” button. You’re good to go.
Based on lots of customer feedback, and after weeks of tweaking to make sure we covered the key user flows, this weekend we released a major upgrade to Paybackable.com. Two highly requested features were added:
Next up: the ability to attach copies of receipts to transactions. It’s largely completed, but we’re working on some of the polish to keep everything simple.
Please let us know what you think of the changes. And keep the suggestions coming!
Based on popular demand, we are currently working to finish manager approvals of expense reports, with the ability to forward approved expense reports to a bookkeeper or whoever cuts the checks. In addition, we are working on the ability to attach scanned receipts to individual transactions, thereby making it possible for offices to go paperless (at least for their expense reporting, that is.
Should be a busy weekend:-)
For all of you self employed folks out there, we just opened up our Bootstrap web site to the public today (it had been in private alpha.) It’s goal is to simplify the hassles of running very small businesses, starting with financial record keeping, estimated taxes, and 1099s. Think of it as the absolute simplest bookkeeping software. you can find for people who have the file a Schedule C at the end of the year.
If you’ve been reading the news, you know that the IRS business mileage rate goes up to 58.5 cents starting tomorrow through the end of the year. We actually got an email from our bookkeeper today telling us we should “track our mileage through June 30 2008 separately” because of the change. Of course, we informed her that we were adding the new rate to Paybackable, so tracking the change in mileage rates would be, well, a complete non issue:-)
So, for those out there who are feeling any pain from this change (when all you should feel is thankful relief that you get some of your cash back), just log into the easiest expense reporting solution on the market and grab that higher business deduction. For our existing customers, starting tomorrow, all you need to do differently is…nothing!
For those of you (and there are a lot) who have to drive for business, a little good news to go along with the record gas prices. The IRS announced today that the standard mileage rate for business miles will increase 8 cents to 58.5 cents per mile, effective July 1, 2008 through December 31, 2008. You can read the full details on the IRS web site.
Naturally, we will be updating Paybackable to reflect the new rate, so any mileage expenses you enter during that time will have the correct mileage rate based on your date of travel. See? More savings for you, no additional work required:-) But we’d certainly appreciate you telling your friends and business associates about us!
We came across a very interesting tool the other day that provides some insight into how employees think about expense reports.
There’s a simple tool out there called Tweetscan that let’s you search public comments on Twitter. On a lark, I typed in “expense reports” and saw a long list of complaints from regular people. I just did so again this morning and received an even longer list. What’s amazing is the consistency in language - lots of uses of words like “hate”, “dread” and “ugh.” Try it yourself and see: http://www.tweetscan.com/index.php?s=expense+reports
Two things about these tweets (lingo for posts on Twitter) were of particular interest to us:
1. The vast majority of expense reporting solutions in the market are designed to make company controllers and senior management happy by solving for things like cost controls and policy enforcement. Actual ease of use for the employees is a complete afterthought - hence the dread of using software like this.
2. When I ran these searches on Twitter, they were during normal business hours. This means company employees, during the hours they are getting paid, are doing their expense reports. That means that the longer it takes them, the more frustrated they become, the more money it costs the company. Wouldn’t it save a ton of money to make the expense reimbursement process simpler? We sure think so. Maybe they could convince their companies to try some easy to use expense reporting software 
Well, we’ve received so much encouraging feedback from our users that we’ve investing in a big new release of Paybackable.com. Some of the changes include:
Existing users will be able to enjoy the same functionality as they always have for free. But we’ve introduced a few new paid plans to enable companies who need to grow. Existing customers who wish to upgrade can go to http://www.paybackable.com/account/edit
While we’ve done extensive testing, there may still be some issues with the new release, so please email us at support@paybackable.com with any bugs you find. And, as always, we want to hear what other features you’d like to see, so please submit your requests at http://www.paybackable.com/feedback