Bookkeeping has come a long way, thanks to the ever-evolving world of tech. Automation and artificial intelligence now run your accounting software, increasing productivity and decreasing your workload.
What was once a tedious task of manually entering each and every receipt, one at a time, into your accounting software, has become automated so you barely have to lift a finger. In the simple click of a button, you can have your receipt captured, categorized, marked as paid and matched to your bank feed.
Everything just gets easier – your receipt is posted without having to type any information in. Your monthly bills and statements are automatically uploaded and entered. Your bank or credit card reconciliation is done in a fraction of the time. Your filing cabinet is non-existent, and receipts are beautifully categorized by supplier, account, amount – however you want to search!
It all sounds wonderful – but why should you bother with it, especially if your current process is already working for you? Read on to find out.
What are the advantages to using expense management software?
Automation
Technology has come a long way in the accounting space. When it comes to your expenses, automation is key. Expense management software can amalgamate several steps in the accounting process – and minimize your workload.
Manual entry requires you to receive the receipts from your cardholders and obtain bills from your suppliers via mail or email. Field by field, you would enter in payment method, supplier name, transaction date, reference number, account(s) to post to, subtotal, tax and total.
And if you’re missing any receipts, you’ll have to chase them down from your cardholders at the end of the month, assuming they haven’t misplaced them. Finally, you’ll have to file the receipt away and hang onto it for 7 years, per the CRA.
Apps like Dext or Hubdoc trim that down to just two steps: take a photo of the receipt; review and publish receipt. Done.
The software uses Optical Character Recognition, extracting all of the information and placing it into the corresponding fields. Worried about errors? Don’t be. Both softwares boast incredible accuracy and low error rates.
Using supplier rules, you can set up defaults to where the receipt is categorized to, the calculated tax rate, and payment method used. The receipt is then sent to your accounting software as an expense, bill or credit, and a copy of the image is neatly attached to the transaction.
Paperless
Now that you’ve sent the transaction and image to your accounting software, you can toss that paper receipt into the recycling! We know – it seems wasteful to have your supplier print a receipt that ends up in the recycling so fast. That’s where “fetching” comes into play.
As suppliers move toward the world of digital billing, these softwares are capable of “fetching” your invoices. That is, they are capable of logging in and automatically obtaining the bill, so you don’t have to lift a finger to get those bills.
Alternatively, if your supplier isn’t on Dext’s list or Hubdoc’s list of suppliers, you can forward your receipts and bills to a designated email address for processing.
The end result – a completely paperless record of your receipts and bills. What’s so great about this, aside from saving valuable space in your office and filing cabinet?
Well, when you’re searching for a specific bill or receipt, you can search by supplier, amount, date, due date, category, even currency, and much more.
No more searching through years of banker’s boxes of receipts!
Mobile and user friendly
Both Dext and Hubdoc are incredibly user friendly softwares to use. They both offer a mobile app where you can easily photograph and upload your receipt and send it off to your connected accounting program.
Customer support is also available from both platforms so that you’re never stuck without an answer to your questions.
And when it comes to onboarding employees, both softwares have comprehensive training videos and documentation to teach them how to use your software, whether they’re just the cardholder taking photos of their receipt, or they’re in the accounting department and doing the bank reconciliations.
Affordable
The time savings alone are enough to convince any small business owner to use an expense management software. By reducing your workload to a quarter of the time, you’ll free up hours and hours for more important tasks.
Both Hubdoc and Dext offer affordable pricing plans, in a convenient monthly or annual subscription fee, cancellable at any time with the option of downloading your data.
Time savings and paperless systems are attractive to accountants and bookkeepers alike, so the software is often included in the fees of many professional firms – Simcoe Office Solutions included. We offer it in our top 2 packages.
As well as helping you, this system makes our life much easier and that means we can pass the savings onto you, so we pay the monthly fee for the system on your behalf.
We even offer one-on-one training on how to use your new software and best practices for entries – free of charge!
In summary
We recommend a system like Dext or Hubdoc that removes the administrative burden that bills, invoices and receipts place on small businesses. It makes the gathering, storage and processing of receipts and invoices as easy and cost effective as possible.
The system will make your life easier and remove clutter by filing paperwork in the cloud.
Get started today by scheduling a call with us to discover your customized bookkeeping solution and see what expense management software can do for you.