Track Your Expenses On-the-Go

Reclaim that time spent filling out expense reports!

No one looks forward to that sinking feeling of pulling a stack of crumpled receipts from your wallet or suitcase and sitting down to recreate the financial details of a business trip.

And from a management perspective, time and energy spent enforcing expense report deadlines takes away from other profitable business activities.

"It's a necessary evil in every company," is how Dennis Hancock, VP Sales & Marketing at ZENN Motor Company describes the laborious routine of filling out expense reports.

Hancock recently rid himself of this pain, however, with Exgis Expense, a mobile software application that lets him use his BlackBerry® smartphone to record expenses on the go. "I expect to save 20 to 30 minutes each time I prepare an expense report, which I do every two weeks," Hancock reports.

Exgis Inc. (Exgis) founder Mark Wilson explains how Exgis Expense can help you leverage little gaps of time throughout the day to boost your productivity. "Say you step out of a taxi and walk into an office tower on your way to a meeting. While standing in the elevator, you can record that taxi expense on your BlackBerry smartphone in about 10 seconds," he says.

Expense transactions are recorded on the smartphone and made available in real time on the corporate server, so expenses are always up to date and available for administrative staff.

"When the time comes to submit your expenses, it's simply a matter of printing and signing a report," says Wilson. For employees, this means expenses are submitted earlier, for quicker reimbursement. Companies can in turn prepare and submit billable expenses to clients earlier.

Wilson understands the benefits of streamlining expense management. Prior to founding Exgis, Wilson spent fifteen years at Ernst & Young where he led the project team that designed and built the company's global expense management system. Today it's used in over 100 firm offices worldwide.

"Expense management can actually be quite complex, considering different business policies, currencies, and tax structures among provinces, states, and countries," Wilson explains, "so we designed Exgis Expense with many options for customization in areas like field labeling, screen layout, reporting and forms."

ZENN's Hancock illustrates how this back-end customization translates into time savings for users. "Our company requires an input of GST expenses on each applicable line," he says, "and it was always a hassle to locate this amount on receipts or to have to calculate it. Exgis Expense performs this calculation automatically, which is a significant time saver."

"As well, Exgis built the interface to match exactly with my company's expense form, so there was no new learning required before using the application," says Hancock.

Global travelers also appreciate the application's integration with XE. XE.com, the world's most popular currency site, provides over 170 currency exchange rates daily to Exgis Expense users.

"Expense reporting is such a painful activity for everyone," says Wilson. "No employee likes spending time on them, and no manager or finance department employee likes hounding staff to submit expenses on time."

It was, in fact, a friendly email reminder from his finance department (while at Ernst & Young) that led Wilson to discover the idea for Exgis Expense.

"I was sitting on a plane, on my way back from a business trip, reading an email from finance," he says. "It was year end, and the email was reminding everyone to get their expense reports in right away."

"As usual, I was one the late-submitters, so I pulled out all my receipts from the long trip and started organizing them right there in my seat," he says. "I reluctantly folded down the lunch tray and began filling out my expense report, all the while thinking of a hundred other things I'd rather be doing!"

Suddenly Wilson realized the irony of his situation. "I remember looking at my BlackBerry smartphone, sitting on that same lunch tray amidst a mountain of receipts, and wishing I had software that would have let me record every expense right when they had occurred, over the previous few days."

Wilson mulled that idea over and, a few months later, decided it had so much merit that he would start a company to build the solution himself.

He left his secure job and successful career behind to found Exgis Inc.

"I saw Exgis Expense as a viable solution to the time-draining expense management practices that are found in virtually every company," he says.

Wilson also points to the common practice of relying on spreadsheet template files, which accounting staff must design and update whenever legislation or business policies change.

"Invariably, employees use older versions of spreadsheet claim forms, causing more headaches for themselves and for accounting staff. And of course, as companies grow, these problems occur more frequently," he says.

"The Exgis Expense application solves all of these problems instantly, so employees, managers and accounting staff can focus on their core responsibilities, with expense reporting becoming as transparent and painless a process as possible."

Special Offer:
FREE Trial of Exgis Expense
Record your expenses on your BlackBerry smartphone when they happen with Exgis Expense. Then file your expenses at the click of a button when you're back at the office. Advanced features provide daily currency exchange rates and allow for integration to desktop-based time and billing systems.

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3 Key Success Factors for Small Businesses: Mark Wilson, Founder of Exgis Expense offers these three pieces of advice for small businesses. 1. Stay focused on the end goal As your small business grows, you'll find lots of different opportunities to chase. Make sure none of them pull your business away from its primary focus. 2. Be ready for growth Growth is great, if you're prepared. Look at your back office systems. If any processes begin to break down, or if you start getting bogged down with administrative tasks or paperwork, see this as a warning sign! Invest in technologies that will streamline your system and you'll be ready to scale up quickly. You'll also find it easier to bring on more personnel if your environment is supported with streamlined systems. 3. Seek out and establish quality partnerships Who are the leading companies in your industry? Find out their alliance practices and make sure you can articulate exactly how a partnership with your business would benefit them.