The move to cloud-based accounting applications is an important factor in the decreasing demand by businesses for paper receipts. Paper receipts get crumpled and lost. Digital receipts are more conveniently accessible. New platforms take advantage of smartphone cameras for photographing receipts and processing the transactions with accounting software.

Merchants Love Digital Receipts

For merchants, digital receipts can become a marketing opportunity for promoting goods and services. Digital receipts help merchants avoid the cost of purchasing paper and toner cartridges for printing customer receipts. Because receipt printers are often specialized devices, they become unnecessary when merchants transmit receipts by email.

Easy Access to Receipts Stored in the Cloud

Take advantage of the cloud to store the digital receipts you received by email as well as your scanned receipts. Saving paper receipts can be inefficient and time-consuming. It is easy to lose paper receipts – especially when you are on the road. Saving paper receipts in a physical file requires attaching them to a piece of paper or a pocket folder. Paper receipts require manual entry of the information they contain, and that information can require duplicate entries to different files. Beyond that, paper receipts are more difficult to access than receipts stored to the cloud. Paper receipts often add to the clutter in your office.

Save Paper and Money

Use of paper receipts often necessitates the use of a specific receipt printer, using a particular paper. These expenses, as well as the cost of toner cartridges can be avoided with the use of digital receipts.

Make Tax Time Less Stressful

When preparing tax returns, it often becomes necessary to sort through and organize paper receipts. Saving them to the cloud makes them easier to organize, especially with the availability of software that can organize receipts for you. Ease the stress of tax preparation by making the process less complicated.

Email Opportunities

Sending receipts to your clients via email presents new opportunities to communicate with your clients. Because a receipt is an important piece of information, a client would not ignore it as if it were a promotional email or spam item. The email transmitting the receipt can allow you to send a personal message to the client, express gratitude for the client’s business, and provide information concerning upcoming developments at your company.

Using a Smartphone as a Receipt Scanner

If your business uses QuickBooks Online mobile accounting software, you can sync to the Receipt Bank app , which extracts data from receipts and invoices. You can then send that data to your QuickBooks account. When you are away from the office, simply photograph a paper receipt with your smartphone and use Receipt Bank to save it. Even if you made handwritten notations on the receipt, such as the clients to be billed for a proportion to the expense, you will have that information retained with the photographed receipt. Accessing stored receipts with your smartphone is more convenient than searching for a small, crumpled piece of paper.

References & Resources

• cnbc.com
• quickbooks.intuit.ca
• quickbooks.intuit.ca