Expense Report Programs Add Up

With all the advances in technology, it’s amazing how many people, whether business owners or employees, still have to hunker down with their paper forms and folder of crumpled receipts to tally up their travel and entertainment expenses. The folks at Intuit, which publishes Quicken, QuickBooks and other financial software, developed something called Quicken Expensable in 1995 to deal with that chore.

The first major upgrade of that product in two years is now available for individuals and small businesses from an Intuit spinoff called On the Go Software ([800] 331-3416 or https://www.onthegosoftware.com).

Quicken Expensable 98 is a $49.95 program for Windows users that simplifies tracking and reporting expenses. There’s also a version for hand-held Windows CE computers, which, as you might expect, synchronizes with the desktop version for the easy exchange and updating of information. Expensable is also compatible with Quicken and QuickBooks.

“Intuit historically has felt Expensable is a good extension of Quicken,� says Ken Grunzweig, chief executive of On the Go. “Customers were actually using Quicken for travel and expense reporting, which is not really what the program is designed for.�

The program speeds the usually laborious task of data entry. First, you can scan receipts into Expensable using any type of desktop scanner. The program can’t interpret the receipt, but it does pass along an image of it, which is good enough for the Internal Revenue Service, according to Grunzweig.

As with Quicken, Expensable will complete the spelling of commonly used words as you begin to type to speed the entry process. It calculates totals and splits expenses among accounts in case you want to allocate part of an expense to one client and the other to another client, to your own business or to you personally.

The program has a better memory than I do. It knows, for example, what credit card you typically use for meals and enters that by default. Of course, you can change it as needed. If you take out clients who are also in your contact management program database (like Act, Goldmine or Outlook), it will pull the contact information from that program.

The “trip genie� reminds you about expenses you might otherwise overlook, like mileage to the airport, parking and baggage-handling tips. One thing I find very useful is the ability to separate business and personal calls made from a hotel.

You can also enter your receipt information randomly and the program will sort them by date. There is also an embedded browser (Internet Explorer 4.01) that links to more than 10 Web sites selected for business travel planning.

The advantage of having the Web sites linked to Expensable is that you can download data such as exchange rates and your travel itinerary directly to your expense report file. The company has a relationship with a travel reservation service that can track your travel expenses automatically and download them into your expense report.

If you’re self-employed, you can use this for your tax records. For each expense, you can enter whether it’s reimbursable, a non-reimbursable business expense or a personal expense. You can then export the data to Quicken or QuickBooks and later to a tax preparation program. Like Quicken and QuickBooks, you can analyze your expenses by category to determine, for example, how much you’re spending on meals and entertainment.

The product comes with 30 standard forms, but for a fee the company will develop a custom form.

There are, of course, plenty of other options. SideKick 98 from Starfish Software (https://www.starfish.com), one of the more popular personal information management programs, includes an expense module along with its scheduling and address book features. The expense reporting feature offers simple entry screens that allow you to enter the date of your expense, the city you are visiting, the vendor, the amount and any remarks. When you’re done, it creates a report that you can print out to file or submit.

Expense Report 98 from Zoom Systems is a handy shareware program. (You can download it from the Internet, try it and pay $25 if you decide to keep using it.) The program has a spreadsheet-like interface that lets you enter your information across rows. When you’re done, it prints out a report. It also has a budgeting feature, allows you to export your data, and lets you send your expense reports by e-mail directly from the program. You can download the product by going to https://www.download.com and searching for Expense Report.

When it comes to expense reporting, I’m a do-it-yourself kind of guy, so I used Microsoft Works to develop my own expense reporting system that works in Microsoft Works and Microsoft Excel. I’ve made it available for free on the Internet at https://www.larrysworld.com/expense.htm.

The spreadsheet has a place where you can enter the first date (it automatically updates each date for a week) as well as your expenses for air fare, lodging, phone, car rental, taxi/rail, mileage, breakfast, lunch, dinner and entertainment. The spreadsheet provides totals by day and category. It’s not fancy, but it gets the job done.

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Find out more about small business and technology at The Times’ Small Business Strategies Conference Oct. 17-18 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. You can e-mail Lawrence J. Magid at [email protected] or visit his Web site at https://www.larrysworld.com. On AOL, use keyword “LarryMagid.â€