ProOnGo Blog

Hello everyone!
We just released an update to our mobile devices and Web Portal that will make understanding ProOnGo much more intuitive. We changed the expense state ‘New’ to ‘Draft.’ This way, our business users can have an implicit understanding that they must Submit their expenses to their manager in order to for their employer to Approve them.

Before, we would have users leave most of their expenses in the ‘New’ state, which pretty much rendered the ‘Submit’ state useless. While we couldn’t get rid of the ‘Submit’ state because there would be know understanding between an employer and employee of exactly when the employee is finished adding information to particular expense, we decided to change the ‘New’ state to ‘Draft’ so there is more of an instinctual understanding that the expense is not yet complete.

On the mobile application, we made sure to highlight this by making the ‘Save as Draft’ small text, while making the ‘Submit’ a button. Here’s a screenshot from our Android expense tracker:

Here is a graphic that illustrates this change:

As always, if you ever have any questions or comments, send us an email: Support@ProOnGo or a tweet @ProOnGo

We’ve made a lot of improvements recently to the way that our QuickBooks-compatible timesheets work, and a lot of our focus has been on making the workflow easy on both the employee and the manager/admin. Here’s how easy it is to use our timesheets feature:

1) Employees log in to www.proongo.com, and click on the “Weekly Timesheet” bar, in the Expenses tab:

Starting a QuickBooks Timesheet with ProOnGo.com

2) Employees fill out their timesheet, picking Customer:Job and Item:SubItem for each row, and typing in their hours for each day, and then pressing ‘Submit’:

Submitting a QuickBooks Timesheet with ProOnGo.com

3) Admins log in to www.proongo.com, and click on the “Weekly Timesheet” bar, then can click on any employee from the drop-down list. After doing so, they just review the employee’s submitted timesheet, and press APPROVE (or maybe DENY):

Approving a QuickBooks Timesheet with ProOnGo.com

After doing so, the ADMIN can send the time activities to QuickBooks anytime. Some of our clients like to send the info to QuickBooks right away; some like to do it once a week or once a month. The timing of sending the time activities to QuickBooks is really up to your preferences.

We implemented a brand new feature in the ProOnGo Web Portal this week; you can now filter out your expenses depending on whether or not they have a receipt.

This will make it infinitely easier for users that are looking to compile reports only of their receipt images.

To filter your expense list to only show receipt images, click on the Filter button (next to Reports) and choose Yes under Has Receipt?

As always, if you have any requests or feel like we could do better in some areas of our solution, feel free to send an email to Support@ProOnGo.com or send us a tweet @ProOnGo

Earlier this week, we launched our integration with QuickBooks utilizing Intuit Anywhere. This enables our users to record their expenses via the ProOnGo Expense mobile application (for iPhone, Android & BlackBerry) and sync an expense to QuickBooks utilizing the Intuit Sync Manager.

What this means is that employees will be able to record their expenses on their mobile device, label them with their QuickBooks expense accounts, Customer:Job and Vendor, then their managers will be able to view all of the expenses, including receipt images, approve or deny them, then sync all of their employees’ expenses to QuickBooks, all from their mobile device.

So if you’re an expense controller, a CFO or a manager of a sales team, you can make sure you get your expense approval out of the way while you’re waiting in line at Starbucks or at the gate in the airport.

We put together a video as well as a PDF guide to help walk you through this process if you have gotten caught up.

Often times we’re asked to elaborate on our expense states; exactly what do they mean, and what are they for?

When we designed our expense solution, we had to take into consideration the vast array of users; from small busiensses with 100 employees to Mom & Pop shops with just one or two expense submitters. As you can imagine, the 100 employee business has a much different process for approving company expenditures than a two-person company.

Mom & Pop shops generally do not have as much red tape as the 100 person company to approve and reimburse expenditures, so that’s why we came up with a workflow situation that allows gives businesses the option to choose how many hurdles employees and managers must overcome in order to reimburse an expense. Below is an image illustrating what you can and can’t do with ProOnGo expense states.

If you have those typical expenses that you incur week in and week out, we here at ProOnGo feel for you. In our infinite quest to make expense-tracking as simple as possible, we’ve developed a feature in our Web Portal to enable you to easily set recurring expenses and control the frequency of their occurance.

To set up a recurring expense, login to the ProOnGo Web Portal at www.ProOnGo.com and select an expense from your expense list. You’ll notice a calendar icon in the upper right hand corner of the expense.

If you click on that icon, you’ll have the option to choose the frequency of the expense.

Adjust all of your recurring expenses in the Settings tab underneath Recurring Expenses.

Hello Everyone

It’s been nearly a month since our last platform update, so I thought I’d share what we have in improved for this latest build.

Our latest build for BlackBerry features an OS 7 version, for all of you WAY-early adopters. We’re getting a jump on RIM’s slated release of 7 new BB OS 7 devices this fall, so when they launch, there is no excuse to be late on your expense reports.

You might notice a difference to the expense list screen on BlackBerry and Android; we’ve removed the title ‘Expense List’ and we’ve also made our filter notification a little bit smaller to save you some screen real estate.

We also made some fundamental changes to the Android and BlackBerry mileage trackers, making sure to accommodate our neighbors-to-the-north (and south) by giving users the easy ability to change whether they are recording their distance in Miles or Kilometers from the Mileage expense. Previously, this option was unavailable on Android and on BlackBerry it was difficult to find.

