Office Productivity
Expense Tracking for Mobile Professionals
Published January 9th, 2009 by Jennifer LeClaire
With the Consumer Electronics Show underway in Las Vegas this week, I had to take the opportunity to mention technologies for mobile professionals.
While there are no doubt plenty of meeting rooms being rented in Vegas, there are also plenty of new mobile technologies being unveiled, from laptops to netbooks to smartphones and beyond.
One technology I thought was pretty cool is ProOnGo Expense. It’s a mobile phone expense management tool that takes the hassle out of keeping track of receipts. This is cool stuff.
ProOnGo Expense taps into the power of smartphone cameras. Here’s how it works: You capture receipt images and tag them with expense details. The goal is to eliminate hours of wasted time spent finding, filing, and organizing paper receipts.
Custom Reports on the Fly
With tax time just around the corner, this is a welcomed technology. But it gets better.
ProOnGo Expense also lets you create customizable expense reports as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Adobe PDF files ready to view, print, e-mail, or store. You can even remove personal information from your receipts, using a scratch-off technology included in the product.
Phillip Leslie, ProOnGo Founder and CEO, got it right when he said: “For years, mobile professionals have lost productivity because of the burden of keeping their paper receipts organized. The launch of ProOnGo Expense offers these professionals a more efficient way by using the one tool that every mobile professional keeps at hand — their smartphone.”
What?! No Blackberry Support?
It works for me. ProOnGo launched in 2008 to help mobile professionals manage and submit their business expenses more efficiently. The company designs software that lets mobile professionals maximize the value of their smartphone.
Here’s the rub: It may not be compatible with your phone. If you have an iPhone, you are out of luck. If you have a Blackberry, you are out of luck. That cuts out a lot of the mobile professionals I know. If you want to use this nifty software you have to own an HTC Diamond, HTC Touch Pro, HP iPaq 910c, HTC Advantage or AT&T Tilt.
The company is also planning support for some Samsung models and the Palm Treo Pro, as well as the Verizon Wireless XV6900. But the two major business phones are still missing from the list. That’s disappointing.
Still, if you have one of these models, you can pick up this program for a bargain: it’s only $19.99 and can save you a lot of hassle with tracking your expenses from the road.
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About the Author
Tim K January 10th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I’ve never used them, but http://xpenser.com looks like a cool alternative if your device isn’t supported by ProOnGo. You send your expense info to them and access it later through their site. Their front page says they can handle expenses submitted through text message, IM, email, iPhone, and voice.
I like the idea of utilizing your phone’s camera, though, if the image quality is good enough. Definitely faster than data entry.
Rob Zeus January 12th, 2009 at 4:19 am
This is really cool technology. I’m not sure how well it would actually work for the mobile professional. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost receipts on the road, or they end up losing the ink when they get crumpled or exposed to the sun.
The point is: Whether you work in a virtual office, an executive office suite or just at home in a spare bedroom, technology is paving the way for greater efficiency.
Marcus Hester January 12th, 2009 at 4:37 am
I got excited when I saw the headline about such a nifty technology for mobile professionals. But I was disappointed by the relative few handsets it’s available for. Seems like a major misstep. If you are targeting mobile professionals, it seems to me that you’d target the handsets they use most. The ones listed aren’t them. With so much emphasis on HTC, you have to wonder if HTC has a piece of this somehow.
Anthony File May 19th, 2009 at 11:31 am
ProOnGo is free right now. Additionally, I was chatting to a guy through twitter who had ProOnGo for his Blackberry storm. He said it integrated with with Quickbooks as well.
I checked the website and couldnt find the blackberry download, so I checked back with the guy and he said all you had to do was email them. I am waiting ProOnGo’s reply right now.
Phillip Leslie, ProOnGo June 2nd, 2009 at 4:26 pm
There were a lot of questions on this post about why we don’t support Blackberry. Today I’ve got an answer for you — we just announced Blackberry Storm support, available at http://www.ProOnGo.com. Give it a look (free trial) and thanks for your feedback!