Seriously, Stop Trippin'

TripIt and Expens'd leave no room for excuses.

Anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to filing travel expenses, I am the worst. Many an editorial assistant and business manager have come thisclose to strangling me. Lost receipts, late filings, car service receipts with missing info, and miscalculations, yep I’m the expense equivalent of “the dog ate my homework.” And working from a home office also means that for me, April 15 comes with very loud threats from my tax preparer. Suffice it to say this year I had to TurboTax it.

But a couple of weeks ago, while shopping for flights for my trip to Hamburg, I stumbled upon TripIt and fell in love. I quickly signed up for the service, which lets me manage my travel, and more importantly, share that info with colleagues, friends, and family. Yep, I’m also that person, the one who periodically disappears only to pop up in some random foreign country. I’ve learned now, to at least call from the airport. But TripIt makes things easier.

Once I made my travel arrangements through Orbitz, I simply sent the info to plans@tripit.com. I could then select which of my “connections” would see the info. With TripIt Pro, I can also choose an “inner circle,” those select folks who get to share my travel calendar, interact with me, and change travel information, etc.

The Pro option is $9.95/month, which is a bit steep for me, given my limited travel schedule. It does, however, make sense for frequent fliers and the jet set. I would be willing to pay a bit less for a similar option, however, maybe even on a per-use basis or something along those lines. TripIt Pro also notifies you when your flight info changes, but in my experience, the airlines, if you sign up for their service (or use Orbitz), actually do a pretty good job on that front.

No More Excuses

But with all this talk about TripIt, I digress. What I really want to talk about is a partner service called Expens’d, which I discovered when I signed up for TripIt. I love Expens’d. I’m using the free service, which makes it easy for me to input my expenses on the daily—from anywhere. Because it connects with TripIt, I don’t get confused, and I’m less likely to lose info, overspend, or file late. Expens’d also generated CSV (comma separated variables) for my trip so I could simply export it to Excel and email reports to the folks who need it. I also created a PDF of my expenses (they do the math) for my personal files.

Users have several pricing options from free (for a single user) to $49 per month for up to 50 users. Beyond the free plan, you get features such as expense approval and up to 10GB of attachment space. I like the ability to add tags, and search expenses by user and dates.

What I would really love, though, is tighter integration with TripIt, which would give me the ability to arrange expenses under a single trip, rather than a date range. For me, however, the beauty of Expens’d is it simplicity and convenience. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Tags: Expens'd, Hamburg, Travel, TripIt

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 3:43 pm and is filed under media // culture, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.