With so many of our clients using Receipt Bank who may not be aware of some of the new features, and so many who may not know of it's amazing functionality at all, we bring you an update on the application.

The Basics

In the old days of bookkeeping, every receipt and invoice needed to be unwrinkled flat and the information printed on, entered manually onto a list of purchases.

At a minimum the data that was entered was date, amount and supplier but frequently included VAT. Time pressed business owners and brain numbed bookkeepers spent hours doing it.

At the heart of Receipt Bank is optical recognition software that can read not only date, amount, supplier, and VAT, but reference number and due date. Once extracted this data can then be pushed through automatically to your bookkeeping thereby saving any time in data entry. There are settings that allow you to review the data first or publish automatically.

The obvious question is how do the receipts and invoices get to Receipt Bank in the first place. The service the following ways to deliver receipts to the platform:

• A postal service whereby you simply put paper receipts and invoices into a bag and send them off

• Smartphone App (Android and iPhone) whereby you take a photo and upload it

• Uploading scan from you computer

• Syncing with a Dropbox folder

• Emailing to you Receipt Bank account

For businesses already using Xero an image of the receipt is also automatically published through to the bookkeeping along with the data so that if you ever need to check the bookkeeping record against the receipt it is instantly available on the bookkeeping software.

Once published, the images on Receipt Bank are stored in an archive.  Since scanned records are accepted by HMRC, there is no longer any need to keep paper copies and the platform avoids the need for any other record keeping system. In fact the record keeping system is much improved as records can be searched by amount, date, supplier etc.

The software deals with Foreign Currency exchange automatically and has an elegant way to handle expense claims from employees (who can submit expense receipts direct to the system via their smart phone).

New Features

For those used this basic functionality it is worth giving the heads up on recent developments that Receipt Bank have made which are news worthy in themselves.

• Suppliers Tab - here you have the flexibility to set the way Receipt Bank treats the data according to particular suppliers. For example you may want to review the data extraction for new suppliers but trust Receipt Bank to publish other suppliers straight to the bookkeeping. VAT treatment and account headings can be automated for individual suppliers. We are finding this tab speeding up our reviews considerably.

• Improved Search - the search function in the Inbox and Archive has been improved and there is a new way to search for receipts via the Suppliers Tab.

• Re-Bill to Client - you may be in an industry where you need to re-bill certain expenses to clients. Once processed in Receipt Bank these can be grouped and re-billed though the function found under the Tools button.

• Trip-catcher - Receipt Bank now has an integration with Trip-catcher so that mileage expenses can be submitted straight to the bookkeeping via smart phone.

Receipt Bank is Co- South London system of choice, but we are at pains to point out that others exist and we do not receive any financial gain from promoting it.