Expensify is a well-known US-based expense management platform with global reach. Nabbit is a Canadian-built receipt capture tool designed specifically for Canadian tax rules and QuickBooks Online Canada. For a Canadian business choosing between them, the differences are significant.
| Feature | Nabbit | Expensify |
|---|---|---|
| Built for Canada | ✓ Built in Canada | ✗ US-built; Canada is a secondary market |
| GST/HST auto-detection | ✓ Automatic per receipt | Partial; requires manual tax rule setup |
| CRA compliance | ✓ CRA-specific archive features | General compliance; CRA specifics are manual |
| QuickBooks Online Canada | ✓ Native, Canada-specific integration | ✓ Available; less Canada-specific |
| Pricing currency | ✓ CAD — no exchange rate surprises | ✗ USD; 35–40% more at current CAD/USD rates |
| Corporate card integration | Limited | ✓ Strong corporate card reconciliation |
| Travel/per diem management | Basic | ✓ Full travel + per diem management |
| Team size sweet spot | 1–50 employees | 10–500+ employees |
| Receipt OCR | ✓ AI-powered, fast | ✓ SmartScan OCR |
| Canadian support | ✓ Canadian business hours | ✗ US-based support |
| Free trial | ✓ 14-day free trial | ✓ Free plan available |
Expensify was built for the US expense management market — corporate cards, travel reimbursement, per diem, and US tax rules (IRS compliance). Canada is a supported market, but Canadian-specific features like GST/HST coding, ITC tracking, and CRA audit documentation are not core to the product's design.
Nabbit was built in Canada for Canadian businesses. GST/HST is not a tax code you configure — it is a default that Nabbit handles automatically from day one. CRA compliance is not a checkbox; it is the archive design. QuickBooks Online Canada is not just "QuickBooks" — it is the specific Canadian version with CAD chart of accounts and province-specific HST rates.
For a small Canadian business, this difference shows up every quarter when you file your GST/HST return.
Filing a GST/HST return requires your business to know exactly how much GST/HST you paid on each expense — so you can claim those amounts as Input Tax Credits (ITCs) and reduce your net remittance.
With Expensify, getting to this number typically means: export expenses → open a spreadsheet → filter by tax code → sum the GST/HST column → enter the total in your GST/HST return. If your staff didn't manually enter the tax amount when submitting an expense, the number is wrong.
With Nabbit, every receipt Nabbit reads has its GST or HST extracted automatically. The tax is coded separately in QuickBooks. When your accountant pulls the QuickBooks GST/HST report at quarter end, the numbers are already there — no spreadsheet, no manual correction. For a business with 50+ receipts per month, this saves two to four hours per quarter minimum.
Expensify is a strong platform for businesses where the primary workflow is corporate card reconciliation and travel expense reports. If your team travels frequently, submits per diem claims, or needs automated integration with a corporate card, Expensify's travel and card features are more mature than Nabbit's. For medium and large businesses (50+ employees) with complex approval hierarchies, Expensify also has more workflow depth.
Expensify charges in USD. For a Canadian business, this means your monthly cost fluctuates with the CAD/USD exchange rate — and at current rates (approximately 1.35–1.40 CAD per USD), US-priced tools cost 35–40% more than their listed price. Nabbit is priced in CAD. What you see is what you pay.
Whichever product you pick, test it against the things that cause trouble at GST/HST filing time and in a CRA audit:
Submit one reimbursement the way your team really would, with a mix of paper receipts: a faded thermal receipt, a fuel receipt, a restaurant receipt with a tip, and a receipt that shows GST and PST separately. Compare what each tool read against the paper, and note how many fields you had to correct by hand. Then ask what the tool does with the corrected data, because the cost of a bad read is an ITC you cannot support later. The guide on what receipts CRA requires lists exactly what a valid receipt must show.
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Start Free Trial →The rules on this page come from these Canada Revenue Agency publications. Check them for the current wording, because CRA updates its guidance.