ProOnGo Blog

Our first publicly available version of ProOnGo Expense five years ago was little more than a receipt scanner that let smartphone owners snap pics of their receipts and have an expense report filled out automatically. We have great memories of those days, because that scenario was crisp and clear and easy to explain to even the most casual of users. It helped to heal perhaps the most “broken” part of the expense reporting process — replacing (in most cases) a manual process where employees were literally taping receipts together on a sheet of paper and submitting them with some kind of Excel-based expense report.

We were energized by the response to that initial launch, so we kept going, asking small business owners what their road warriors needed in order to not only take care of their process for receipts, but also “everything else” that they need to submit with their expense report.

Receipts → Receipts, Mileage, and Time

It wasn’t long before we ended up broadening our value proposition to include the ability to not only track receipts, but also to track mileage and time. Furthermore, our receipt tracking became much more refined when we started helping our users distinguish between receipts attached to corporate card expenses versus receipts that were from out-of-pocket expenses that needed to be reimbursed.

Likewise, our time tracking took a step forward when our customers taught us that sometimes filing “time activities” one-at-a-time is the easiest process, whereas sometimes filing a whole timesheet is the easiest process (usually for companies that are heavily powered by hourly labor or hourly billing).

Our customers have taught us a lot about what it takes to replace every scrap of a legacy based expense tracking process and modernize it into the world of web and mobile apps, and we’ve worked hard to keep up with the ever-expanding “suggestion box” from our customers.

The Power of the Expenses Tab

As we’ve gotten more and more detailed in the way that we serve your needs, our web app in particular has changed dramatically in the past year. Here’s a refresher on what you’ll find on the Expenses tab these days:

Expenses Tab in ProOnGo Expense

You can show/hide the various subtabs if you like — for example if you are sure that all you need is the Weekly Timesheet, or that all you need is the Corporate Card subtab — you could go into the Employees tab and tap the “Gears” icon to toggle on/off various sections:

Toggle On/Off Visibility of Tabs

However, we thought we’d at least explain the purpose of each section, before you decide which ones to show/hide and which ones you will use most often.

• All Expenses: This contains everything you’ve filed… mileage, time, corporate card expenses, out-of-pocket expenses.
• Corporate Card Expenses: This is where your credit card transactions arrive for cards issued by your company (sure there is some one-time setup involved, but after that they just magically arrive on a day-to-day basis). You wouldn’t want to clutter this subtab with ad hoc transactions from your personal cards, because this subtab is purely for corporate card expenses where there is no reimbursement to you because the company pays the bill to the credit card provider directly.
• Out of Pocket Expenses: This is where you file expenses that are from out-of-pocket spend for which you expect the company to approve and reimburse you. It barely matters what payment method you used at the time of the transaction (cash? personal debit card? personal credit card?) because that’s beyond the scope of what your company should know or care about. The point is, it’s for expenses that you paid out-of-pocket, that the company needs to reimburse you for
• Mileage Expenses: If your company reimburses you for mileage that you’ve driven on your personal car, for company business, then this subtab is for you. This is where you can document each trip that you make that you deserve reimbursement for.
• Time Expenses: If you occasionally need to track your time, but you don’t habitually need to do that on an “every week” basis, then this subtab is for you. This is a great place to go to file a occasional time activities (perhaps you rarely do billable work but once in awhile you do).
• Weekly Timesheet: Are you the kind of company where each person needs to file a full record of how they spent their time throughout the week? This subtab is for you — it’s a way of bulk-filing time activities in a traditional “weekly timesheet” format.

Keep sending in suggestions about how you want us to grow our solution next, and we’ll keep working to meet your needs!

Archiving Expense Receipts with ProOnGo
ProOnGo archives every expense receipt that you add to an expense, regardless of whether you add it to an expense by going through the Receipt Reader service, or whether you simply attach the receipt to an existing expense. These receipts are archived in the exact size and resolution at which you captured them: we do not shrink, manipulate, or otherwise change the quality of the receipts that you submit.

Why is Receipt Archival Important?
Few CFOs relish the possibility of being audited; regardless of whether the audit is part of internal standard operating procedures, or requested by a client, or initiated by the IRS. The process of auditing past financial performance often triggers the monumental task of retrieving the original documents that prove the nature of each income or expense, often causing CFOs to bring in teams of specialized consultants that are prepared to dig through a mix of paper-based and electronic records, in addition to investigating the nature of any transactions that lack documentation. ProOnGo makes eases the burden that CFOs bear during an audit; with ProOnGo, receipt images are available on a moments notice via our self service web portal available to all business subscribers.

It’s Audit Time: How do I Retrieve Receipt Images in Bulk?
Just log into our secure web portal using your manager or admin credentials, and filter your companies expense list by whatever criteria you wish (date range, type, employee, free-text search, etc). When you have the expense list filtered down to meet your needs, run a report that includes all of the receipt images for those expenses, using the “Create Report” button above the filtered expense list.

Learn More at Our Business Page

Remember our emailed-in-receipts feature? Its the one where, if you happen to have PNG or JPG files of receipt images, you can send them to a pre-assigned email address to have them run through Receipt Reader?

For those of you that already know and love this benefit of our service, listen up for the latest chapter in new ways to use it. For those who haven’t tried it out yet, now might be a good time to do so! Here’s what’s new…

Many of our subscribers that use ProOnGo on a companywide basis have been telling us for months that our emailed-in-receipts feature is something they’d like to be able to send invoices to as well.  You know, the PDF invoices that arrive in your inbox every month, from various suppliers and vendors?  The ones the become a paperwork nightmare almost as fast as expense receipts?  Yes, those ones.

