Hello, Jools.
I'll shed some more light on how receipts and the bank transactions work in QuickBooks.
Uploading your receipt to QuickBooks requires you to review it first to ensure it is categorised and accounted for properly.
For the workflow, you can actually do both ways. Create an expense transaction in QuickBooks and match it with the receipt when it is already available. Simply click the + New icon, then select Expense.
Alternatively, you can upload a receipt and review it in QuickBooks then add it directly to your books.
The general idea here is to keep a digital record of the receipts while ensuring your books match with what you did in real life.
You might want to check this article out if you need more help managing your receipts: Capture and categorise expense receipts and bills in QuickBooks Online.
The Online Banking feature and the Receipts module are separate. However, you can use the Bank Rules module to automatically add those expenses (and other downloaded transactions) into QuickBooks. The receipts would still need to be reviewed and added though.
If you need help categorising your bank transactions, you can check this article: Categorise and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online.
After recording your bank transactions and adding those receipts, are you ready to reconcile your bank account in QuickBooks? You can check this article for a guide on a workflow: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Online.
If you need help learning the ropes in QuickBooks Online, feel free to check out other articles in our articles list page.
I'll answer other questions you might have for QuickBooks Online. Just reply here and I'll lay down the details and steps to help you out.