Expensify Review
Expensify is receipt scanning, expense reports, reimbursements, corporate cards and travel booking for small and midsize businesses and their accountants, sold self-serve from $5 per member a month. It is a public company (Nasdaq: EXFY).
Independently scored, one dimension at a time. Every dimension is sourced, and we say whether a claim is published, reported, or estimated.
Plan prices are published in USD, GBP, EUR, AUD and NZD, along with the card discount formula, travel trip fees and bill pay fees (help center, 26 September 2026). Deductions: the card discount text and table differ on whether pay-per-use qualifies, Annual seat counts cannot drop mid-term, and the travel terms leave the trip fee to the point of sale.
Signup and configuration are self-serve, guided by a published 14-step playbook, with setup specialists for onboarding (help and support pages, 26 September 2026). QuickBooks Online and Xero connect from the workspace; NetSuite needs the Control plan, a bundle install and form changes. ExpensifyApproved! firms get priority onboarding for clients.
A first-party MCP at expensify.com/mcp (launched 8 June 2026) is turnkey: any member connects via OAuth 2.1 with no admin seat, but it exposes one read-only Search tool. In-app, Concierge can create, submit and approve when permitted, and AI Agents that approve, reject and hold reports are in open beta (help center, 26 September 2026). The Integration Server API covers exports, expense and report creation and policy updates, rate-limited to 5 requests per 10 seconds.
Direct sync covers QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Desktop, Certinia, Rillet and DualEntry; NetSuite imports departments, classes, locations and custom segments and offers an optional daily auto-sync (help center, 26 September 2026). Business Central, SAP, Oracle, Dynamics and MYOB get pre-built flat-file export templates only. ERP connectors need the Control plan.
Control workspaces get multi-level approvals, custom expense rules, SAML SSO and an always-on Receipt Audit; duplicate detection runs on Collect and Control (plan comparison and help articles, read 26 September 2026). SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 reports are available on request from trust.expensify.com. Collect lacks multi-level approvals and custom rules, and there is no PO matching, which matters little for T&E.
ACH reimbursement is typically 4 to 5 business days, with one-day Rapid Reimbursement only for payments under $100; global reimbursement usually takes 2 to 3 business days (help center, 26 September 2026). The Expensify Card has no fees and pays 1 percent cash back, 2 percent above $250,000 a month, on US USD spend only. Bill pay is free by ACH or 2.9 percent by card, with no check or wire option in the bill pay article.
Concierge AI answers 24/7 by chat and email and escalates to humans; setup specialists and account managers exist, and phone calls are scheduled through Concierge for customers working with one (support page and Concierge article, 26 September 2026). Trustpilot shows 4.7 of 5 from 1,231 reviews with 10 percent one-star (reported). There is no published response-time SLA or paid support tier.
Global reimbursement reaches 190+ countries from business accounts in USD, CAD, GBP, EUR, AUD or SGD, and the card is issued in 14 countries (help and card pages, 26 September 2026). NetSuite maps one subsidiary to one workspace, and Classic is closed to new signups, so large multi-entity rollouts land on a product still absorbing its own migration. In May 2025 the CEO called SMBs the heart of the company.
Priced in the open and quick to start; ERP reach and the MCP stop short of a mid-market close.
Written by the Audit Friendly research team. No vendor edits, no sponsored placement.
You are buying the expense app a lot of accountants already know. Employees snap receipts, Concierge AI codes them, approvers clear reports in a chat thread, and reports sync to QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage Intacct. Every price is on the help site: Collect is $5 per member a month with no commitment, and Control is $18 per member on an annual plan or $36 pay-per-use. The Expensify Card, travel booking at $15 a trip and global reimbursement into 190+ countries sit in the same app.
The catch is depth and direction. Direct accounting sync covers the big four plus QuickBooks Desktop, Certinia and newer ledgers such as Rillet and DualEntry; Business Central, SAP, Oracle and Dynamics get a flat-file export. Standard ACH reimbursement takes 4 to 5 business days, and next-day only applies to payments under $100. The company is mid-migration from Expensify Classic to New Expensify, revenue fell 5 percent year over year in Q2 2026, and the stock drew a Nasdaq bid-price notice in April 2026 before recovering in May. The MCP is read-only, so an outside agent can analyze spend but not act on it.
