Goodbye Paperwork!
This may not be the advice you expect from a bookkeeper, but with a smartphone and an app, keeping track of your business is simple.
Tools like Receipt Bank and Squirrel Street connect in to online accounting systems, allowing everyone in your business to keep up-to-date from anywhere. These tools have OCR technology that enables information from your invoices and receipts such as amount, supplier name and GST to be extracted and converted into data compatible with your accounting system. You can even set-up regular suppliers to be coded to a set expense category that completely eliminates manual data entry.
With Receipt Bank the process of getting data into your accounting system is as simple as:
- Take a photo of your receipt using the Receipt Bank App
- Check that the receipt has registered correctly
- Throw away your receipt.
As the information is being recorded instantaneously you are being provided with truly up to date expense information. This makes managing where your money is spent easier and your rate of nasty surprises goes down.
Using one of these tools also satisfies the record keeping requirements of the ATO. Once the receipt or invoice is uploaded into the system you can throw out the paper receipt. This means a paperless office where you don’t have to worry about storing receipts and having them fade over time. If you need to find the receipt again it is just a matter of going into your accounting software and clicking on the transaction to see a copy of the receipt. The most precious resource in your business is your time – and it’s much better used managing your cash flow than trying to track down missing receipts weeks after money’s been spent.
Before introducing a new client to Receipt Bank he was spending hours in the evening entering receipts and invoices into his accounting system. This combined with running a busy café during the day had left him stressed out and exhausted. Using Receipt Bank saved him hours of time every week as his process went from doing manual data entry of transactions to simply using an app on his phone to take a photo of his receipts. He is now free to spend more time running his business rather than doing administration.
Have you ever used an app to manage the receipts in your business? Did the app make your life easier and save you a significant amount of time?
Would love to hear your thoughts!