A number of interesting apps have spawned out of Microsoft's Garage program since its inception, including a travel companion known as Outings, the AI-powered Video Indexer, and even the tech that went on to power Mixer's HypeZone. The latest project to come out of the experimental division is called Spend and it's focused squarely on addressing a particularly nasty pain point for workers and businesses: expense reports.
Spend was developed by the same team that created MileIQ, an app that assists workers with logging mileage while on the road. Spend takes a similar approach, offering up a method to automatically track expenses without requiring you to hold on to and keep track of a million receipts.
The Spend app works by linking up with a specific credit card, debit card, or bank account to automatically track expenses for reimbursements or tax purposes. Within the app, you'll see a feed of your purchases and can tag each as either a business or personal expense. Once you're ready, you can then use the app to create a report for the week, month, or another specified period.
Here's the full rundown of Spend's features:
- Automatic expense tracking for reimbursements or taxes
- Advanced receipt tracking and receipt management
- Real-time expense information at your fingertips
- Automatic receipt-matching to expenses
- Intelligent features that will save you time through automatic expense categorizing
- Reports that are compatible with major accounting, expense management software
Spend is only available as an iOS app for the moment, but it's possible it could expand to additional platforms at a later date. As for whether it will graduate from the experimental Microsoft Garage and expand to something larger, that remains to be seen. For now, you can give Spend a try by downloading it from the App Store. And for more on Spend, you can check out the MileIQ blog.
Thanks to Armani for the tip!
