[wurzelgogerer]

How is this different from expensify? Expensify uses the slogan "Expense reports that don't suck." You are essentially trying to do the same thing here. What are your main differentiators and what exactly are you doing better than these other solutions out there?

[oq]

I'm glad you asked. It's really just an entirely different approach. We’re not building another expense tracker (no offense - some people just need to track expenses). We believe the core of the problem is not in the tracking of expenses, but rather the back office workflow. We’re trying to solve a team collaboration problem.

In terms of quantifiable differences, it’s way faster for employees to submit and get reimbursed because we've extrapolated away the need to even create an expense report (submit on the fly), managers can review and approve right from the mobile and for the accountants, everything is on autopilot (accounting autosyncs in the background nightly, payouts are tied to approval and go out nightly, communications go out to employees with payout status immediately, etc.)

[jcampbell1]

This sounds awesome.

I used to have the awful job of auditing executive expense reports at a fortune 10 company. One major problem is that employees submit expenses, and managers approve them, but they don't comply with IRS guidelines for deductibility. For instance, an employee just submits a expense for a $300 dinner, and it is approved by his manager.

One area where you could really stand out from the competition is guiding people to do the right thing, e.g. list the number of people that attended the dinner and a few names and titles of the attendees.

[erichurkman]

> payouts are tied to approval and go out nightly

That's my biggest complaint with Expensify. Great, my report is approved... now what? There is little indication to me, as an employee, of what happens next or when it will take place.

[gwintrob]

Brilliant, Omar. I usually end up putting together a massive expense report after procrastinating for months. This makes way more sense.

[dkoch]

How do you compare to big players in the market like Concur, which has these features?

[jason_wang]

I've been using Expensify for 2+ years and I just started using Abacus. The core value proposition of the two products are significantly different.

Expensify makes the "old school" expense/reimbursement process easier. Expensify lets me collect my receipts, fill out electronic expense reports, submit such reports to my supervisor at the end of each month, wait for his approval, then wait for the finance dept's approval, then wait another 15 days for the deposit. I was a big fan of Expensify because they still made my life easier. But to me, Expensify improves on a pretty awesome dredful process.

Abacus introduces a whole new expense/reimbursement paradigm that focuses on "now". As a user of Abacus, I know if I put in my expense as it happens, I'll get reimbursed right away. This really motivates me to do my expenses now rather than put it off until the end of the month (which also means I'm less likely to lose a receipt).

[ctide]

Have you ever used Expensify? They don't live up to their slogan.