Before signing, get in writing: the committed seat count and whether it auto-renews, since an Annual Control subscription cannot shrink mid-term and overage members bill at the $36 rate; exactly how the Expensify Card discount is calculated for your spend mix and currency; the export type and sync schedule for your ERP; and the reimbursement timing for your countries.
- A US small business on QuickBooks Online or Xero that wants receipt scanning, approvals and ACH reimbursement set up without a sales call.
- An accounting firm or bookkeeper running expenses for many small clients, using ExpensifyApproved! partner pricing and the card revenue share.
- A team that books its own travel and wants flights, hotels and cars to land in the same expense report, at $15 a self-booked trip.
- A company on Business Central, SAP, Oracle or Dynamics that needs two-way sync; Expensify offers those only as flat-file exports.
- A finance team that wants an AI agent to approve, reimburse or edit through MCP today; the Expensify MCP is read-only.
- A buyer who needs card cash back outside the US or on non-USD spend; the rebate applies to USD purchases on US cards only.
The jobs a finance team actually hires Expensify for
Jobs, mapped to how finance teams actually buy.
Reimburse a small team without an annual contract
Collect bills every workspace member at $5 a month with no commitment and includes receipt scanning, simple approvals, QuickBooks Online and Xero sync and ACH reimbursement. A 20-person team pays $100 a month (Audit Friendly estimate). Multi-level approvals and custom rules need Control.
Cut the Control bill by moving spend to the Expensify Card
The discount grows with the share of approved USD expenses on the Expensify Card, up to 50 percent. Cash back of 1 percent, or 2 percent above $250,000 a month, can be applied to the subscription. Both benefits apply as follows: cash back applies to USD purchases on US cards only, and the discount is measured on approved USD expenses.
Book travel and expense it in one place
Expensify Travel, built on Spotnana, books flights, hotels, cars and rail inside the app, applies travel policy and auto-creates a trip report. Consolidated billing puts all bookings on one monthly invoice. Agent help costs $25 per trip.
Run expenses for many clients as an accounting firm
ExpensifyApproved! partners complete a free course, then get a partner manager, priority client onboarding and client pricing 50 percent below direct rates. The firm can keep the revenue share or pass it to clients as cash back.
Reimburse staff in other countries
The paying company needs a business account in the US, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia or Singapore; most payments land in 2 to 3 business days. FX and receiving-bank fees can reduce the amount received, and country verification can take weeks.
Ask Claude about spend without an export
Any member can add https://www.expensify.com/mcp as a custom connector and ask for missing receipts, pending approvals or spend by merchant. Answers reflect only the data that member can already see. Nothing can be approved or changed this way.
Watch the same task in each tool
Forget the 40-row feature grid. Pick a finance workflow and see how this tool and its closest peers actually do it, with our verdict on who wins for whom.
Compare on what matters
What it actually costs
Here's what it really costs: published rates where a vendor lists them, aggregated quote data where they don't, plus a path to your own number.
For an individual employee whose company has not adopted Expensify: code expenses and submit to an approver. No approvals, payments, company cards or accounting integrations.
Pay-per-use only. Unlimited SmartScans, simple approvals, Expensify Cards, bill pay and invoicing, card feeds, ACH reimbursement (next business day only for payments under $100, otherwise typically 4 to 5 business days) and global reimbursement, QuickBooks Online and Xero sync (help center, read 26 September 2026).
12-month seat commitment billed monthly. Adds multi-level approvals, custom rules, NetSuite and Sage Intacct, HR integrations, multiple card feeds and SAML SSO.
Same Control features with no commitment; billed only for members with billable activity that month.
Only for organizations whose first workspace predates 1 April 2025; bills active members, with $10 for each active member above the Annual commitment.
