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Why we use Receipt Bank and Xero – A UK Xero Gold Partner

May 18, 2012 by Daniel Harding

“It makes reviewing our accounts much easier” –  A UK Xero Gold Partner

Keen to change from traditional accounting methods, a number of years ago we developed our own remote access system for clients. We recently partnered with Xero to develop this aspect of our businesses further.

To improve turnaround of client records, whilst giving them more ‘bang for their buck’ we decided to explore the various Xero add-ons.

Having looked at Receipt Bank’s offering, we started using them about 9 months ago. To say it has totally changed the way we work is an understatement.

We scan all client invoices and upload them to the Receipt Bank portal directly.

The invoice data and the scanned image is then available in Xero – which makes reviewing accounts much easier!

Moreover, the improvements Receipt Bank have made over the past few months are impressive. As are the reduced turnaround times for invoice processing.

We certainly look at Receipt Bank as a partner – they’re always keen to learn what is and isn’t working for us. They’re also keen to hear feedback on improvements we think they could make!

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Why I use Receipt Bank and FreeAgent – by Anthony, a conductor

May 11, 2012 by Daniel Harding

“I have a much clearer overview of my finances” – by Anthony, a conductor

I used to process my receipts manually – the old-fashioned way. I’m self-employed and don’t have a lot of receipts but still, it didn’t encourage me to be organised at all and was very time consuming.

I came across Receipt Bank through the FreeAgent website. I started using their cloud accounting service around the same time. Since then I’ve become much more organised and have a much clearer overview of my finances.

My favourite feature is the scanning – you send your stuff off in Receipt Bags and it’s there online!

Most of my expenses are already in my bank account, so the recent new capability to publish items to the ‘Bank’ section in FreeAgent is something I’m really looking forward to using!

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Does the Australian Taxation Office accept scanned receipts and invoices? Yes!

May 8, 2012 by Daniel Harding

At Receipt Bank, we’re often asked whether taxation authorities around the globe accept scanned receipts, invoices and vouchers as proof of transaction. Increasingly this is the case, so going digital is a viable option!

We previously highlighted the HMRC (UK) view on the subject, the Irish Revenue’s take on things and now the time has come to see what the Australian Tax Organisation has to say on the matter.

“We accept a wide range of documents as written records of your claim, for example paper or electronic copies of documents, such as invoices, receipts or delivery notes statements from financial institutions, such as credit card statements BPAY® receipt numbers PAYG payment summaries warranty documents.”

If you’d like to look over the exact text, please follow the link to this ATO document.

Receipt Bank – your items digitized and easy to find!

Digital receipts, invoices and vouchers are kept on our secure servers for at least the required 6 years. You can retrieve these images whenever you like: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Exporting your items as PDF and spreadsheet downloads is easily done, so you can view offline and print if necessary.

Digitally storing your receipts makes it significantly quicker to locate them with our sophisticated online search functionality – no need to spend time trawling through the original documentation. We’ve even had reports that tax inspections of digital records can be done inside half an hour.

If you have any questions about how this works – please get in touch and we’ll guide you through the process!

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Why I use Receipt Bank & KashFlow by Jaime, a plumber – “It’s no longer a task I put off until the weekend!”

May 4, 2012 by Daniel Harding

“It’s no longer a task I put off until the weekend!” – by Jaime, a plumber

Previously I’d do my bookkeeping weekly with QuickBooks and give a plastic bag full of receipts to my accountant at the end of the year. I found the whole process slow and time consuming!

With the volume of customers I have, especially new customers, having to input new customer information took far too long. I was looking for something faster and cloud-based – so I could use it on the go.

I started using KashFlow for my bookkeeping and came across Receipt Bank through their list of suggested add-ons. It seemed like a good idea, I can now deal with things on-the-go and import them straight into my accounting software and have a precise monthly overview of my incomings and outgoings.

The thing I love about it is the speed. It’s superfast. After a job, I get in my van, get the iPad out, take a photo and send it straight off to Receipt Bank for processing. Being able to take photos suits my needs perfectly and the quality of the image is fine. The ability to import directly into KashFlow is invaluable!

It’s nice to keep up with your bookkeeping, being able to do it on the fly is really handy – it’s no longer a task I put off until the weekend!

