Does your small business keep you on the road? Keeping track of all your expenses and receipts when you’re on the go requires a little planning and help from great apps, like receipt scanners. By organizing and tracking your expenses, you can head into tax season equipped to claim all the tax deductions you qualify for.

Receipt scanning software programs simplify expense tracking for a variety of industries. Whether you need an easy, inexpensive way to manage your freelancing expenses or a robust mobile system to organize your sales and travel-related expenses, here’s a guide to receipt scanning, and the top receipt scanning apps on the market.

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The Benefits of Receipt Scanner Apps

Smartphone receipt scanner apps let you snap photos of receipts and send that information directly to the cloud. There are multiple benefits to leveraging this secure, convenient, and smart technology:

• Using mobile receipt scanning options makes things like filing expenses easier for your remote workers, and workers who work offsite with clients.
• The best receipt scanners integrate seamlessly with your accounting software, helping you stay organized.
• Receipt scanners automatically make separate entries for all the itemized charges that appear on your receipts.
• Receipt scanning software reduces the amount of storage space you need for your essential paperwork. Additionally, by storing your receipts digitally, you can access your documents in high resolution; should the CRA, colleagues, or your account have any questions.

The Best Receipt Scanners

Many receipt scanning apps can easily integrate with QuickBooks, giving you a comprehensive look at your financials in one glance. 

There are numerous benefits of receipt scanners. The best receipt scanners can do the following:

• Extract data from accounts payable items, including invoices and receipts
• Classify accounts payable items
• Archive and organize your receipts for easy storage
• Have a dashboard that lets you manage multiple accounts
• Feature multiple submission methods
• Let you submit purchase invoices and expense claims
• Work with both Android and iOS

Here are the best receipt scanning apps for QuickBooks

QuickBooks Online

What if there was a safe and efficient way to file your expenses manually? Using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, the QuickBooks Receipt Scanner can scan and record the amount, date, and location of your transactions.

In addition to receipt scanning, the app can automatically import your bank statements, credit card, Square and PayPal transactions. It then sorts your transactions into tax categories.

Having your expenses categorized in advance will make tax season a breeze, since the category lists in QuickBooks Self-Employed are identical to the list on the T2125 form. Alternatively, you can take control of how your expenses are organized by setting up custom organization rules.

Overall, the app’s interface is intuitive and lets you sort personal and business expenses in a second with a simple swipe. Using the app to track expenses can prevent you from leaving money on the table. On average, users of the QuickBooks Self-employed app have found $19,290 in annual savings. 

Veryfi

Veryfi offers easy-to-use receipt software that doesn’t fall short on features. Users may mail, scan, email, or upload their receipts for processing or dictating the information through their Apple Watch. Veryfi uses AI-powered technology to pull the necessary data from digital and analog files for accurate, automated data entry, and the company releases regular updates to keep its automated technology competitive.

You can choose from different Veryfi apps depending on your needs. The Core app handles your expenses and receipts, while the Logbook app offers hands-free travel tracking. Whereas the Timesheets app lets you track your employees’ time on various projects.

Download Veryfi Now

Nexonia Expenses

Nexonia allows you to track expenses in a cloud-based program for easy mobile receipt and expense uploading. You can customize the configuration and approval workflows to fit your company’s policies and rules for expense handling and link the app to your bank or credit card provider to upload statements and catalogue expenses automatically.

If you travel for work, you can integrate Google Maps with this app to track mileage, and you can sync the app with QuickBooks, so it notes all your expenses in your accounting records. The integration lets you sync your customers, items, accounts, jobs, and other details between the two systems for better automation and accuracy. You can also add the Nexonia Timesheets app to handle time management for easy reporting.

Minute7 Time & Expense Tracking

The receipt scanner Minute7 tracks both hours and expenses to help you manage your team efficiently. You or your employees can conveniently add expenses using the mobile app, and you never have to worry about your employees buying parts or supplies while on a job and forgetting to note the costs. Then, you can upload expenses and timesheets to QuickBooks with the tap of a button or export the raw data to a spreadsheet.