Per trip, not per booking. Agent-assisted trips cost $25 once, with unlimited agent help on that trip; event bookings are $15 per traveler.
Paying a vendor with a credit or debit card costs 2.9 percent; ACH bill pay and marking as paid outside Expensify are free.
The discount rises with the share of a workspace's approved USD expenses put on the Expensify Card in the billing month, to a maximum of 50 percent: Annual Control falls from $18 to $9 per committed member and from $36 to $18 per member above the commitment. The help text limits the discount to Annual subscriptions, but its pricing table shows pay-per-use Control as low as $18 (help center, read 26 September 2026).
No card fees, no foreign transaction fees, no interest; 1 percent cash back, 2 percent above $250,000 a month, on USD purchases on US cards.
Partner firms' clients pay only for active members, with no annual commitment; the firm earns a 0.5 percent revenue share on clients' US card spend.
What it actually takes to go live
The pricing help article says you can increase subscription size at any time but cannot decrease it until renewal, and each active member above the size is billed at the pay-per-use rate (read 26 September 2026). The billing terms page lists auto-renew and auto-increase settings. Size the commitment to your low season, check whether auto-increase is on, and diary the renewal date.
The help center says Control workspaces on Annual subscriptions earn up to 50 percent off in proportion to approved USD spend on the card, but its own table shows pay-per-use Control as low as $18 with the card. The card page says to put at least half of spend on the card for 50 percent off. Cash back and the discount apply to USD purchases on US cards only (read 26 September 2026). Get the formula for your spend mix in writing.
The reimbursement help article limits one-business-day Rapid Reimbursement to payments under $100 when total withdrawals are under $10,000 in the past 24 hours; everything else is standard ACH at 4 to 5 business days (read 26 September 2026). The homepage says as little as one business day. Set employee expectations on the slower figure.
Expensify's indirect integration article lists pre-configured flat-file exports for Sage, Microsoft Dynamics, MYOB, Oracle and SAP (read 26 September 2026). Direct sync covers QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Desktop, Certinia, Rillet and DualEntry. NetSuite and Sage Intacct require the Control plan, and each NetSuite subsidiary needs its own workspace.
The Q2 2026 shareholder letter says new customers cannot sign up for Expensify Classic and that the plan is to migrate the last Classic customers onto New Expensify (6 August 2026). Help articles are split between Classic and New paths, and some settings moved, for example company cards now live inside a workspace. Confirm which product your workspace runs on and train admins on New Expensify.
Q2 2026 revenue was $33.9 million, down 5 percent, and paid members fell 2 percent to 640,000 (release, 6 August 2026). An 8-K shows a Nasdaq minimum bid price deficiency notice on 17 April 2026; a later 8-K says compliance was regained on 28 May 2026. Free cash flow is positive, so this is a watch item for a multi-year commitment rather than a stop sign.
Scored on what an outside agent can actually reach: the documented API, how it authenticates, and whether the vendor ships an MCP server.
In the app, Concierge AI codes and matches receipts, answers questions about spend and can create, edit, submit and approve expenses and reports when the user has permission (help center, read 26 September 2026). Since the 4 November 2025 relaunch Expensify says Concierge auto-corrects incomplete entries and flags receipts that may be AI-generated; treat that as vendor-claimed.
AI Agents are in open beta. Each agent gets its own Expensify account and is added as a full-access Copilot on its creator's account; agents can submit, approve, reject, hold and reroute reports, and take over as approver with Workspace Admin rights. That delegation deserves a controls review before it touches approvals.
The external surface is a first-party MCP at https://www.expensify.com/mcp, launched 8 June 2026. Exists: yes. Scope: one read-only Search tool across expenses, reports, reimbursements, invoices, merchants, categories, receipts, approvals, trips, chats and tasks; it cannot approve, edit, reimburse or change workspace settings. Turnkey: any member with a validated account connects through OAuth 2.1 with PKCE, with no admin seat or contract, and Claude organization owners can deploy it org-wide as a custom connector.