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Why I use Receipt Bank & Xero – by Darren, a bookkeeper from Australia

April 27, 2012 by Daniel Harding

“Using Receipt Bank and Xero has helped streamline the process.” – Darren, bookkeeping business, Australia.

I came across Xero a couple of years ago and instantly liked the look and feel of it. Using Xero helped create a timelier running of my clients’ accounts – and I’ve been loving it ever since.

I get notified whenever someone tweets about Xero – and that’s how I first heard about Receipt Bank. I took a look at the website – tried it, liked it and bought it!

My clients are quite tech-savvy so they used to email me their expenses – I would then enter the data into Xero. Receipt Bank has taken away this manual work and it’s also helped with the consistency of coding.

But the big thing is – Receipt Bank automatically attaches the image of the receipt or invoice in Xero! I wasn’t doing this before, as it was too time consuming. Now, I can see the transactions from wherever I am which is great!

I also used to save a copy of the expense and create a file for my clients’ paper – now Receipt Bank provides this storage for me.

Using Receipt Bank and Xero has helped streamline the process for my clients and I. Now my clients email their expenses straight to Receipt Bank. I’ve set up auto-synchronization, so I only get involved when the items are in Xero and I have to approve them. It’s fantastic! – My wife is sick of me raving on about it!”

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What’s in your Dropbox?

April 25, 2012 by Daniel Harding

Dropbox has become a very popular tool for small businesses – a solution for storing all their documents. In amongst all these documents we know, from speaking to our clients, that there are a lot of invoices and receipts. The data from these still needs to be extracted and entered into your books – this is where we come in!

Providing customers with as many ways as possible to keep tasks like these off your desk is one of the main aims of Receipt Bank – this is why we built a Dropbox integration! Using Dropbox with Receipt Bank, you can have files pass directly from your folders in Dropbox to our servers. This eradicates the need for somebody to do all that time-consuming data entry!

Whilst you can just drag and drop files into Dropbox, there are numerous tools out there to help digitize your documents effortlessly. We’ve picked out a few below:

GetDoxie – an amazing way to scan documents from anywhere. GetDoxie provide a whole host of versatile scanners to suit all needs – they link directly to Dropbox.

Quickshot with Dropbox – Quickshot turns your smartphone into a direct portal to Dropbox. Take a snap on your phone and it will be automatically uploaded to your Dropbox.

ScanSnap – Fujitsu’s ScanScap scanners allow you to select a folder on your computer, eg. Dropbox, where all images arrive automatically after scanning.

More tools like this are being developed all the time. So if you come across any other methods for cutting the time it takes to get your files into Dropbox, please let us know by leaving a comment or emailing the team. The less time it takes to get items into Dropbox, the quicker Receipt Bank can process them and have the data sent on seamlessly into your accounts!

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Why I use Receipt Bank and FreeAgent – by Jason, a digital marketing specialist

April 20, 2012 by Daniel Harding

“I have my expenditure up to date for the first time in three years” – by Jason Wollington, a digital marketing specialist.

When you run a business like ours, a marketing agency with a brilliant track record for being fast on our feet and quite dynamic, the last thing we tend to worry about doing is the paperwork, and at the bottom of that list are expenses!

I saw Receipt Bank after thinking that there must be someone or something out ‘there’ that could take the pain of expenses away from me.

I started using it and thought it was a good idea. After realising it linked to our chosen online accounts package, FreeAgent, it suddenly became a superb idea!

You spend the money, take a picture of the receipt and normally within 48 hours it is in the account and allocated to the correct cost centre – brilliant!

Often we would raise an invoice and then find receipts relating to that project months later. Typically, we wouldn’t recharge the client for these costs, so the money lost from expenses (eg. train tickets) starts to add up.

My company used to do everything manually at the end of a project. We’re really keen to deliver good work, and are more focused on the next project rather than invoicing. This meant that it would take 4 -8 weeks to get round to invoicing, and meant that we’d be funding projects for up to 10 weeks – not great for cashflow!

Thanks to FreeAgent, our invoices now go out two days after a project has been signed off. With Receipt Bank, any additional costs related to a job get added seamlessly.

Receipt Bank has saved me thousands a year definitely. It allows me to back up receipts immediately – it’s a task that no longer fills me with dread. We have up to date accounts, which my customers can verify by looking at the receipt on their invoice – a really nice touch in keeping with the open book policy we operate with our customers!

