Did you ever dream of having a virtual assistant? Go ahead, you can admit it. We won't tell. Thanks to Concierge, that might now be possible.
Concierge is an artificially intelligent virtual assistant that's built right into Expensify. That means Concierge knows everything Expensify knows, which, given the billions of dollars in expenses we process, is a big deal.
Right now, Concierge is eager to use that knowledge to make your life easy.
Now, if you're thinking you may already have spoken to Concierge, you're not crazy. Her job at Expensify was something every one of our employees does every day: customer support. For the past few months, Concierge has learned how to handle an increasing array of common support issues – especially around the complex area of bank import.
Similarly, Concierge is the brains behind our "Price to Beat" feature, as she not only knows every expense ever reported by anybody, she also knows the realtime pricing of every flight, hotel, and car in the world.
That means Concierge will discreetly notify you if you're getting the best value for your travel dollar – something that matters even more if your company has enabled "Expensify Rewards," as you keep 50 cents of every dollar you save your company.
Concierge also welcomes new users to help them get their accounts set up, gives regular updates on tasks outstanding to be done, and so on. Over time, Concierge will get more and more intelligent. You'll find her reaching out at various times to offer a helping hand, or roll out the red carpet everywhere you go.
But, in particular, we wanted to highlight the most recent trick up Concierge's virtual sleeve: Scheduled Submit.
You can enable this on the website in your personal preferences. It works like this:
- You SmartScan your receipt, as normal, the moment you get it.
- Concierge will read and categorize your receipt, again, as normal.
- But now, Concierge will add it to your expense report for you, and even submit it to your manager, on whatever schedule you want.
By default, Concierge will submit your receipts the night you scan them. (If that's too fast, you can also pick weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.) When combined with our supersonic next day reimbursement, it means you can have cash money in your bank account tomorrow, for every purchase you expense today – just take your phone out of your pocket, SmartScan the receipt, and put your phone away. Concierge will do all the rest.
We know what you're thinking – the world is a complex place, and not everything always goes according to plan.
Don't worry, Concierge is smart enough to know when a receipt is out of company policy, and will only submit receipts that she knows are ready to go. We're talking about the copious Uber and Starbucks receipts, not the thousand-dollar multi-leg international flight.
Similarly, Concierge works not only for you, but also your company. If your company wants Concierge to do something different (submit on a particular frequency or hold certain receipts for manual review), she'll be a team player and make it happen.
But it's not worth anybody's time to manually transcribe, submit, review and approve a ton of tiny receipts, and Concierge is there to take all that drudgery off your team's plate.
David Barrett is the founder and CEO of Expensify.