1. Lyft Business
  2. Admin
  3. Manage expensing

Syncing expense codes to Lyft Business via SFTP

Learn more about how to simplify the management of Expense Info for your organization in this article.

In this article, we'll cover: 

Why Expense Sync works for your organization

Expense Sync helps your organization manage high volumes of changing Expense Info by automatically syncing your newest Expense Codes and Expense Notes to Lyft Business while removing batches of old ones with ease.

  • Expense Sync is secure. Connecting your organization with Lyft's SFTP server is a secure and easy way to sync your relevant company data, including Expense Info, with Lyft Business. We follow an industry-standard secure key exchange process
  • Automatically add or remove massive batches of Expense Info as often as you need to. Easily manage your organization's Expense Codes and Expense Notes that are consistently changing due to new client projects. Add or remove Expense Info as often as once per day
  • Expense Info is included in reporting for your Lyft Business account. Get the business travel data you need. Reporting is complete with Expense Codes and Expense Notes so you can accurately reconcile transportation spend. Pull reports daily, monthly, quarterly — whenever you need it.

With Expense Sync, you can upload an up-to-date list of Expense Codes and/or Expense Notes that will be read once daily. Any newly added Expense Codes or Expense Notes will become available to your employees automatically, while any existing Codes or Notes not found on the latest upload gets removed. 

Please note: Making changes to your Expense Info directly in the Lyft Business Portal may cause unexpected syncing errors after Expense Sync has been enabled. We highly recommend to not make any changes via the portal once your organization has begun using Expense Sync.

How to upload your organization's updated list of Expense Info

  1. Upload two CSV files with a list of the Expense Codes and Expense Notes you want to make available for your employees into the /expensing/ folder
  2. Name the file expense_codes.csv for Expense Codes
  3. Name the file expense_notes.csv for Expense Notes
  4. To update your list of Expense Codes and Expense Notes, overwrite/replace expense_codes.csv and/or expense_notes.csv in the /expensing/ folder with your latest copies
  5. Please see the Formatting your Expense Codes and Expense Notes CSV files section below to ensure your CSV file is formatted correctly

How to format your Expense Info CSV files

Expense Codes

The file must be named expense_codes.csv, and it must be a comma-delimited file with the following columns in the header: Code, Description, Emails.

  • Code is required
  • If Emails is provided, the specific code will only be usable by the emails listed. Note that the comma-separated list of emails must be surrounded in double quotes “” 

Here is the content of an example file with and without emails included for specific codes

Code,Description,Emails
AEJ749,Customer Support,""
JE2939,Marketing,""
JIEJ908,Super Secret Department,"john@example.com, jane@example.com"

Screen_Shot_2018-07-20_at_3.53.18_PM.png

Expense Notes

The file must be named expense_notes.csv and it must be a comma-delimited file with the following columns in the header: Note,Emails

  • Note is required
  • If Emails is provided, the specific note will only be usable by the emails listed. Note that the comma-separated list of emails must be surrounded in double quotes “”

Here is the content of an example file with and without emails included for specific notes

Note,Emails
Client Meeting,""
Trip to Airport,""
Secret Lyft Privileges,"travel-manager@example.com"

How to configure your network

You should be able to access the SFTP server by simply using the hostname sftp.lyft.net without any additional configuration.