The receipt scanner for QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is where your books live, but getting receipts into it is still the slow part. Bulk Receipt Scanner reads a whole stack at once and sends each receipt into QuickBooks as an expense, with the receipt image attached, so the paper trail is in your books, not in a shoebox.

How it works

1. Connect QuickBooks once. Sign in to QuickBooks from your account settings and choose which payment accounts and categories your receipts should use. You do this once.
2. Scan the stack. Spread up to 8 receipts in a photo and add up to 15 photos to a batch. Each receipt comes back on its own, with vendor, date, totals, payment method and every line item, and the arithmetic checked.
3. Review and send. Check anything flagged, then send. Each receipt arrives in QuickBooks as an expense with the image attached. A receipt that was already sent is skipped, so nothing is entered twice.

What goes into QuickBooks

• An expense per receipt, dated, with the vendor matched to your QuickBooks vendors or added.
• The receipt image, attached to the expense, so you can open the original from QuickBooks.
• The right category. Pick a QuickBooks category on any receipt, or let the scanner suggest one from your own categories in QuickBooks; a suggestion changes nothing until you accept it.
• Split by line when you need it. A receipt with materials and personal items can be split across categories line by line, and it goes in as one expense with one line per category, the total exact.

Already paid by card? Match instead of adding

If your card charges already come into QuickBooks from your bank feed, adding the receipt as a new expense would count it twice. The Match card charges page reads a card's charges from QuickBooks for a date range, pairs your receipts with them, and on your confirmation attaches each receipt image to its charge and, where the charge has a single category, sets the account. The charge stays the one your bank sent; it simply gains its receipt.

How this compares with QuickBooks' built-in receipt capture

QuickBooks Online includes its own receipt capture: snap a receipt in the QuickBooks app, upload one on the web, or forward it to a QuickBooks email address. If you have a receipt or two a week, that may be all you need. Where they differ:

Intuit also notes the feature is limited on QuickBooks Online Free and Lite.

Tired of fixing every receipt after it's read?

If you've tried QuickBooks' receipt capture and spent the time you hoped to save correcting each one, wrong amount, wrong category, no vendor, you're not alone, and the fix isn't skipping the review. Intuit's own help asks you to review each receipt before it goes into your books, and to make sure the categories you select are correct. That's good advice with any tool, ours included. What changes is how much is already right when you look.

Here is what Bulk Receipt Scanner sends for each receipt:

• The amount as printed, checked. The total is read with the subtotal, tax and every line item, and the sums are checked against each other. A receipt that doesn't add up is flagged before you send it, and no figure is ever changed to make QuickBooks or the arithmetic happy.
• The vendor. Matched to your QuickBooks vendors, or added as a new one. If a vendor couldn't be read, the field is blank in the review for you to fill in.
• The category. The one you picked on the receipt, or the QuickBooks category you set for it once, at setup. A suggested category changes nothing until you accept it.
• The receipt image, attached to the expense.

A receipt that was already sent is skipped, and a possible duplicate waits until you've decided, so the cleanup doesn't turn into hunting for double entries.

Questions about plans? See pricing , or see a real scan first.