It was not listed in the official MCP registry on 26 September 2026, and the Expensify/expensify-plugin GitHub repo holds only a README. Community servers that add write actions exist but are third-party. For writes, the Integration Server API can create expenses and reports, update policies and mark reports reimbursed, at 5 requests per 10 seconds; OAuth for partner apps is in private beta.
Submit and approve an expense report
Who wins for whom: A team that wants duplicate detection from $5 per member and multi-level approvals on Control: Expensify. A company that wants an agent to review expenses against its written policy: Ramp. A global employer that wants pre-approvals, allocations and delegation with receipt fraud scoring: Emburse.
Expensify
Multi-level approvals on Control. Control workspaces get multi-level approvals, custom expense rules, SAML SSO and an always-on Receipt Audit, duplicate detection runs on Collect and Control, and SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 reports are available on request.
Where it loses: Collect, the $5 per member plan, lacks multi-level approvals and custom rules, so policy depth needs Control at $18 per member a month on an annual commitment.
- Compliance depth: 72/100
- Time to live: Days to 2 weeks (estimate)
Source: AF score rationale: Compliance depth 72; Expensify pricing tiers and use cases.
Watch: New Expensify for admins 2:45 · Official demo · Expensify on YouTube (official)
Ramp
Agent review against written policy. Ramp's policy agent reviews expenses against the written policy, which Ramp claims automates 85 percent of reviews, while Plus adds audit log, custom roles and auto-locking cards when receipts are late.
Where it loses: Ramp's 85 percent automation figure and 15 times catch rate are vendor claims, and audit log and custom roles need Plus, whose platform fee Ramp does not publish.
- Compliance depth: 84/100
- Time to live: 30 days per Ramp (unverified)
Source: AF score rationale: Compliance depth 84; Ramp use cases and watch-outs.
Watch: Receipt capture, even easier 1:12 · Official short · Ramp on YouTube (official)
Emburse
Rules engine plus receipt checks. Emburse Enterprise runs a configurable business rules engine with pre-approvals, allocations and delegation, and the Assurance add-on flags missing itemization before submission, then scores duplicates, altered or AI-generated receipts afterward.
Where it loses: Assurance is a paid add-on with no published price, the AI expense agent announced 13 May 2026 had no availability notice by 26 September, and Emburse is not FedRAMP certified.
- Compliance depth: 84/100
- Time to live: 4 weeks to 6 months (vendor)
Source: AF score rationale: Compliance depth 84; Emburse use cases, pricing tiers and watch-outs.
Watch: Emburse Expense Report - Conference/Meeting 9:52 · Independent walkthrough · DMACC Business Office on YouTube
Reimburse an employee
Who wins for whom: A team paying staff by ACH on a $5 per member plan, with global payouts to 190+ countries: Expensify. A US company that wants free domestic reimbursements and Claude approving in-policy claims: Ramp. A multinational reimbursing in 160+ home currencies from the approval workflow: Emburse.
Expensify
ACH reimbursement, 190+ countries. Collect at $5 per member a month includes ACH reimbursement, typically 4 to 5 business days or next business day under $100, and global reimbursement reaches 190+ countries, usually in 2 to 3 business days.
Where it loses: One-day Rapid Reimbursement applies only to payments under $100 when withdrawals stay under $10,000 in 24 hours, and FX and receiving-bank fees can reduce global payouts.
- Payments & money movement: 71/100
- Time to live: Days to 2 weeks (estimate)
Source: AF score rationale: Payments & money movement 71; Expensify use cases, pricing tiers and watch-outs.
Watch: New Expensify for admins 2:45 · Official demo · Expensify on YouTube (official)
Ramp
Free domestic reimbursements. Domestic reimbursements are free, Ramp lists reimbursements in 60+ countries and 40 currencies, and Claude can approve in-policy reimbursements through Ramp's hosted MCP server as the signed-in user.
Where it loses: Ramp may add an FX margin to international reimbursements, and non-US groups should confirm local reimbursements per country, since Canada and UK launches came only in July and September 2026.
