Q: Is the Expensify that I use today going away?
No. That's why we're launching Expensify.cash as a totally separate site and app. Expensify.com will remain entirely as it is today for the foreseeable future.
Q: Do I need to create a new Expensify.cash account?
No. Your existing Expensify.com account works with Expensify.cash -- they use the same back end database, and the same actual account behind the scenes. Expensify.cash is just a rewrite of the "front-end" -- the part that runs on your laptop or phone.
Q: Should I use Expensify.com or Expensify.cash?
Unless you are a developer looking to contribute to a new open source project, and to help build the next generation of Expensify, you should keep using Expensify.com.
Q. When will non-developers be able to use Expensify.cash?
Only if a developer invites them. So find a software developer buddy of yours and ask them to sign up. In the meantime, sign in to join the waitlist, and you'll be first in line when it's ready for you.
Q: Why would I use this over email?
With apologies to Mark Twain: the death of email has been greatly exaggerated. Odds are you are reading this as an email right now. Email is here to stay, and Expensify.cash is designed to complement email, not compete with it. Every Expensify.cash conversation generates an email summary for you -- and your email response will be sent out via mobile push or SMS text message based on whomever you are talking with. But at some point, when the conversation gets serious enough that it goes "realtime," using realtime chat is usually more convenient than a zillion tiny emails.
Q: Why would I use this over Slack?
For the same reason a Google Workspace customer might pick Google Meet over Zoom -- it does the same thing, except without costing any extra, and in a way that will be more optimized for complex financial conversations. Furthermore, the vast majority of our customers don't use Slack, so most customers aren't even asking this question.
Q: Why would I use this over WhatsApp or SMS?
Those tools are great for one-to-one conversations, as well as a small number of relatively low-volume, small group conversations. But when you really sit down to GSD with a group of people, the volume of chats and overall complexity of the conversation gets hard to manage with those simple tools. Slack solves that with "channels" and "threads" and "reactions" and a number of other features -- all of which are coming to Expensify.cash, along with our own deeply embedded financial tools to manage group expenses.
Q: Why not just build this into Expensify.com?
In a way, we have: our new Concierge chat system was an early form of this. And our Concierge chat system was really just an upgrade to our report commenting system. Accordingly, this "new" chat platform is actually already used by millions of people to talk with Concierge, or to "chat" with other users via report comments. However, to get the full benefit of React Native and Onyx, it requires a much more serious rewrite than can be done incrementally. Over time we will gradually expand Expensify.cash with nearly all of Expensify.com's features, and users will naturally migrate from one to another. But we are committed to minimizing disruption to our existing customers, so we opted to build it as a separate app for now.
Q: Does Expensify.cash cost anything?
Nope! For now it's just a free chat tool. Enjoy! However, the long-term goal is to create company-managed "rooms" that would create billable activity just like any other. You can think of Expensify as the "Amazon Prime for back office services": a one stop shop for everything you need to run your business, all with a single inclusive price. Even then it wouldn't cost anything extra, it would just be one more service provided by the Expensify platform.
Q: Why open source Expensify.cash; why not just hire more engineers?
To be clear, we are always hiring engineers -- please send your unemployed friends to we.are.expensify.com. But the key to Expensify's ability to remain so nimble at scale is keeping an extremely small core team of generalists who understand the "big picture" -- and then engaging a large ring of highly talented specialist contractors from around the world to execute that vision. This is how we offer award winning 24/7 realtime chat support with only a couple dozen Concierge employees, as well as immediate free phone onboarding for every user (just click the "call" button on any Inbox task). We believe there is an opportunity to execute that same playbook for our engineering team, pairing our core group of engineering generalists, with a global network of open source engineering specialists. We've already been doing this at a smaller scale with our close partnership with SQLite, and our open-source BedrockDB, so this is just doubling down on what has already been working exceptionally well.
