Hi Pierre,

After some discussions with Nek, Antoine and Cornelia, it seems that last expenses re-invoicing batch has created some frustrations for our clients.

Two main reasons for these frustrations have been identified:
Some expenses shouldn't have been invoiced / should have been invoiced at lower costs;
Invoices were sent 2 months after event was done, in some cases.
The biggest consequences following these are: clients thinking our internal communication is poor and we don't look serious. Clients thinking we are trying to get money out of them because if they wouldn't check, they would pay expenses they shouldn't. Clients having closed their account and not willing to pay,

Now, I understand that our contract clearly indicates an expenses invoice will come, and that costs will be charged accordingly to what we spend. But with minor adjustments, we could probably prevent some of these issues, hence getting this money back more efficiently.

Invoice only what should be invoiced
Current situation
I take everything that is on Expensify, and add that on the invoice according to what's in the contract.

Basic alternative
I continue to do so, but before sending each invoice, I ask the account owner to review it.

Advanced alternative
With the growing amount of invoices + all freelancers still sending their report to me, there could be an better way to do this. Expensify process would become:
At end of an event, each event staff submits the report to the Event Lead (the producer);
The Event Lead does a simple quality check, then approve and submit these reports (and his own) to the event Account Owner;
The Account Owner reviews all reports, adjust billable status if needed, then approve and submit to euexpenses;
The Account Owner exports the reports and import to SFDC, then change the Payment Status field to "CBS ready to be approved";
I run through SFDC events that needs to be approved, review the invoice, and either adjust (after discussion with Account Owner) or switch Payment Status to "CBS ready to be invoiced";
Cornelia invoices.
Main issues with advanced alternative: some people already have a problem to properly set the category of an expense, so I am afraid of what will happen when they will have to set an email. An extra validation step in the process. The report doesn't go to the staff direct manager anymore.

Main advantages with advanced alternative: re-invoiced costs are matching what was discussed with client. I can still spot leaks before sending the invoice. It makes producers more aware about the money that is spent on the events they lead (confront them to profitability). Distributing the approval job among managers, instead of me having to do all the contract VS expenses check.

Reducing the invoicing delay
Current situation
We wait until credit cards expenses are automatically synced to SFDC, so that staff don't have to create them manually / we make sure we don't miss money going out of our bank account. With current deadlines, it means it can take from 15 to 45 days before the invoices reaches the client.

Basic alternative
We forget about automated transfer of credit cards expenses to Expensify, and people add these manually based on receipts. Could then be done when coming back from an event, with cash expenses at the same time. Risks of missing credit card expenses for which we don't have the receipt.

Advanced alternative
We have Credit Suisse expenses synced in real-time / we switch credit card provider if technical infeasibility from their end. I know you were looking into this some time ago, and my take is that if we still don't do that, it's because it would require a fair amount of time to action, which I am not trying to impose here.

Then, we would enforce people to report their expenses at the end of each event.

Main issues with advanced alternative: setting it up.

Main advantages with advanced alternative: we can do one round of invoicing per week, and eventually group the expenses with the second half of the contract payment (unsure if this would results in saving time). We can hope to see cash flowing back to us more quickly. No more excuse from client that they closed the account. Solves the problematic we currently have with ~10% of clients that wants expenses right away.

Conclusion
Happy to discuss about these and find the best way to improve our expenses re-invoicing.

Many thanks,
Ivan