Attaching Receipts to Accounting Transactions

An alternative to receipt management applications is to simply attach receipts to transactions in your accounting software….

this transaction screen from QBO (Quickbooks Online) allows you to attach an image file to the relevant transaction in your transaction record.

 

A variant of this approach also works in Xero…

user can upload files and attach them to transactions – or simply attach descriptive notes to help explain entries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wave Accounting

Wave Accounting have recently added a “Receipts” app to extend the capability of their accounting application.

The most interesting feature is that the receipts will be stored alongside accounting data. This should make it more convenient for outsourced accountants to refer to receipts when doing the books.

Image File Uploaded to Wave Using Wave "Receipts" App

However, while they make claims about using AI to pull the data from the image file, I ended up supplying all of the actual intelligence and had to type in the values, based upon a look at the image file.

While using the tools provided by online accounting softwarwe is workable – particularly for ‘exceptional’ or unusual transactions – it is probably best to have a separate document management system, in which all transactions are stored online and shared with users that need access.