Expense management plays a huge part in your business’ success. When you track all your expenses, you can see where your money goes, ensure you don’t overspend, and make the right tax deductions when you file your return. To simplify your record keeping, use one of several expense-management apps that seamlessly integrate with QuickBooks.

Download Minute7 Time & Expense Tracking Now

AutoEntry

Avoid manually punching in your business expenses and spend time on more critical tasks with the AutoEntry app, which keeps office clutter at bay by storing your receipts and invoices. This app simplifies your data entry and keeps a digital record, so you can cut down on the volume of documents you keep.

AutoEntry lets you record expenses by taking a picture of the receipt with your mobile device, and it works with any document, including receipts, banking statements, and bills. You can also record expenses or, if they’re digital, email them.

After you record an expense, this app takes the data and prepares it for entry into QuickBooks, pending your approval, and you can save time by setting certain expenses to auto-approve. AutoEntry keeps a copy of the expense image that you can view at any time, which makes it easy to verify expenses during a tax audit.

Download AutoEntry Now

BigTime

BigTime Time Tracking and Billing is a project and expense-management app. Whether you’re a freelancer logging your own hours, or you have employees logging the hours they work for you, BigTime makes it easy with its customizable timesheets. It takes seconds to log in and record hours using a mobile device. You can also log expenses and attach them to their corresponding projects, helping you keep track of project costs. When you finish a task for a client, you can submit your time using BigTime.

Hours and other project data logged in BigTime automatically sync to QuickBooks, and you can take any of your data, set up expense reports customized precisely how you want, and export them to Excel or convert them to PDF format.

Download BigTime Now

Neat

The Neat family of products delivers solutions for businesses of all sizes. A leading provider of standalone receipt scanners, Neat makes it easy to scan your receipts from anywhere. You can also use the subscription-based mobile app to scan your receipts, whether you’re at the office or on the go. Neat’s advanced PC-based software does the rest.

Use this program to organize your receipts, business cards, and scanned documents into folders and subfolders, search their data by filters or keywords, and create a variety of reports and budgets.

Neat scanners and monthly service plans have various price points, and the service integrates with popular accounting programs, including QuickBooks.

Download Neat Now

Note: *Based on TY17 CA subscribers that have identified >$10k in income and >$0 in business expenses.

Scanning Your Receipts in a Timely Manner

It’s easy to let daily paperwork accumulate when you run a small business, but everything runs better when you stay on top of scanning and tracking your invoices and receipts. When you take time each week to attend to basic bookkeeping tasks, you have a more accurate view of your cash flow, and it’s easier to pay all your bills and expenses on time.

To do this, you might find it easiest to collect daily expense receipts, customer invoices, and bills from merchants in a bin throughout the week, and then take a few minutes to enter the transactions before the weekend. Consider that you also need to schedule time to pay bills, follow up on customer invoices, and review your cash flow.

Saving Your Scanned Receipts

Once you convert your records to an electronic format, your next task is finding a way to organize them. If you only have a few documents, you can easily scan them and organize the files in folders. For example, you could have a folder for all business expenses from a certain year, a folder related to GST information, and so on. Alternatively, apps and programs can help organize your documents.

Submitting Your Saved Receipts as Records

If the CRA needs more information on your tax return, you can submit the records electronically using My Account, My Business Account or Represent a Client. Just hit Submit Documents and follow the prompts. The CRA performs most audits on-site at your place of business, so if you get audited, you can show or print electronic documents as requested.

Why Successful Business Owners Use Receipt Scanner Apps

When you run a small business, you’re always looking for ways to save time and simplify your record-keeping procedures. The best receipt scanners integrate seamlessly with your accounting software, helping you stay organized.

With that in mind, consider using the QuickBooks Mobile accounting app, which allows freelancers, contractors, and sole proprietors to track and manage their businesses on the go. Cloud services like QuickBooks offer impressive security and convenience benefits over traditional methods. Try QuickBooks today

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