Business Travel Tool: Get Uber to Show Up Automatically, and Bill it To Your Company

It isn’t just United and Hyatt that are integrating with on-demand car service Uber (and on-demand condom service too, cough).

As Keri noted, Expensify – the business expense reporting app – is integrating with Uber, too.

When you leave the San Francisco airport there’s a big billboard for Expensify that reads “Expense Reports That Don’t Suck.”

I’ve used Expensify for work for the past two years. I take pictures of my receipts, code my expense reports, and submit them from my phone (or laptop). Which reminds me I have one approaching the cut-off date if I want to get reimbursed.. (Be right back!)

Ok, now that I’ve submitted my expense report. Approvals are handled electronically, the system lets accounting batch import all of the expense requests. And Expensify even handles ACH electronic transfers for reimbursements so I don’t have to deal with deposting paper checks.

They’re great for mileage tracking, too. You can enter starting and ending address and it’ll autopopulate mileage and backup from Google Maps, or use Google Maps and GPS to track your actual route.

You also can just forward your e-mail receipts to them, and they’ll add the receipts so you can attach them to expense reports.

And since they have your airline receipts, hotels, etc. they read the info and as a result build-in capabilities similar to TripIt.

Enter their Uber integration. “Expensify has teamed up with Uber to trade your boarding pass for hotel key with a single tap.”

Expensify already provides live flight updates for any reservation forwarded to receipts@expensify.com, and creates your expense report along the way. We call this feature “Trips”, and we’re taking it one step further: starting today the Expensify app will detect when you land and have an Uber driver waiting outside baggage claim to escort you straight to your hotel — all prearranged from your itinerary without you even needing to look up the address. We call it “SmartRides”; the VIP travel experience for everyone, brought to you by Uber and Expensify.

…Next up is an expansion of SmartRides to take you to the airport at the start of the trip, and back home after. After that, we’re launching our integration with Uber for Business, which allows companies to centrally pay for their employees’ Uber trips and automatically sync up the receipts.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Concur does this as well – I think they started in July.

    /vent on
    I don’t have a choice and must use Concur – and I can’t pass up an opportunity to say that Concur is the worst, slowest, biggest PITA expense reporting tool on the planet, and now we have to use the “travel” functionality as well.
    /vent off

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