ProOnGo Blog

A new version of PRoOnGO Expense has just gone live on the Apple iTunes Store. We’ve made a number improvements including support the camera for iPad 2.

In addition to supporting the iPad 2, here’s what else this new version has improved:

• Support for sales tax, HST, and GST: two tax fields are available to configure by tax percentage or tax amountSupport for sales tax, HST, and GST: two tax fields are available toconfigure by tax percentage or tax amount. Detailed in this blog post.
• Improved Report Time; Users with hundreds of expenses have been noting that amount of time it takes to load up their Reports page. We’ve decreased the loading time so our heavy iPhone users will notice a significant difference.
• Time and Mileage totals added to the Summary bar. The top bar of ProOnGo Expense now scrolls displays the total amount for expenses as well as the types of expenses.

You can get this new update from the iTunes App Store right now. Download the latest version and test out our latest features, then drop us a line and tell us what you think: Support@ProOnGo.com.

Thank god you work in a small business, right? No bureaucratic hurdles to jump through just to be able to purchase some new coffee filters for the break room.

Unfortunately, most expense reporting software aren’t fans of this casual nature. It’s like every piece of software these days will not function unless you have a few yards of red tape you’re willing to string around the office.

Well, we here at ProOnGo understand that formalities might not always be necessary, and that what’s most important is getting the job done, not making sure you have followed all the steps.

That’s why we’ve given small businesses the option to ‘unformalize’ their expense adjudication. Adjudi-what? You know, approve or denying expenses.

If your small business expenses are hooked up with ProOnGo Expense, managers are given complete control over their employees expenses, and don’t have to wait on employees to ‘submit’ their expenses before they are included in an expense report.

With ProOnGo Expense, the manager just logs into the ProOnGo Web Portal and they instantly have access to their employees’ expenses. As the expenses are incurred by the employee, managers can edit, delete, approve or deny the expense, and populate it into an expense report.

So instead of waiting for employees to submit their expenses, managers just go and get ‘em. Stop wasting time and get your business running with ProOnGo Expense.

Many of our customers that come from other expense reporting solutions talk about the “black hole” that expense reports seem to go into, from the moment they are filed to the moment they are reimbursed.  Employees wait needlessly for expense reports to be processed/approved/denied, oftentimes with at best a murky picture of “which payroll run” the reimbursement might finally be included on.

ProOnGo can help.  If you are an employee submitting expense reimbursement requests through ProOnGo Expense, take a look at the Filter tab in the app, for an option that’s sure to give you the information you are looking for…

• Need to know precisely, in real-time, which expenses have been denied – so that you can clarify and resubmit?
• Need to know which expenses from your recent trip have been approved?
• Need to know your total “approved” T&E spend, year-to-date?
• Need to know how much money you have tied up in submitted, but not yet approved/denied, expenses?

For the answer to all of these questions, in real-time, tap the Filter tab and toggle on/off settings in the Expense States area.  Use it in combination with other filter settings (like date range, filter by category, etc), to get an even clearer picture.  Lastly, know that when you set the filter “just right” and return to the main expense list, the total sitting above the list will show the sum of just the set of expenses that you’ve filtered in on.  Enjoy!  Is your company still on an antiquated paper-based expense system?  Show your manager how easy expense reimbursement workflow can be, with ProOnGo.

International travelers, you’ll like what we’ve got in store for you in the latest iPhone release of ProOnGo Expense (it hit App Store on Friday!).  Those of you who have dealt with exchange rates in ProOnGo Expense for iPhone probably remember digging into  iPhone -> Settings -> ProOnGo, to set up your remote currency and exchange rate.  Well, we learned the hard way that this is a pretty obscure place to put that kind of setting, especially for those of you that travel internationally on a regular basis.

In the latest release, we’ve revamped our exchange rate support dramatically.  To get to “the goods” just tap on the “Currency Exchange Rates” item in the Options tab, and you’ll see a screen that we think is far more user-friendly than the old way.  Then, when you go to file a new expense, you’ll see where you can enter in your remote currency (lets say EUR for example), and see it automatically converted to your local currency.  This goes without saying, but the reason you need it is so that you can track the “real money” that changed hands, but also track what your company will/should reimburse you for in your home currency.

Enjoy, and if you like it, we can get your colleagues set up as well through an expense reporting package that serves your whole company!

With millions of companies using QuickBooks, and many of them using ProOnGo to track their expenses on-the-go, we get plenty of questions about the various ways to record and submit expense transactions — and usually the punchline is “which technique is right for me?”

For example, here are some questions we’ve heard recently:

• We have some employees that use company-issued credit cards, and some that use their personal credit cards — how should our expense tracking policy differ for these situations?  How do we file the expenses in ProOnGo, and where will they “land” in QuickBooks?
• Our employees sometimes spend out-of-pocket and request reimbursement later; how should these transactions be accounted for?  How do we file the expenses in ProOnGo, and where will they “land” in QuickBooks?
• Sometimes we reimburse an employee simply by doing “Write Check” in QuickBooks.  Is that a good idea, and how can we track the individual expenses that led to the total amount printed on the check?

For these and other questions that have tax implications, you should seek the advice of a tax professional, but we can certainly point you in the right direction so that you’ve got some talking points when you sit down with your CPA.  To that end, we’ve created an interactive questionnaire that asks you plain-English questions about your reimbursement processes, and gives you some technical pointers of QuickBooks expense tracking techniques that you should consider.  As you complete the questionnaire, you’ll end up with something like this:

ProOnGo tracks mileage, as you might recall, and it turns out that some of the folks that write us most often about mileage tracking are the many regional sales managers that find themselves driving several hundred miles every week, from prospect to prospect and client to client.  We’ve heard the stories of personal cars that end up with 100,000+ miles on them over the course of just a few years, almost entirely due to business-related driving… all in the name of landing the big sale!

If that sounds a lot like what you do, then you are no stranger to tracking mileage, whether its for reimbursement or for tax deduction.  So, about a year ago, we added to ProOnGo Expense the ability to detect start and end addresses, and distances.  That new trick got quite a warm reception!

However, if there is one thing we’ve heard over and over, it’s that many of you find yourselves visiting the same client or prospect multiple times a year, and boy would it be nice to be able to just “save” a list of favorite start/end points. That way, you can pick from a list of “favorites” rather than always auto-detecting the street address.  Well, your wish has now been granted, in our iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, and Android versions of ProOnGo Expense.  The look and feel varies a bit depending on which kind of device you carry, but I think our iPad version turned out particularly good (see for yourself, below!)… Lastly, I should put in a plug to say that if you are a sales director or sales manager, and you think your whole team could benefit from this, we’ve got some pretty economical ways for you to roll out ProOnGo Expense to your entire sales organization.  Enjoy the new “Favorite Addresses” feature, and as always, don’t be shy with your feedback!

Hello All

We’ve been gaining more and more international users and the demand for tax support has become too overwhelming to not do something about it.

That’s why yesterday, we updated our BlackBerry and Android apps to include the ability to add up to two tax fields. Users just enter in in a percentage and ProOnGo Expense will find the the tax amount and include it in your expense details.

Below is a screenshot for Android. If you have any quetsions about the functionality or have a feature request, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email: Support@ProOnGo.com

Updated on April 25, 2011 @ 6pm CT: iPhone users, help is on the way!  The tax feature described above (most people use it for sales tax, GST, or HST), will soon be available for iPhone as well.  Here is a sneak peak: