What are some good expense report mobile apps?
 

I'm trying to figure out what expense report apps road warriors use. I know there are some out there for iPhone, RIM, et al. But I think most folks are like me and just stuff the receipt in their briefcase and deal with the mess and pain of expense reports back in the office. Any reco's on exp rpt mobile app's that actually save time and aren't a pain-in-the-butt?

I use one called Expense Diary on my Treo. It's far better than a full-manual option, but not nearly ideal. For instance, it doesn't sync with Excel, so I still have to fill in the report manually. But it's at least a way to make sure expenses get recorded and categorized as they occur.

It was a major gripe of mine that the Treo did away with the expense report app that had been standard on prior Palm products. And there were even third party add-ins to transfer that data automatically into Excel.

Now I'm on the verge of dumping my Treo for a Droid, and your post has reminded me that I need to find out if there's a decent expense app for Android devices. So to add to the OP's question, anyone know of a good Android expense app?

I use iExpenseIt on my iPhone. Its great! Deals wiht multiple currencies, and at the end of my trip i can send myself (either via email, or wifi) a report in both html format, or .csv.

It saves me a ton of time!

I use "Receipt" on the iPhone - you snap a picture and put in your comments, then you can group all the receipts together into an expense report that arrives in your mailbox as a .PDF file with what looks like xeroxed copies of all your receipts, very nice.

That IS a nice feature. Any idea if that app's available on Android?

Also take a look at www.expensify.com - I like it a lot.

I've considered Expensify. But from their description, it looks like entering cash transactions would be a major pain. Have I misunderstood this? Can you shed a little more light on this?

Also, it seems that for Expensify's credit card based record entry to work, you need to have phone service when you make the entry. Since I have a Verizon Droid, that would mean it would be of no use to me in Europe. Is that correct?

And what about entering mileage?

I've had a look at several of the Android expense apps, and none of them so far seem to have the ability to accept entries in multiple currencies. That is, you can change the currency on a lot of them, but changing from dollars to euros, for instance, changes all the previous entries (initially entered in dollars) to euros, too. :td: Expensify would solve this problem, at least for credit card expenses, if the concerns I mentioned above are not issues.

Agreed. At one time I researched how to get a copy of that older app and re-insrall it on a newer Palm. The one I remember would, if configured correctly, would put your data into the correct rows and columns of an Excel spreadsheet.

This question has come up a few times in the past. With how easy travel expenses are to do on a smartphone, I'm always surprised how few people respond. I'd call doing expenses daily/as they occur daily on a smart phone the polar opposite of the 'stuff the receipt in briefcase, ... deal with the mess later' method.

Answering my own questions:

Expensify doesn't require phone access for any entries. It doesn't even take entries that you incur on your credit card. Instead, you give them password access to your online accounts for your credit cards and they transfer all your transactions on those cards into an expense report. This covers currency issues automatically, and you never have to write anything down. The problem is you have to have credit cards dedicated to reportable expenses only, and you have to trust them with full access to your online credit card account. I only have one sign-on for all my Amex cards, so even if I restricted the Expensify tracking to a single card maintained just for this purpose, they'd still have access to all of my Amex accounts online.

I have recently found what I hope is a diamond in the rough.

Toshl is a fairly simple Android expense tracking app that is currently geared mostly to helping individuals keep track of where their spending goes.

But the user interface for adding transactions and managing spending categories is absolutely wonderful. Very simple, very easy, and still very flexible. Just what you need for entering transaction data with a burger in one hand, a drink in the other, a steering wheel between the knees, and the phone... well, let's just say simple and easy is good.

They don't yet handle multiple currencies, though. However, they have a suggestion site where the multiple currency issue has been suggested as a new feature. They say they're considering it, and may implement it if enough people are interested.

So if you want a good travel expense app on Android, please go to the Toshl comment page and indicate your interest. They currently only have a handful of people interested in the app, so if several FTers show up to support the modifications, we might get what we need.

On my Android phone, I've been using the Expense IT application. It seems to do everything I need. I'm able to track expenses (with receipt pictures), mileage, and time. The app lets you create different clients and then create different jobs for each of those clients. I've used it for my consulting business to bill customers as well as for expense reporting for various trips that I have to go on. It works great in both situations.

My favorite part is the fact that I can send the expense reports and bills directly from the app....it doesn't force me to go through some website to gen the report...very cool!

Great apps thats worth the look

AJ