Receipt Bank allows them to see the actual evidence of our procedure. Every charge is visible – they can see that we do not mark up incidentals and costs to get a higher margin.

I have my expenditure up to date for the first time in three years. I do it every three or four days. I can do it over breakfast, it doesn’t take any time away from my work and I can look after my customers better. Receipt Bank and FreeAgent are a great combination – as good a pair as Ant & Dec!

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Use Receipt Bags to ensure your receipts and invoices are never lost again!

April 17, 2012 by Daniel Harding

Every small business owner or freelancer will be well accustomed to long hours spent dealing with their expenses. Going through their wallets and inboxes for receipts and invoices before categorizing them according to different clients and projects – it’s an arduous task!

Here at Receipt Bank, saving you time and money is the priority. We have developed tools for every situation – so you never have to spend any time doing data entry for your expenses ever again!

Receipt Bags are waterproof, tearproof, Freepost envelopes for our customers inside the United Kingdom*. Simply pop your receipts and invoices inside, send it off, and we do the rest. The scanned images will appear in your account within 72 hours – the crucial finance data can then be exported into spreadsheets or as images into a PDF file.

If you have an accountant or use online software to help with your bookkeeping, we can send the data directly over – saving you even more time and money!

Just ensure you have a Receipt Bag around so you’re never tempted to just leave them in your wallet or on your desk gathering dust. Keep one in your car door, so when you’re on the road, it’s easy to deal with petrol, parking and restaurant receipts. Or store one in your laptop pouch, so expenses from meetings and conferences get put aside for safekeeping when you check your emails at the end of the day.

You no longer need to waste a day going through your expenses at the end of the month. You’re far less likely to lose the odd costly receipt. You’re far more likely to keep those little finicky ones you’d rather didn’t exist (trust us – it adds up!**). Aside from time and money saved, it’s a weight off your mind.

*Receipt Bags aren’t currently offered outside of the UK – rest assured, we’re working on bringing them to other territories.

**Read this testimonial from Sean, a UK security consultant who explains how saving parking receipts means Receipt Bank pays for itself.

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Why I use Receipt Bank and FreshBooks – by Peter, a consultant

April 13, 2012 by Daniel Harding

“It has freed up more time to spend with my family ” – by Peter, a consultant

Previously, my process for staying on top of my finances was laborious and very much out of date. I would have piles of receipts and once a month my wife and I would spend an age going through everything. My accountant would be on my back. Now the stress has gone.

Receipt Bank removes the problem. Receipts go straight from my wallet into an envelope, before ending up in the postbox. I use the smartphone and email forwarding features, but my favourite by far is the envelopes – it’s a very civilized thing to do.

I heard of ReceiptBank through FreshBooks, who I use for my billing. Once I got used to it, it was so straight forward – my receipts now move automatically into FreshBooks.

It has saved me lots of time. Typically I would do this outside of work hours, so it has freed up more time to spend with my family. I can’t really measure the value of Receipt Bank in pounds and pence.

Posted in FreshBooks, Integrations, Testimonials | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Why I use Receipt Bank – by Sarah, a social media manager from Melbourne

April 5, 2012 by Daniel Harding

“It got me in the habit of throwing out receipts” – by Sarah Moran, a social media manager from Melbourne. 

I used to put off getting my finances in order until the end of the tax year, where I’d have this big pile of receipts looking at me. This usually took a day or two to get through.

I didn’t have a process at all. I knew that money went in my bank account, and then came out – I didn’t know much about where it was going.

I found Receipt Bank through great recommendations on Twitter and an interview on my friend’s blog, The Fetch. I wanted to start being able to reflect on where my money was going in a meaningful way, and Receipt Bank seemed like a good way to start doing that.

It has got me into the habit of throwing out receipts, getting them out of my wallet. I take out the receipt, take a photo with my Android phone and throw it away. It gets rid of clutter, stress and helps me get things done.

It’s a huge weight of my mind to know that everything has been processed, I don’t have to waste time putting it into an Excel spreadsheet – it’s there already!

Just being able to email in or take photos really works for me. It’s intuitive and fits in with how I’m used to working.

- Read Sarah’s blog or follow her on Twitter
- Download Receipt Bank for Android now.

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