Zoho Expense: Product updates - March - September 2019

Hello everyone,

We've rolled out some amazing updates with handy workarounds to make your expense reporting effortless. Take a quick look at the important enhancements that we’ve introduced in the past seven months.

iOS App 2.O

We've brought a new makeover to the iOS app with the iOS 13 updates and the following enhancements:

• A refreshing new UI, user-friendly workflows with contextual menus, easy navigations, and many more.
  

• Your virtual assistant, Zia, will help you get your tasks done quickly.
  

• The all new Siri shortcuts, cuts down on a lot of steps and helps you work efficiently.
  

• You can now easily create expenses, mileage expenses, and record GPS offline. You can also upload receipts while offline. They will be auto-scanned and converted into expenses, once you are back online.
  

• Multi-policy users can select a policy under which a report has to be created. Associate policies and create policy specific expense reports.
  

Download now and experience the new iOS App 2.O.

Compare Trip Options

Once your travel desk adds the trip options, you can view them in your trip request. The options will bear details of the flight, hotel, bus or train, amount, date, and timings. You can compare these options and select the one you prefer.

Comment on Trips

Communications with the travel desk can now take place in the comments section of your trip requests. You can resolve any query regarding your trip bookings by chatting through comments of the respective trips. The travel desk will be promptly notified of your comments and they can respond immediately.

Change Integration Owner of QBO

If the user who set up the integration has left the organization or is unavailable due to a similar reason, you can now re-authorize yourself as the integration owner replacing the old user. Once you assign yourself as the integration owner, you will have the permission to export reports to QuickBooks Online and configure the integration. Also, you can share access with other users to export reports to QuickBooks Online.

To do this: Go to Admin > Integration > QuickBooks Online > Show Details > Update.

External Lookup

With this custom field, you can now look up the tickets module in Zoho Desk. For example, if you create a Lookup field for ticket number in the Expenses module, you can look up the ticket number and associate it with an expense.

To do this: Go to Admin > Settings > Expenses > Preferences > + New Field > Label name: (Preferred name), Date type: External Lookup > Save.

Budgeting (Early Access)

The most awaited feature is here! You can now create budgets for the expense categories in your business, on a monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, or annual basis. Compare your actual spending with the set budget. You can also fetch values from previous years’ actuals and set the new budget. Thus, budgeting will help you take informed financial decisions for developing your business further.

To do this: Go to Admin > Budgets.

Export Analytic Reports to Zoho Sheet

Export your analytic reports to Zoho Sheet and view them as spreadsheets. You can also export these analytics to other employees from Zoho Sheet or save them as spreadsheets for future reference.

To do this:  Go to Analytics > Run an analytic report > Export as > Export to Zoho Sheet.

Auto-match Card Feeds and Expenses Created From Receipts

​

You can now avoid duplicate expenses by auto-matching the expenses created from card feeds, and the expenses created from receipts. Whenever you create an expense from a receipt, Zoho Expense displays all the possible matches of that expense, from the expenses created from card feeds. You can match with one of the expenses or create a new expense.

SMS Notifications (Indian edition)

App notifications can now be sent through SMS. The approvers and submitters can receive notifications when reports are submitted or approved. The following table depicts the notification types and the user roles who will receive SMS notifications:

Notification Type	Received by
Reports Submission	Approver
Reports Approval	Submitter
Reports Rejection	Submitter
Reports Reminder	Approver

Note: As of now, we support SMS Notifications only for the Reports module. However, we're planning to support SMS Notifications for other modules soon.

Other Enhancements:

• You can import or export per diem rates that are specific to different locations or departments.
  

• We have provided a default user invite email template. You can customize it and use it to invite your employees.
  

• If you've integrated Zoho Expense with Forte, you can now reimburse the expenses in bulk via ACH. (US and Canada)
  

• You can now import and export advance payments.
  

• Besides giving a policy name, you can give a display name for the policies. This is the name that will be displayed to all the users in the organization.
  

• You can create Text Box (Multi-line) custom fields for expenses, reports, trips, and advance payments.
  

• You can create Multi-select custom fields for reports, trips, and advance payments.
  

• With the custom approval option, you can now send your reports for approval to the project head(s) of every expense in a report.
  

• You can map the bank accounts under the Paid Through list in Zoho Expense with the corresponding bank account in QuickBooks Online. When you export a report to QuickBooks Online, the expenses that are paid through the mapped bank account in Zoho Expense will be listed under the corresponding bank account in QuickBooks Online.
  

Try out these features and share your feedback in the comments section below. 

Regards,
Vidhya G.S.
The Zoho Expense team

• Topic Participants

• Vidhya G S

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