The last change I’d like to mention is the ability to Add Income. This was just launched on Android, so now on all three platforms (Android, BlackBerry and iOS devices) you’re able to record the money you receive up front for your expenses and see the total amount for your expenses (less the Income).

We’ve got a big feature lined up for release on iPhone and Android that should be launching within the next week, so stay tuned for that. As always, if you ever have any questions, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email: Support@ProOnGo.com

After launching support for QuickBooks nearly two years ago, ProOnGo Expense has made sure to be the most comprehensive solution for importing your expenses into QuickBooks.

That’s why we’ve made sure to account for all the various methods in which one imports their expenses as well as how their expenses are treated on their books.

While researching different methods for importing expenses into QuickBooks, we found that the Write as Check method, while recommended by Intuit, is actually the second most popular method; the first being importing Vendor Bills. That’s why I decided to write a brief outline of how ProOnGo integrates with QuickBooks using the Vendor Method as well as some of the capabilities you might not have known about.

The very first step you should undertake, when deciding to use ProOnGo and QuickBooks to record your expenses, is to make sure that the Expense Categories, Vendor List, Payment Method List and Customer List is homogenous between ProOnGo and QuickBooks. The best way to do that is to pull all of your categories from QuickBooks into ProOnGo using the IIF method (EDITORS NOTE 10/16/2012: This post is way out of date. We no longer recommend or support IIF files. We’re 100% cloud-based now.).

In order to do this, open up QuickBooks and browse to File->Utilities->Export->Lists to IIF Files. Next, make sure you select the following:

• Chart of Accounts
• Customer List
• Vendor List
• Payment Method List

Then save your IIF file.

Next, browse to ProOnGo.com and sign into the ProOnGo Web Portal with your username and password. The ProOnGo Web Portal is the perfect administrator’s tool for expenses. It’ll allow you to see all of your expenses, make changes to them, create expense reports, view and download past expense reports, as well as customize different aspects of the mobile app.

Navigate to the Custom Categories tab. If you’re an admin for a small business account with ProOnGo, this tab will be called Company Categories.

You’ll see an import button under the title ‘QuickBooks Import Chart.’ Select Choose File and browse to your saved IIF file.

When your IIF imports, you’ll see all of your Expense Accounts will generate in Field 1, your Customer:Job list will populate in Field 3, Payment Method in Field 4 and your Vendor List will populate under Favorite Merchants.

Now that you have your expense categories synced between QuickBooks and ProOnGo, it’s time to start recording and labeling your expenses.

When it’s time to import your expenses into QuickBooks, either on the mobile device or the ProOnGo Web Portal, create an expense report with the format of QuickBooks Pro (Bill). You’ll shortly receive a special IIF file in your inbox that you’ll import into your QuickBooks system. In QuickBooks, browse to File->Utilities->Import->IIF Files. Select your IIF file and your data will be imported.

Next, all you’ll have to do is browse to Vendors->Enter Bills and using the Previous and Next buttons, you’ll see your expenses.

A note about the billing field: Using the IIF file import method, if there is a Customer:Job and Expense Account recorded for the expense, then the Billable? field will always be checked. Unfortunately, there is no way around this using the IIF file method of import. However, we will have the ability to choose the Billable? field in our next iteration of QuickBooks integration, when the ProOnGo Expense web application for Intuit App Center is released. More info on Intuit App Center here.

Extra Feature–Class Support:

We’ve often been asked to sync with the Class field inside QuickBooks and we have finally been able to meet this request. To the end-user, they’ll select their Class using Field 2 inside ProOnGo Expense, and on import of the IIF file into QuickBooks the proper Class field will show up inside QuickBooks. If you’re interested in having this integration, let us know and we’ll get it set up for you: Support@ProOnGo.com

If you’re an expense Admin with ProOnGo, then you’ve probably noticed a change to how you can Add Employees in your favorite expense tracker. We’ve included an Employees tab which now makes it a lot easier for Admins to immediately add their employees to their accounts.  Like the earlier version, you’ll use the bottom text box to input the number of employees you’d like to create accounts for.

We also made a change to our mobile subscription page, adding annual payments, which is catching up to our desktop subscription page.

A brief update for today. Later in the week we’ll have more as our new Android build hits the market with a brand new feature which adds another dimension to our expense-tracking.

Stay tuned!

Just because your company isn’t using ProOnGo Expense, that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on it! One of the most popular expense-tracking companies for corporations is Oracle iExpense.

Over the past few years, Oracle has made its system a lot easier for managers and employees to stay on top of their expenses, however we still hear from a great many Oracle iExpense users that would prefer to record their expenses via ProOnGo Expense, even if the back-end is powered by Oracle iExpense.

That’s why we made it a priority to integrate the Oracle iExpense spreadsheet into the ProOnGo Expense reporting screen. Oracle users simply record their expenses on in the ProOnGo Expense app (Android, BlackBerry, and iPhone) and then label each expense with the company’s Oracle expense categories. Then users tap the Reports tab, and choose to export the expenses in the Oracle iExpense template.

Users then receive a link to the Oracle iExpense template in their inbox, as well as a tab-separated HTML table containing the expenses. From here, users just follow the same procedure for importing expenses into Oracle – highlight all of the expenses, copy and paste into iExpense. So, even if your business has already deployed Oracle iExpense, you can still use ProOnGo Expense for Businesses as a great way to get your expenses into your company’s system.

To use ProOnGo in conjunction with Oracle iExpense, just send us your Oracle iExpense spreadsheet template via this web page and we’ll get your spreadsheet integrated within a couple weeks (usually sooner).