n-How to Create an Expense Report in Expensify (and How to Stop Building It By Hand)
Open Expensify, go to Reports, click Create Report, then add expenses to it either from receipts already sitting in your account or by scanning new ones with SmartScan. Name the report, check the totals, and submit it for approval. Here's the full walkthrough, and what it looks like once a report builds itself as the expenses happen instead of waiting for someone to assemble it.
The full walkthrough
1. Get the receipts into Expensify first. Forward them to receipts@expensify.com, snap a photo in the mobile app, or let a connected corporate card import the charge automatically. SmartScan reads the merchant, date, and amount off each one.
2. Open the Reports tab and click Create Report. This starts a blank report that expenses get added to.
3. Add expenses to the report. Pull in receipts already sitting unreported in your account, or add a new one directly from the report screen. Each line should show the category, project or tag if your workspace uses them, and whether it's billable to a client.
4. Check for policy flags. Expensify highlights anything that violates a spending rule, a missing receipt over the required threshold, a category that's restricted, a per-diem overage, before you submit it.
5. Name it and submit. Give the report a clear name (most teams use the trip or month), confirm the total, and submit it. It routes to whoever your workspace's approval chain designates next.
Why this still takes longer than it should
Expensify automates the mechanics inside the report itself: reading receipts, flagging policy violations, routing approvals. What it doesn't do is decide when a report should exist in the first place. Someone still has to remember that a trip wrapped up, sit down, pull the right expenses together, and submit it, often days or weeks after the fact when half the receipts are easier to misplace than remember.
The other recurring friction is reports that sit half-built because an employee is waiting on one more receipt, one more approval from a manager who's traveling, or clarity on which project to bill an expense against. None of that is a SmartScan problem. It's a workflow problem sitting next to a tool that's otherwise doing its job fine.
What we've built on top of Expensify expense reports
Reports that assemble on a schedule, not a memory
Unreported expenses tied to a trip or a project get rolled into a draft report automatically on a set cadence, biweekly, monthly, or the day a trip's return flight lands, so nobody has to remember to start one.
Missing receipts chased automatically
An employee who submits an expense without a required receipt gets a reminder on a schedule instead of a manager manually tracking down who still owes documentation before close.
What slows your reports down the most?
Missing receipts, unclear project codes, approvers who travel, reports that pile up until month end: whichever one it is for your team, describe it and we'll see what's realistic to build around it.
Still waiting on someone to sit down and build the expense report?
The report itself isn't the hard part anymore, Expensify handles that well. It's getting one started before the trip is a distant memory. Tell us where yours stalls and we'll look at what it would take to have a draft start itself the moment the triggering event happens. And if expense reports aren't your real bottleneck, that's fine too, n-frames builds automation wherever the manual work actually lives, Expensify or anywhere else in your business.
Let's talk