Take Pictures of Your Receipts and Expenses With These Awesome Apps
As your business grows, the hassle of managing expenses grows with it. When we think about managing our financial documents, we instantly imagine being overwhelmed by paper that accumulates over time. And since these invoices, receipts, bills - whatever you want to call them - could be just about anywhere, tracking down all these documents is usually a nightmare.
At best, we only lose some, but typically many are gone for good. Adding to the nightmare of locating receipts and expenses from all over, we may be forced to log-into multiple vendor portals to locate and download our expenses. This whole process is tedious and time consuming.
Lastly, if you’re an employee that needs to submit an expense report, at some point, you’ll need to sort your receipts and submit them as part of your expense management process.
Doesn’t sound like fun.
Tech Can Help
Since we are in the age of technological advancement, it doesn’t have to be that painful anymore.
Using receipt-capturing and document-collecting apps means saving time and space and being more efficient. Your accountant will love you too, since you can shift to working with them in real-time.
Apps We Love
Receipt Bank is a powerful app that performs data extraction from the digital image of your receipts and invoices. Once data has been collected from your hard copy, they can be edited, organized and published to your online accounting program, like Xero or Quickbooks.
How it works:
Receipt bank uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to capture data from the image of your receipts or invoices. To get your expenses into Receipt Bank, you can send the documents by email, upload them from a computer, snap a picture with your smartphone or link expenses from your cloud storage provider. Receipt Bank scans the document and looks for pieces of information such as the total amount, tax, and date. The accuracy is impressive!
Other features:
Receipt Bank allows you to take 50 pictures at a time, making it easier to submit data. It also has a line-item extraction feature which is useful for clients whose documents have different tax categories or items that come from different projects. With that said, it is no surprise that Receipt Bank is considered the largest bookkeeping productivity tool out there.
Hubdoc’s best feature is it's ability to seamlessly gather documents for you. Hubdoc fetches statements and stores them in its secure database, which can be synced to cloud accounting software. As a business owner, you will receive tons of financial documents, be it in the form of bills, statements or receipts. Instead of having to scroll through your emails or manually gather them by yourself for bookkeeping and record-keeping purposes, Hubdoc does the paperwork for you!
Hubdoc pulls in/fetches various receipts, expenses and statements for you and arranges them by account (which can be sorted alphabetically) or by time and date. It doesn’t only fetch PDF files for you, but also brings in CSV files that you can import into your accounting software. Its functionality and ease of use are definitely a game-changer for business owners and accountants.
How it works:
You can either take a picture and forward your paperwork to Hubdoc, or log-in to your bank accounts with Hubdoc once and it will automatically fetch all your bills, statements and receipts. Much like Receipt Bank, it also uses OCR that converts digital images into usable data which eliminates the need for manual data entry.
Other features:
Hubdoc’s interface follows a simple folder structure which makes it user-friendly, so it will not be a problem if you are working with someone who is not very tech-savvy. Hubdoc can also be integrated to cloud storage services for easy backup (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)
Expensify is one of the most talked about apps in the expense tracking scene. In essence, Expensify pulls data from the picture of your receipt and fills out an expense report for you. It is best known for its intelligent automation which makes the expense management process a breeze for employees and business owners - automated data extraction, approval, reimbursement - while syncing to your online accounting system.
How it works:
Expensify also uses OCR technology for data scanning and extraction. Upon processing receipts, company executives and managers can set up rules for automatic approval or configure Expensify to automatically mark expenses that may require some human element when reviewing. Once the reports are approved, it prompts funds to be delivered into your employee’s bank account within 24 hours via direct deposit. Additionally, it can be connected to your accounting system so that you get a full view of your organization’s finances in real time.
Other features:
In the event you lose your receipts (and we always do!), Expensify can be connected to your bank and credit card accounts to fetch transactions and generate e-receipts.
Concur is also a powerful expense tracking and reimbursement solutions program that works similarly to Expensify - it captures documents, generates reports, and allows automatic reimbursement - though its edge is geared more towards managing travel expenditures. It can collect transaction data from airlines, hotels and car-rental companies, automatically generating transactions and adding them to expense reports.
How it works:
Data can be collected from multiple sources. Employees can take pictures of receipts using a smartphone, or have transactions pulled from credit card accounts while managers can instantly review and approve the expenses.
Other features:
Concur has a mileage mapping feature in case that is a requirement for an expense report.
Whether you're looking for an expense tracking tool for yourself, your business or your team, the above apps can do the trick. Each one has unique characteristics while simultaneously offering versatility. Take them for a spin and let us know which one you like best!