Sent by: Expensify, Inc. - 548 Market St #61434 - San Francisco, CA 94103
PS: To address some likely questions:
Q: Is the Expensify that I use today going away? No. That's why we're launching Expensify.cash as a totally separate site and app. Expensify.com will remain entirely as it is today for the foreseeable future.
Q: Do I need to create a new Expensify.cash account? No. Your existing Expensify.com account works with Expensify.cash -- they use the same back end database, and the same actual account behind the scenes. Expensify.cash is just a rewrite of the "front-end" -- the part that runs on your laptop or phone.
Q: Should I use Expensify.com or Expensify.cash? Unless you are a developer looking to contribute to a new open source project, and to help build the next generation of Expensify, you should keep using Expensify.com.
Q. When will non-developers be able to use Expensify.cash? Only if a developer invites them. So find a software developer buddy of yours and ask them to sign up. In the meantime, sign in to join the waitlist, and you'll be first in line when it's ready for you.
Q: Why would I use this over email? With apologies to Mark Twain: the death of email has been greatly exaggerated. Odds are you are reading this as an email right now. Email is here to stay, and Expensify.cash is designed to complement email, not compete with it. Every Expensify.cash conversation generates an email summary for you -- and your email response will be sent out via mobile push or SMS text message based on whomever you are talking with. But at some point, when the conversation gets serious enough that it goes "realtime," using realtime chat is usually more convenient than a zillion tiny emails.
Q: Why would I use this over Slack? For the same reason a Google Workspace customer might pick Google Meet over Zoom -- it does the same thing, except without costing any extra, and in a way that will be more optimized for complex financial conversations. Furthermore, the vast majority of our customers don't use Slack, so most customers aren't even asking this question.
Q: Why would I use this over WhatsApp or SMS? Those tools are great for one-to-one conversations, as well as a small number of relatively low-volume, small group conversations. But when you really sit down to GSD with a group of people, the volume of chats and overall complexity of the conversation gets hard to manage with those simple tools. Slack solves that with "channels" and "threads" and "reactions" and a number of other features -- all of which are coming to Expensify.cash, along with our own deeply embedded financial tools to manage group expenses.
Q: Why not just build this into Expensify.com? In a way, we have: our new Concierge chat system was an early form of this. And our Concierge chat system was really just an upgrade to our report commenting system. Accordingly, this "new" chat platform is actually already used by millions of people to talk with Concierge, or to "chat" with other users via report comments. However, to get the full benefit of React Native and Onyx, it requires a much more serious rewrite than can be done incrementally. Over time we will gradually expand Expensify.cash with nearly all of Expensify.com's features, and users will naturally migrate from one to another. But we are committed to minimizing disruption to our existing customers, so we opted to build it as a separate app for now.
Q: Does Expensify.cash cost anything? Nope! For now it's just a free chat tool. Enjoy! However, the long-term goal is to create company-managed "rooms" that would create billable activity just like any other. You can think of Expensify as the "Amazon Prime for back office services": a one stop shop for everything you need to run your business, all with a single inclusive price. Even then it wouldn't cost anything extra, it would just be one more service provided by the Expensify platform.
Q: Why open source Expensify.cash; why not just hire more engineers? To be clear, we are always hiring engineers -- please send your unemployed friends to we.are.expensify.com. But the key to Expensify's ability to remain so nimble at scale is keeping an extremely small core team of generalists who understand the "big picture" -- and then engaging a large ring of highly talented specialist contractors from around the world to execute that vision. This is how we offer award winning 24/7 realtime chat support with only a couple dozen Concierge employees, as well as immediate free phone onboarding for every user (just click the "call" button on any Inbox task). We believe there is an opportunity to execute that same playbook for our engineering team, pairing our core group of engineering generalists, with a global network of open source engineering specialists. We've already been doing this at a smaller scale with our close partnership with SQLite, and our open-source BedrockDB, so this is just doubling down on what has already been working exceptionally well.
Sent by: Expensify, Inc. - 548 Market St #61434 - San Francisco, CA 94103