Receipt scanning tools are far more than what their name seems to suggest. These modern tools do indeed simplify and automate the receipt scanning process, but receipt scanning tools also help organise business data better and also serve to encourage smarter, quicker business processes, including easier reporting and expense approvals.
Business owners and decision makers, in-house accountants, bookkeeping firms, sales and supply chain all stand to benefit from receipt scanning. This might seem like a bit of an exaggeration, but the fact is that everyone who relies on data and everyone involved in data entry, stands to benefit from receipt scanning. For a free trial, click here: https://dext.com/en/business-owners/receipt-scanning
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Benefit: Data entry made easy
Beneficiaries: Sales teams, accountants, bookkeeping firms, teams that need to file heavy reimbursements, small business owners
The receipt scanning tool’s claim to fame is its ability to extract data from any bill, invoice or receipt. The user simply needs to snap the source document that he or she desires to pick up data from, and upload the snap to the receipt scanning software. The software’s optical character recognition technology is designed to intelligently pick up all the key accounting information from source documents such as dates, amounts, tax and particulars . Instead of the time consuming and painstaking process of typing out all these details, automation enables the user to receive these details in digital format, thanks to the receipt scanning software. The digital text that is delivered by the software can be edited and extracted as per the user’s requirements.
Snaps are the most popular method of uploading source documents to the software for the purpose of extracting text from hard copy source documents and digitising it for further use. However, one can also upload PDFs and the software is also capable of pulling data from online sources.
This means that:
- Sales teams can cut down on their reporting. Information can easily be picked up from the client’s purchase order, for instance.
- Accountants and bookkeeping firms can minimise their data entry burden by uploading PDFs of bank statements.
- Small business owners can claim a higher number of tax deductibles because it is now easy to do so – simply snap and upload the receipt for office printer paper, transport tariffs or coffee meetings instead of procrastinating till you lose the receipt or the ink fades
- Reimbursements for business trips that usually include many tiny amounts linked to many receipts for F&B, transport and accommodation are similarly easier to prepare and submit on time.
Benefit: Expense approvals at a click
Beneficiaries: Business owners and middle management
Expense approvals tend to eat into the time of small business owners and the working hours of middle management in larger organisations. Very often, expense approvals pile up and create anxiety among approvers or dissatisfaction among submitters who are waiting for their approvals to come through. If the expense approvals are linked to further business processes, any hold-up has the potential to affect the productivity and profitability of the business. If the expense approvals are linked to reimbursements, there is a chance that delayed approvals create dissatisfaction and irritability.
Receipt scanning software has just the fix for this situation: Expense reports appear in an easy-to-view format that allows the user to view an expense and click approve, and then move on to the next. This means that expenses can be approved quickly and without any hassle. Moreover, the software allows you to approve expenses on the go, via a partner app on your smartphone. This is a staple in most types of receipt scanning software.
In addition to the convenience of at-a-click approvals, receipt scanning software also lets you add expense approvers. This means that you can either delegate expense approval or add extra sets of eyes to the process if you feel the need to do so, especially for big-ticket expenses.
Benefit: Automatic data sorting and categorisation
Beneficiaries: Businesses of all scales
The receipt scanning software also sorts all your financial data by region and tax. Data from various suppliers is grouped and even the digitised entries created by the system are automatically sorted according to type and date.
Benefit: Data insights
Beneficiaries: Small business owners, supply chain and procurement teams
Receipt scanning software is intelligent and has the very useful ability to give you business insights based on all the financial data that it has access to. You might just be able to access improved profitability thanks to supplying chain leaks spotted and flagged up for you by the software.
Benefit: Synchronisation with accounting platforms
Beneficiaries: Small business owners, accountants and bookkeeping firms
Most of the popular brands of receipt scanning software in the UK integrate seamlessly with other accounting platforms. The user can simply connect and utilise automated publishing and transaction matching.
Benefit: Sync your bank account
Beneficiaries: Bookkeeping firms and growing businesses
When you are a small company with trim margins and a trim team, you may not have a dedicated accounting team, or you might just have a fledgling accounting department. You might be keeping track of accounts yourself and outsourcing bookkeeping to ensure compliance. As transaction volume grows, you may not always have the budget to keep growing your accounts department (or the time to record every transaction yourself if you are a freelancer or a small business owner). This is when the option to sync your bank account becomes very pertinent because it enables the automatic flow of transaction data from your business bank account to your books.
Linking your bank account also means that you will have live data at all times.
Benefit: Connect with online payment gateways
Beneficiaries: Businesses of all scales
As online payment becomes the mode of choice, the option of connecting to your PayPal to track payments coming through there is yet another very relevant benefit afforded to users of receipt scanning software.
Conclusion: Receipt scanning software has a world of benefits to offer to businesses of all scales and it has a special use for small businesses where accounting is either handled by the business owner or is outsourced. Besides accounting tasks, receipt scanning software can make life easier for sales, supply chain and procurement teams, and all manner of expense submitters and approvers, by its ability to automate data entry.
