Lots of small businesses are using receipt scanners.
They help reduce clutter, can eliminate the possibility of losing expense receipts (especially the most important ones), and keep finances better organized.
Apps like Expensify have helped small businesses save plenty of time and money by cutting down the time spent manually entering receipts into accounting software.
Well now, Expensify says it can save even more time making paper receipts essentially history. The company is introducing an upgraded Expensify SmartScan feature to its mobile app. And the company says the apps Rapid Fire mode allows small business owners and their employees to enter receipts even faster than before.
The upgrades also allow users to more easily access their library of receipt photos.
When receipts are scanned through Expensify Smartscan, they’re uploaded to a server where they can be accessed via a web browser or other apps like Evernote, Dropbox, and Genius Scan to manage the receipts.
Companies can have someone assigned to approve expenses, deny them, and filter them appropriately into company’s accounting records. Expensify is compatible with several popular accounting platforms. It’s base price is $5 per month, per user.
The upgraded camera app even enables cameras with flash capabilities, the company says.
Where it once required tapping to save a scanned receipt, the new Expensify SmartScan automatically saves those scans. Then it sends them straight to an Expenses list available from Expensify’s supported Web services.
In a post on the official Expensify Blog, CEO David Barrett explains:
“Now, a new camera flow that cuts a couple taps out of the SmartScan flow might not seem that big a deal. But when you process millions of receipts per month, those precious seconds add up — especially when you’re holding up the line behind you at the cash register while scanning the receipt.”
Ideally, he writes, when the Expensify app is being used properly, there’s no need to even hang on to a paper receipt. If a user is awaiting a receipt, they can open the app and the SmartScan function.
When a clerk hands the user a receipt, they can quickly snap a photo and hand the receipt back for disposal. Expensify automatically saves it and organizes it for managing.
Image: Expensify
Now if we could just get an app that will automatically download the receipt from the store so we don’t have to waste the paper printing arm-long receipts in the first place.