Keen to simplify your paperwork processes? Cooper Curtis examines Receipt Bank & Expensify
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When it comes to making your bookkeeping as streamlined as possible, there are new technologies popping up all the time. It is sometimes difficult to decide which one will be right for your business when they claim they are all singing all dancing.
The main two 'firms of the future' applications we have encountered are 'Receipt Bank' and 'Expensify' which appear to be the market leaders at this present time. Although they are both apps to simply take a picture of a receipt, they slightly differ depending on what type of business you are. With both services having OCR detection technology, designed to eliminate time entering manual information.
I have summarised the main features of the two applications below which may influence your decision. If you do have any queries however, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Receipt Bank
Set up in 2010 to relieve the administrative burden placed on small businesses Receipt Bank;
- Integrates with most cloud accounting such as Xero & Quickbooks
- Is useful if you are a business processing a lot of purchase invoices and receipts
- Takes pictures of your Invoices and receipts and submit through the app.
- The receipts sit on the cloud
- Offers a 14 day free trial
Conclusion
Easy to use app that can create various reports. Multi mode function allows you to take a picture of multiple invoices and receipts at once. It does take a while for the OCR detection to process the information once the picture has been taken, but I haven't encountered many hiccups with the result. I do think it is quicker to categorise the information yourself rather than wait for it to finish and double check all the information.
Overall if used consistently, this does reduce time a business can potentially spend on bookkeeping.
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Expensify
As the name suggests this app is more geared towards expense reporting as opposed to sales and purchase receipts like Receipt Bank. It is;
- Good if you need your employees or contractors to send in a picture of their expenses.
- Need to reconcile company credit cards on a monthly basis
- Require approvals for submitted expenses
- Good if you require expense policy enforcement
- Offers a 30 day free trial
- Most users of Expensify are in the IT & Service Industries
- Receipts are retained on the central cloud
- Integrates with most Cloud and accounting packages
I find this app very user friendly, and facilitates several expenses reports to be creates at once as well as 'buik' adding expenses. As with Receipt Bank, I find the 'smartscan' facility does take a while to pull the information together, and sometimes it is easier to categorise photos instantly yourself.
Conclusion
Both apps are very user friendly, With any of these apps, the onus is placed on the business owner to post up their receipts regularly. The advantage of course is a business gains a real time insight into how it is performing and their advisor can look at ways to enhance profitability.
If you would like more information about bookkeeping solutions, contact Caroline on 0845 3031144 or email caroline@coopercurtis.co.uk.
Post by Caroline