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Tag: Expenses

Chase’s New Expense Tracking App Will Cater to the Most Anal-Retentive Bosses

If finicky expense-tracking is going to evolve with the times, there has to be a way to track every dime spent from anywhere and it appears Chase is making an effort toward that goal with its newest offering: Jot.

Hot off the wire:

Jot will provide Ink from Chase customers a variety of mobile benefits, including the ability to:

— Receive text alerts within seconds of making a purchase with their Ink card;

— Immediately tag these purchases to custom categories on a mobile device or online;

— Enable employees to tag their business expenses;

— Immediately view all transactions on their account, including those of their employees, through their mobile device or online;

— Adjust employees’ card spending limits in real-time via a mobile device; and

— Create and download reports into accounting software, including QuickBooks(R) and Excel(R).

“Small business owners are innovative, passionate and hardworking, and Chase’s dedication to partnering with these business owners comes from the belief that this group of entrepreneurs is an integral part of the American economy,” said Richard Quigley, president of Ink from Chase. “Jot was designed with small business owners’ immediate financial needs top of mind. Jot will enhance the finance-savvy business practices of small business owners, allowing for additional time and an improved focus on the passion and sense of accomplishment they have for their businesses.”

Financially-savvy Ink customers who have an iPhone or Android phone can download Jot by visiting the Ink website. Once you’ve got it downloaded you and your employees’ spending will be reined in and you’ll be back agonizing over more important things in no time.

Mobile Expense Tracking, The Easy Way

While we won’t all admit it, many of us are pretty lazy. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and given the right set of tools, lazy bastards like us can actually spend more time procrastinating and less time worrying about how to blow off whatever it is we’re trying to avoid.

When it comes to expenses, we can all use an easier way, lazy or not. Here are three apps that should help.

Evernote (free) MACPA CEO Tom Hood uses the Evernote iPhone app to snap a pic of his receipts, which he can then send directly to his office for safe-keeping and reimbursement. This means no stuffing random receipts into your pockets hoping they make it back to homebase. You can also use it as a sort of mobile Post-it note and scrapbook, capturing clips from newspaper articles, meeting notes and even business cards.

iXpenseIt This app ($4.99 in the Apple store) can help you track your own personal expenses as well as any you might incur for work. Voted one of the 50 Most Useful iPhone Apps by Laptop Magazine and a Best iPhone App by CNN Money.

ProOnGo Expense (free 30-day trial, pricing varies) goes a step further and even allows you to track your billable hours. It is compatible with iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and even Windows Mobile. Using the GPS feature, you can track your mileage too. The receipt reader feature allows you to put all your receipts into a neat Excel sheet or QuickBooks file.

Just for clarity’s sake, we’re sure you’re aware of this but here are the IRS rules on business expenses for your records. File it!

KPMG Decides That Travel Time Is No Longer On the Clock

A member of the Phil Mickelson fan club is a little peeved with a recent decision (or not so much, you’ll have to tell us) regarding travel time:

I am in an office that covers a significant region that includes TN, KY, GA, MS and AL. Previously, it was office policy (and in most cases area policy) that at a minimum half of the travel time to and from client was considered chargeable. Well, management in its infinite wisdom has decided that will no longer be the case. Therefore, those 40, 50 or 60 hour weeks are now 50, 60, or 70 hour weeks when the travel time is excluded for management’s purposes but included in the “real world” (which management has clearly lost touch with).


Why the change? Our source has a theory:

In this year of increased emphasis on internal profitability (which is a joke for a fixed fee revenue generating business), management needed some mechanism to make up for all the hours that are going to be wasted messing around with this “awesome” tool (which malfunctions daily) [Ed. note: he/she is referring to the new paperless audit tool]. This is also in response to the area management’s inability to win clients. So, instead of [leadership] making the tough decisions and forcing those responsible for the poor results, loss of clients, and improper planning to bear the weight of the lack of profitability (and reduce their income), it totally makes sense to squeeze the staff even further. I guess the philosophy may go something like this: “well, they are already pissed because we don’t pay them properly, we are forcing them to use this eAudit tool that doesn’t work and isn’t ready for deployment, and we are making them work ridiculous hours because we fired too many people (keep in mind the exodus is just beginning so this is just going to get worse), so we might as well just making even madder by telling them that those hours they used to spend in the air or car in the service of KPMG don’t really matter for crap either”.

Sound about right, Klynveldians? Discuss, debunk and whathaveyou.