Mobile Expense Reporting – Making Your SmartPhone Smarter

The new and updated Gorilla Expense Pro mobile app makes your smartphone smarter when it comes to expenses. The app is powerful in its capabilities, yet simple to use for travelers and managers. Users will be able to submit entire expense reports from the mobile device without having to get in front of a computer.

We even have a challenge based on how easy it is to use this app to submit expenses. it is called the ‘Complete your expense reports in 7 seconds or less’ challenge! Try it out and post your feedback on Twitter. Use the #7secondchallenge hashtag so that we can promote your tweet.

So, how does this new mobile app work? What are the key features? Lets take a look under the hood….

The Mobile App

The app is available for iPhone, iPad and Android phones. Once the app is downloaded, the user enters the username and password (same as web application). Once logged in to the app, the user is presented with 4 buttons on the home page of the mobile app, as shown below.

By clicking on the ‘Expenses’ button, the user can submit individual line item expenses. This is described in more detail below in the ‘Expenses’ section. The ‘Reports’ button is where users can create and submit an entire expense report from the device. An expense report can consist of multiple individual transactions. These transactions could be a mix of corporate card transactions and out of pocket expenses.

Expenses

The expenses button is used to create individual line item transactions. These transactions include the receipt, expense type categorization, vendor, amount, other co-workers that were part of the expense, like a Meals expense type and other fields. Once the transactions care created, they are ‘uploaded’ and can then be ‘dragged and dropped’ into an expense report.

The app provides for three options to create/submit expenses, as shown in the 3 tabs in the screenshot below: Mobile, Bank and Email. Their functions are described below.

Mobile: In the mobile tab, the user can create expenses, attach receipts to transactions and categorize or code the expenses to specific GL codes / expense types. Additional details at the transaction level such as the vendor, other employees who were part of the transaction can also be entered to complete the expense. The app provides for multiple options to attach receipts – Photo Gallery, Camera and Dropbox, as shown below.

Using the photo gallery, the user can attach a receipt that is saved in the photo gallery of the device. Or the user can use the camera to take a picture of the receipt at that point. Finally the user also has the option of attaching a multi-page PDF receipt sitting in their Dropbox account by clicking on the Dropbox link. This is especially useful for those pesky 5 page receipts from hotels.

Bank: In the bank tab, users will see expenses imported into the system from their corporate cards and / or personal cards. Similar to the mobile tab,  the user can attach receipts to these transactions, categorize them based on GL code / expense type and then drop them into an expense report. The big advantage here is that users can easily and conveniently attach receipts to these corporate card expenses and submit them as part of the same expense report. This makes reconciliation much easier for AP Managers and improves visibility of spend on corporate card for the stakeholders.

Email: This feature allows users to FWD an email that has a single PDF receipt attachment to a fixed email account (example: receipts@abc-inc.com). Once the email is forwarded, the app will create an expense line item and attach the PDF receipt. This is made available to the user in the email tab of their mobile app to be incorporated into an expense report.

If the email does not have a PDF receipt attached and if the email itself functions as a receipt, then the user FWDs the email itself for the application to create a PDF of the body of the email and attach it to the transaction. For greater detail on this functionality, read our article here.

Reports

When the ‘Reports’ button is clicked, the user can create an expense report, add transactions to the expense report and submit it from the mobile device. Here is a screenshot of an expense report that shows the report level details. There is information on the report name, report type, date range, cash advance and comments explaining reason for the trip.

Once the skeleton expense report is created, the user can add transactions to the report. This is done by clicking on the Add Existing Transactions button (shown below). These are the transactions that have been uploaded by the user as we discussed in the Expenses section above. The screenshot below shows a few expenses added to the expense report, with different payment methods – some are out of pocket expenses and there is one corporate card expense, which is shown in the Red text color.

The app breaks down the expenses at the bottom of the page while providing a convenient summary of the expenses for full visibility. The cash advance amount entered at the top of the expense report is also shown at the bottom. If the expense report is complete, the user can validate the report and then submit it. The validate process checks if any policies were violated. Once that is done, the user can submit the expense report. The user is then presented with a confirmation screen that shows the expense report confirmation number, as shown below.

Once the expense report is submitted, the manager will receive an email with details about the expense report. At that point, the manager can choose to approve, reject, redirect or edit the expense report. The manager approval process can be done from a mobile device as well. Subsequently, the user is informed of the status of the expense report once the manager has taken action on it.

That shows how an entire expense report can be created on the mobile device, then submitted and approved as well. In conclusion, the major advantages with the mobile app are:

– It makes it very easy and convenient for users to submit expense reports

-Expenses are done immediately after they are incurred

– All the relevant information is included and broken up by line item expenses

– The mobile app also works in an Offline mode, so that users can still create expenses when there is no 4G or Wi-Fi connectivity

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Interested in seeing a live demo of the mobile app? Send us a message at info@gorillaexpense.com and we will get a demo scheduled immediately