Well, now, you can forward single-page PDF invoices to the same pre-assigned email address that you use for receipt images.  The PDF will not only be processed by Receipt Reader, but it will be pushed to both your phone and the My Expenses tab in the web portal, so that you have the Vendor, Date, Amount, as well as an image of the PDF (we end up converting it to JPG so that it appears smoothly throughout our solution wherever you can attach, view, or edit receipt images).

Enjoy, and keep your feedback coming.  Also, a special thank-you goes out to our business package subscribers, who have been extremely open and helpful in explaining what else we can do to make ProOnGo a perfect fit in a corporate setting.

Updated Apr 13 @ 11am CDT: Thanks for the questions you’ve sent on about this new feature… let me answer the most frequently asked question right here for everyone to see.  Question: “Does it handle multi-page PDFs?”  Answer:  Yes! It just concatenates all of the pages together, so you’ll have the whole document as your “receipt attachment” in the expense, even if the original PDF was more than one page.

Hello Everyone!

It’s the beginning of December and we’re quickly approaching the one year anniversary of the release of the ProOnGo Expense build for iPhone. We’ve come along way since then, and we don’t plan on stopping the development train just yet!

This new version for iPhone features a major upgrade for our expense filtering system; You can now filter your expenses by multiple metrics

What you can do:

• Filter by client name and time period
• Filter by expense type and client name
• Filter expenses payment type and expense type
• Filter expenses by their workflow status
• Many, many other combinations

Keep in mind, when you create a report, the expenses included in the report will be the expenses shown on your Expense List home screen.

How we see you using this:

It’s the end of the week, you just finished up a project with a client and now it’s now time to send your expenses to your client.  Simply filter your expenses by client name and time period and then create your report, then your client is updated with your expenses.

Give us a shout about this feature (Support@ProOnGo.com) or any other feature you have an opinion on and as usual, and we’ll keep making ProOnGo Expense your favorite mobile expense-tracker.

If you’ve been having trouble getting your GPS to work properly on your Samsung Android device, Samsung has come out with a couple guides to get your GPS back on track. The guides walk users through how to update the phones with the appropriate software fix and how to use and install the GPS Restore Application.

Samsung Captivate GPS Fix Guide

Samsung Vibrant GPS Fix Guide

Thanks to MobileBurn for the tip.

A new version of ProOnGo Expense went live on the iTunes App Store yesterday and we managed to fix some bugs as well as added anew feature; we now have a “Start From Here” item at the bottom of each mileage expense.

Rebranding ProOnGo Expense to fit your company.

Coming in early December, we will be launching the ProOnGo Expense White Label package. This brand new package allows businesses to rebrand ProOnGo Expense with their company’s log and color scheme, and we will upload this new app to the iTunes App Store.

How it works:

If you’re interested in getting a custom application for your firm, it’s a relatively quick and easy process thanks to the ProOnGo Expense Custom App Wizard.  All you do is:

1. Pick your splash screen color
2. Insert your Company Splash Screen image
3. Upload your app icon
4. Choose your color scheme
5. ProOnGo uploads the app to the iTunes App Store.

After you complete the wizard, you’ll be able to instruct your employees to the iTunes App Store market to download the company’s rebranded expense-tracking application.  You can expect the White Label Wizard to go live in early December.

Are you a tech savvy CPA that would like to become a launch partner with ProOnGo’s White Label app? Contact us here!

A few weeks back we launched our ProOnGo Businesses Packages. These packages allow businesses us to easily distribute ProOnGo Expense throughtout their company without needing to worry about individual subscriptions.

I want to take a moment and go over our Premium Business Package’s features and explain how these features can help out your business with expense tracking.

Up to 100 Users
With the a Business Package subscription, businesses don’t have to worry about signing up every single one of their employees with ProOnGo. They simply point to the ProOnGo Expense app in the device’s marketplace, and as long as they sign up with the company’s email address, the user will enjoy full benefits of a ProOnGo subscription

80 GB Receipt Storage
It’s important for businesses to have a back up of their receipts in case of an audit. Luckily, ProOnGo has businesses covered. We offer 80 GB or receipt images. That’s over 80,000 receipt images per year. All of this information is instantly recalled as soon as a business needs it.

Custom Excel Spreadsheet Integration
Most businesses contain expense report templates and as our Pro Subscribers already know, we’re able to take that template and have it automatically filled out with your expenses. Businesses will receive the same special. They just send us their expense report template and it’ll be fully integrated into the app within two weeks.

Credit Card Integration
We currently support American Express cards, but within the next coming weeks, we are rolling out our support to over 90% of banks in the United States. So businesses with ProOnGo Expense can have their employees business cards instantly sync with their expenses, so no manual entry is necessary.

24-Hour Support Guarantee
We guarantee a response to your support request within 24 hours of your request. Email Support@ProOnGo.com

Accounting System Integration Consultation
Need to import your employees’ expenses directly into your accounting system? We’ll offer a free consultation session to figure out how to import the expenses into your system.

5 Hour per Year Receipt Audit Assistance
When the auditor calls, we’ll be at your side. With a subscription to a Premium or Pro Business Account, your business will receive 5 hours of audit assistance to gather the receipts you’ll need.

Annual Backup DVD
Receive a DVD backup of all of your receipt images once per year.

If you’re interested in one of our Business Packages, but have some questions you’d like answered first, just shoot me an email and I’ll do what I can to help you out: Max@ProOnGo.com

Hello All

We just released our Credit Card Integration feature into ProOnGo Expense about two months ago, and it’s quickly becoming one of our more popular features.  The feature, which allows users to sync their credit card with ProOnGo Expense, imports the credit card’s transactions as expenses.

Well we’ve just granted access to the Credit Card Integration feature for our Trial and Lite Package users. The trial is only going to be around for a limited time, so sync up your card now and see how you like it.

Oh, and keep sending us your questions and comments to Support@ProOnGo.com!