One of the most frequent and long standing requests has been to add a command to Xpenser for retrieving the balance of your reports. Well, Brandon Krauska’s email was the one that put it over the edge – instead of adding another vote to the prioritization queue, we jumped in and implemented it.

It’s simple to use: just send the keyword “balance” or “bal” to Xpenser using email, IM, SMS, etc, and you’ll see a response with your latest balance. You can also combine this with your report keywords to get the balance for a specific report. For example, if you create a report called “Personal Expenses, July 2010″ and assign the keyword “personal” to it, then the command:

balance personal

would return the balance of that particular report.

Give it a try, let us know what you think, and keep the feedback coming: feedback@xpenser.com . You never know, your email might be the one that makes a feature happen!

Photo by Foxtongue.

Quick note: we’ve launched an improvement to the PDF output of expense reports – the sizing should now be more reasonable and consistent (no more giant headers), the header contains a little more information, and overall it’s slightly cleaner.

Take a look and let us know what you think, and thanks everyone who provided feedback on the existing report format.

As always, please keep the feedback coming ( feedback@xpenser.com ). You never know, your input might me the one that tips things over in favor of implementing/improving what you’re looking for.

AndBot is a great new Android application directory with lots of news and reviews and a very good search feature. This morning they have a wonderful review of the Xpenser Android application with lots of screenshots and a good overview of how a “satisfied, long time user of Xpenser” has been making use of it. Go give it a look, and thanks AndBot!

A little while ago we released the Xpenser API and Platform, opening the door for third parties to build new and interesting applications on top of Xpenser, provide new applications and interfaces, and integrate Xpenser into their own products. The Xpenser Android application is one of the applications been built using these APIs by REI Computer Consulting.

An Android app for Xpenser has been one of your top requests for some time, and now thanks to the folks at REI Computer Consulting, it is available!

The Android application is quite capable – it not only allows you to record new expenses, but also lets you view your previous expenses and reports, and provides both a quick add and a detailed add capability. We’ve been using it for a few weeks now and have been quite impressed.

So give it a try and let us know what you think by emailing android@xpenser.com . And here’s the QR code for easy download:

We love our users, for they inventive and resourceful. Here’s a nice invention from Ryan Straight of Teach Video Games that allows you record your expenses by pressing just a few keys on windows (and possibly under linux as well). It was inspired by the LifeHacker post on adding items to Remember The Milk (another excellent app that you should look at, by the way).

Here’s how to set it up:

• Make sure you have Launchy installed.
• Download the script from here. Copy it to your Launchy plugins folder, typically “C:\Program Files\Launchy\plugins“
• Open it in your favorite text editor and update the “GMAIL USERNAME” and “GMAIL PASSWORD” fields to your gmail username and password.

• Setup the Launchy Xpenser command by hitting Alt+Space, and click the gear icon at the top right of the popup.
• Click on Plugins tab, then click on “Runner” in the list of items on the left.
• Hit the Plus icon near the bottom of the screen and add the following:
  • name: xpn
  • program: C:\Program Files\Launchy\plugins\xpn.vbs
  • arguments: “$$” (include the quotes)

You should now be ready to go. To use it:

• Hot Alt+Space to get launchy to pop up.
• Type in “xpn”, then hit tag. You should see a right arrow/triangle pop up after the “xpn”. Now type in your expense as usual – for example, “lunch 45.11 with Joe”. Hit enter.

And that’s it! Your expense will be sent over to Xpenser and recorded without breaking your workflow or even requiring you to open up your browser.

Thanks Ryan and LifeHacker!

As always, please let us know of any feedback, suggestions, neat tricks, or inventions at feedback@xpenser.com .

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Zia Consulting, we have our first Xpenser iPhone application, called Fresh Xpense.

Fresh Xpense has been built using our brand spanking new Xpenser Platform APIs, also available now. More apps for more platforms are coming soon, and feel free to jump in and build you own.

Fresh Xpense is wonderfully easy to use and supports offline mode – you can enter expenses even when you’re not connected to the web and they will be synchronized the next time you get online.

Give it a try, and don’t forget to rate it. And as always, feedback is very much appreciated and welcome: iphone@xpenser.com .

Some of you may be familiar with YubNub, which bills itself as a “social command line for the web”. The idea is to provide a simple command line like interface to allow you to performs all kinds of interesting actions by simply typing them in. We, being geeks, are quite familiar with it, so we were thrilled to find out Nathan Rein (@nbr) has created an Xpenser command for Yubnub:

http://yubnub.org/kernel/man?args=xpns

Thanks Nathan, yet another beautifully simple way to interact with Xpenser!

With the receipt storing feature becoming very popular (upload your receipts via the website or email/forward them to r@xpenser.com), we had many requests for improved printing capabilities – a comprehensive report, including all associated receipts.

We spent some time with your receipt submissions, going through the various wonderful formats they’re submitted in, did some conversion magic, and hopefully ended up with something you’ll enjoy.

Look for the Print button on the Xpenser Expenses page:

Click it and you’ll see a preview of your report:

This report includes not only your expenses, but also all associated receipts, numbered for easy cross reference.

Hit the PDF button to download a copy of this report as PDF, and the Excel button to download the report as Excel:

The new Excel export does away with the issues related to international characters; they should now work well.

Please give it a spin and let us know what you think. We love feedback, we read all your emails, and we generally respond quickly, so don’t be shy: leave a comment here or send email to feedback@xpenser.com .

Well, it’s about time.

As those of you who have been using them for a while know, Xpenser has had a nice set of APIs for some time. They’ve been getting more and more use, and we finally managed to stop procrastinating, documented them, and have opened them up for general use. Go forth and integrate, create new interfaces, have fun. [Updated link to point to new developer wiki]

One of the major motivators was our integration with Outright, a fantastic online bookkeeping system. Outright impressed us from day one with their passion for simple, understandable interfaces – create an account with them and you’ll be shocked at how quickly you’re looking at a profit and loss statement. Having used a few other accounting packages who shall remain nameless, I can tell you this is really good stuff.

We also had a chance to spend time with them at TechCrunch50 and Finovate conferences, and I can tell you they are good people. Go open an Outright account if you don’t already have one and see for yourself.

With today’s integration, Outright allows you to automatically pull in your Xpenser expenses into their system,  making it even easier to keep your accounting straight. Look for the “Mobile Expenses” button on the Account Import page. Follow the simple setup steps and you’ll be enjoying synchronized expenses in no time.

…

Which brings us back to the APIs – we implemented OAuth to allow easy integration with Outright, and added the ability to request expenses by creation and modification date. These are particularly nice in scenarios where you want to implement synchronization, allowing you to only deal with items that have changed since you last synchronized.

Now that APIs are documented and available, there is no excuse: integrate away. There’ve been several requests for an Adobe Air Xpenser client, which I personally would love to see. We also had several requests from folks who wanted to integrate the time tracking interface into their apps – now you can.

And for the non-technically inclined: leave a comment or let us know at feedback@xpenser.com what applications and integrations you’d most like to see, and we’ll get the word out.

We are out and about these days: just got back from San Francisco for TechCrunch 50, going to Demo next week (Sept 21st-23rd, Mon-Wed) in San Diego, and heading to Finovate in NYC on September 29th and probably the 30th. Drop us a line if you want to stop by and say hello: feedback@xpenser.com .

We’re also overdue for trips to Chicago and LA, give us a good reason and we’ll get our act together and hit the road