- Payments & money movement: 88/100
- Time to live: 30 days per Ramp (unverified)
Source: AF score rationale: Payments & money movement 88; Ramp published claims, pricing notes, AI notes and watch-outs.
Watch: Receipt capture, even easier 1:12 · Official short · Ramp on YouTube (official)
Emburse
Reimburse in 160+ home currencies. Emburse Enterprise reimburses in 160+ home currencies, and the Emburse Pay add-on pays employees and vendors from the approval workflow over ACH, virtual card, check or 180+ cross-border corridors through REPAY and Airwallex.
Where it loses: Emburse Pay is an add-on whose fees are not published, some rails are still in phased rollout, and Spend Basic includes only 50 ACH reimbursements a month.
- Payments & money movement: 70/100
- Time to live: 4 weeks to 6 months (vendor)
Source: AF score rationale: Payments & money movement 70; Emburse use cases, pricing tiers and watch-outs.
Watch: Emburse Pay - Vendor Payments in One System 2:06 · Official demo · Emburse on YouTube (official)
Expensify, kept current
Expensify says it is one of the first expense tools available in Claude for Small Business, using the same read-only MCP. The update also adds 21 HR integrations and Intuit Enterprise Suite support through the QuickBooks connection.
Revenue was $33.9 million and paid members 640,000. The CEO said net-new New Expensify revenue grew over 250 percent year over year across more than 10,000 new customers, and AI workflow agents entered beta.
UK businesses and select EU markets including Spain, Ireland, Poland and the Netherlands can issue the Expensify Visa Commercial Card, with VAT tracking and daily or monthly settlement.
A first-party MCP gives AI assistants read-only, natural-language access to expense data over OAuth 2.1; any member with a validated account can set it up.
The Q1 2026 release says Expensify launched integrations with Campfire ERP, Rillet ERP and American Airlines and announced partnerships with Xero, ANZ Bank and Kiwibank.
Concierge works over chat, email and text, auto-corrects incomplete entries and, the vendor says, flags receipts that may be AI-generated, with human support behind it.
Expensify FAQ
On Control with an Annual commitment of 40 members, list price is 40 times $18, or $720 a month and $8,640 a year. With the full Expensify Card discount that falls to $360 a month, about $4,320 a year. On Collect it is 40 times $5, or $200 a month, if simple approvals and QuickBooks Online or Xero are enough (all Audit Friendly estimates from published prices).
Vendr reports a median Expensify contract of $6,600 a year across 113 deals. Add Expensify Travel at $15 per self-booked trip and 2.9 percent on any bills paid by card.
Collect is pay-per-use only, billed monthly with no commitment. Control can be pay-per-use or Annual; Annual is a 12-month commitment billed monthly, the seat count can rise but not fall until renewal, and auto-renew is a setting the Workspace owner controls. One subscription covers every workspace the same owner holds.
Reports export through CSV export templates or the Integration Server Report Exporter and Downloader jobs, which can produce CSV files and PDFs with full-page receipts. Ask for a full export of receipts and audit history before you give notice, and confirm how long data stays available after cancellation.
Most small teams configure it themselves in days, following Expensify's 14-step playbook: workspace, accounting connection, category and tag rules, approvals, bank account, cards and bill pay (Audit Friendly estimate of timing; the playbook gives no durations).
Setup specialists help connect cards, bank accounts and integrations, and account managers handle ongoing questions. NetSuite adds a bundle install and form edits on the NetSuite side, which usually needs a NetSuite admin. Firms in ExpensifyApproved! get priority onboarding for their clients.
Partly. The first-party Expensify MCP at https://www.expensify.com/mcp connects Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor through OAuth with no admin setup. It exposes one read-only Search tool, so an agent can find missing receipts, pending approvals and spend trends but cannot approve, edit, reimburse or change settings.
Write actions live inside Expensify: Concierge can create and submit expenses and approve reports when you have permission, and AI Agents in open beta can approve, reject and hold reports under written rules. Developers can also create expenses and reports or mark reports reimbursed through the Integration Server API.
Expensify alternatives
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