2025 Highlights: A Year of Steady Progress and Significant Developments

As we come to the end of 2025, let's take a moment to reflect on the significant progress and developments we've made to improve your travel and expense management.

In the Spotlight

Introducing Online Booking
(US edition only - Early access)
Enable online booking for employees and let them self-book their flight and hotel itineraries. Create a travel policy and ensure that users associated with the policy book their tickets online while staying compliant with the defined rules and spending limits.

Pine Labs Prepaid Cards

(India and Global edition with country set to India)
Using Pine Labs prepaid cards, you can easily track and manage your corporate card spending with minimal manual effort in Zoho Expense. It comes with a dashboard which provides insights into the spend summary, transaction history, and top-ups.

Introducing Batch Payments (Offline and Online)
Add multiple reports to a batch and reimburse them together using batch payments. Create a batch, export, and upload it in your bank portal for reimbursement. Once the reimbursements are settled, you can mark the batch as processed in Zoho Expense. If you've integrated with HSBC, you can add approved reports to a batch and reimburse them online via HSBC. After reimbursement, the batch will be marked as processed automatically. The HSBC integration is available only for Indian edition users of Zoho Expense created under the zoho.in domain.

Pay Advances Online
Users using the India edition of Zoho Expense, created under the zoho.in domain, can pay advances online via ICICI, YES, and HSBC. Users using the US edition of Zoho Expense can pay advances online via ACH Forte. This feature is only available in organizations where advances can be marked as "Paid."

Forecast Analytics (Early access)
Using historical data, Zoho Expense will forecast trip expenses in your organization to help you plan effectively and make informed decisions in the Trip Expense Summary report in Analytics.

Notify Employees via WhatsApp
Integrate with your WhatsApp Business account and use your purchased WhatsApp Credits from Meta to send instant notifications. Notify submitters and approvers when a report or trip is submitted, approved, rejected, or when expenses are reimbursed. You can also customize the notification messages you send out in Zoho Expense.

New Edition: Singapore
In addition to the existing editions, Zoho Expense now has a Singapore edition, helping you manage business expenses while staying GST compliant.

Card, Expense, and Budget Management

Real-time Feeds in New Regions (Early access)
Users using Zoho Expense in the UK, Germany, and Italy can fetch card feeds in real time with support for both Visa and Mastercard.

Report Automation for Trip Expenses
Once you enable report automation for trip expenses, a report will be automatically generated for your employees with all their expenses incurred during the trip.

To enable: Go to Admin View > Settings > Report Automation > Configure Now, next to Trip Expenses

Enhancements in Per Diem
Instead of creating a custom rule for a per diem rate every time, create per diem rule templates that can be applied to any per diem rate in any policy to reduce time and manual effort. Additionally, per diem has been enabled for users using the UK edition of Zoho Expense (Early access).

Import User Budgets (Early access)
Instead of manually creating a budget for your employees, you can import them into Zoho Expense. Create budgets in bulk by assigning a fixed amount across all categories or expense types, or by setting custom amounts for each one individually.

Analytics

Analytics Upgrade

The analytics module has been upgraded to provide better visibility into actions in the Admin View. Here's what the new enhancements include:

1. Date customizations and criteria filters are displayed on the report details page.
   
2. Group by option and column customizations are located above the table.
   
3. Search for other reports using the Hamburger menu icon on the Report Details page.
   
4. The print option is now available under the Export dropdown.
   

Custom Reports (Early access)
Customize a report in Analytics and save it as a separate report. You can add filters, customize columns, define a layout, and set your report preferences. The reports will be displayed under Custom Reports in the Analytics module.

Liability Summary Report
To see how much each employee owes the company and how much the company owes each employee, use the Liability Summary report found under Reimbursements in Analytics. You can view the report in the Admin View under Reimbursements in Analytics.

Trip Expense Summary Report in Analytics
We've introduced a new report, Trip Expense Summary, in Analytics. The report gives admins a holistic view of booking expenses, the per diem allowance associated with the trip, and trip expenses including personal expenses incurred on the trip.

iOS and Android Mobile App Updates

1. Zoho Expense's iOS app adopted the Liquid Glass design to give users a richer visual definition of the interface. Additionally, with Apple Intelligence, the Date and Amount fields are now auto-filled when an employee manually adds an expense after selecting a receipt.
   

2. Introducing the Singapore edition for Zoho Expense that helps you manage business expenses while staying GST compliant.

3. Employees can view and manage the petty cash accounts assigned to them to cover minor, everyday expenses, typically for branch operations in My View (Early access). 

4. While creating a mileage expense using the UK edition of Zoho Expense, select whether the charging location of your vehicle is home or public to ensure mileage reimbursement for electric vehicles is calculated in line with HMRC rates.

Customer Testimonials

"Doing my expenses now takes me seven minutes when they used to take me four hours a month."

Tim Williams,

Executive Director, Go Geothermal

"The transition to Zoho Expense was smoother than we expected. Given the scale of our operations, we anticipated challenges, but the implementation process was well-structured, and our employees adapted quickly. In just three to four months, we moved from a completely manual process to a fully automated system that everyone was comfortable using."

Jothi Prakash,

Deputy General Manager IT, Coromandel International Limited

"The Zoho team's support throughout our journey, from onboarding to project go-live, has been outstanding, making the transition smooth and hassle-free."

Pankaj Pandit,

Chief Information Officer, Oberoi Realty Limited

Thank you for traveling along with us on this journey marked by notable milestones and growth. We look forward to a more rewarding and enriching 2026. Wishing you an incredible 2026!

• Topic Participants

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