Why We Love Receipt Bank and Savvy SMBs Do Too

How do your employees manage your company's expense receipts?

In a perfect world, employees would turn them in immediately. Receipts would never be crumpled, smudged, sun-bleached, run through a washing machine, or stuffed in the bottom of a suitcase. They would never fall under the car seat or get lost, and meal receipts with two copies would never be submitted twice. 

In a perfect world, your business could have a person solely dedicated to receipt management. Someone who could track down receipts, ask employees questions about those expenses, ensure everyone was reimbursed properly, make sure those employee expenses were paid efficiently, and that every detail of the receipt was then accurately allocated to a customer or related job all without spending money to get rekeyed in a spreadsheet.

All business owners know this is not the case. Receipts are delicate and by the time they reach bookkeeping (if they ever reach bookkeeping), their contents are often indecipherable.

This big problem with small pieces of paper leads to inaccurate expense reporting, inefficient bill payment, wasted time, wasted resources, improper employee reimbursements, and major accounting mistakes.

Never Fear Receipt Bank™ Is Here!

We love Receipt Bank because it’s an app that automates collecting, processing, and recording receipts. It directly connects businesses and employees with their bookkeepers and accountants. The software eliminates the need for data entry and streamlines the receipt submission process.

Receipt Bank enables individuals to submit receipts for approval with a snapped picture from a mobile phone or the scan of a document, so you no longer have to sort through stacks of illegible receipts or track down employees who haven't submitted their receipts.

By uploading an image of a receipt into Receipt Bank, the app's optical character recognition technology automatically records:

• Item Type (invoice, receipt, or credit note)
• Invoice Number
• Date
• Supplier
• Currency (accommodates foreign exchanges)
• Total
• Sales Tax
• Payment Method

You can view, approve, and categorize expenses or ask the submitter a question about the receipt without ever leaving the app.

Receipt Bank integrates with QuickBooks and other accounting software tools for seamless record keeping, expense tracking, and minimal time spent on data entry.

Our Favorite Receipt Bank Features

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) means no more data entry
• No more receipt chasing
• No more lost receipts
• Accurate, effortless expense tracking
• Secure cloud-based records
• Seamless QuickBooks integration (which means faster client reimbursement)
• Automated submission reminders
• Foreign currency conversion
• Single point communication

7 Major Mistakes Receipt Bank Helps SMBs Avoid

1. Having No Process for Collecting, Tracking, and Storing Receipts

As a business owner, dealing with tangles of expense receipts isn't your first priority; running your business is. Tracking expenses, however, is an essential part of running a successful business. Unfortunately, most small and medium-sized businesses do not have enough resources to dedicate a single individual to the task of collecting, tracking, and smartly storing expense receipts.

This oversight leads to incorrect reimbursements and under-reported expenses, both of which make it impossible to know your actual business costs. As a result, you will not be able to properly price your services, calculate an accurate profit margin, or have a clear picture of your business's cash flow. All of these problems are significant enough to put you out of business.

2. Wasting Time on Data Entry

Without a solution like Receipt Bank, your employees have to manually track receipts and enter them into Excel, and your bookkeeper will have to spend hours manually transferring information from receipts and invoices into QuickBooks, ensuring you have entered it accurately, and double-checking that each expense is coded properly.

Depending on the nature of your business, how often you and your employees have to travel, hold meetings, entertain clients, or purchase material supplies, this could mean several hours of needless data entry each week.  And, because employees are notoriously slow at filling out expense forms, you run the real risk that expenses wont get into QuickBooks in time to invoice your client - which takes cash out of your pocket.

3. Leaving Room for Error

Manual data entry also exposes your business to the risk of human error.

When spending hours upon hours every week, reading the small, often faded or smudged print on receipts and invoices, the individual transferring data into a spreadsheet is likely to make a mistake or two. Depending on the size of the mistake, this could expose you to serious problems such as non-compliance and inaccurate tax filing, not to mention having to operate with and make business decisions based on inaccurate financial data.

4. Expense Reimbursement Foibles

Keeping track of employee requests for expense reimbursement can be problematic without good systems in place. Paired with a powerful app like Expensify, Receipt Bank helps businesses avoid problems with lost receipts, multiple reimbursements, or forgotten reimbursements by seamlessly managing the collection of receipts and the expense approval process.

5. Missing Out on Early Payment Incentives

With poorly timed payables, businesses often miss out on savings in the form of early and on-time payment incentives — or worse, businesses incur unnecessary expenses in the form of late fees and interest payments.

6. Storing Data in Multiple Locations

This inefficiency, which stems from using outdated record keeping systems, will cause problems whenever it's time to put together your financial reports and every time tax season rolls around. With invoices in one place, itemizations in another, receipts bursting from proverbial shoeboxes, and expense reimbursement requests somewhere else, gathering and organization all the information you need for accurate and timely financial reporting can easily become a nightmare.

7. Missing Tax Deductions

Businesses operating without an efficient and accurate receipt management and expense tracking system risk paying more taxes than those who manage expense tracking with streamlined systems.

Inaccurate expense tracking not only muddles your financial reporting and financial data, it also means your business will likely miss out on a big chunk of potential tax deductions and savings.

A handful of missing receipts or inaccurately categorized expenses could mean the difference between owing taxes or receiving a refund at the end of your financial year.

Optimize Your Bookkeeping and Accounting to a Seamless Integrated System

What if your small or medium-sized business's bookkeeping and accounting functions ran like a well-oiled machine? Imagine the unnecessary costs you could identify and cut and the operational inefficiencies you could fix. Picture your business with a stronger bottom line and growing profit margins. With the right tools, you can make all your business dreams a reality.

At GrowthForce, we not only partner with businesses to dedicate a team of bookkeeping and accounting professionals to their accounts, we also partner to help them establish strong bookkeeping and accounting systems, policies, and procedures that will support them today and help them grow into the future.

With streamlined technology tools like QuickBooks, TSheets, Bill.com, Expensify, and Receipt Bank, businesses can eliminate guesswork and back office inefficiencies to save valuable time and monetary resources. With streamlined financial systems in place, business owners benefit from having timely, accurate, and — most importantly — management reports with actionable financial data at their fingertips.