QuickBooks Online Receipt Capture can now import and categorize bills from the Receipts Tab, and it's 'Free' too. Accountants, bookkeepers and business owners have been hoping for this feature and now we have it with no additional cost. The same data extraction capability applied to receipt capture is used on bills. This is stellar news because it eliminates the concern about what and why money is leaving the business. By attaching an image to a QuickBooks Online Bill is it easy to review why money was spent therefore protecting bill payers and reducing fraud concerns.
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How it Works
The Bill can be imported into QuickBooks in a verity of methods such as drag and drop, browse to upload, email and image upload from a mobile device. The imported data is processed by QuickBooks. In my testing this processing varied depending on the type of document sent but overall, the process was fast, and the Bill was ready to view and categorized within five minutes. There were several pieces of data already extracted from the document which were the data and dollar amount but all other details in my experience needed to be entered.
One thing to not is you can not expense by line items at this time. Instead you can only choose one expenses account per transaction. (if I were a betting girl, I would say this is in the works, but I have no official word on that) However, you can add Classes and Billable Customers.
How to Get Started:
1) From the QBO Navigation Bar choose Banking Center
2) Select the Receipts tab
3) Drag and drop, email or upload a mobile image of the document to QuickBooks (1 file at a time)
New functionality in QBO Receipts Capture now allows Users to capture 'Bills' as well.
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4) From the For Review section of the Receipts tab you can see when the document is ready for review
5) QuickBooks extracts, data including date and dollar amount
6) Click on Review in the Action column
7) Select Bill as Document Type (as shown highlighted in the 'red box')
Review of your captured documents allows you to identify it as a 'Bill' with the new feature and then enter the applicable information.
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8) Enter the remaining details:
- Enter Payee
- Approve Bill date and enter due date
- Select Account
- Verify amount total
- Additional Fields (optional)
- Make expenses billable
- Select Customer
- Class
- Add reference number
9) Import into QuickBooks by Saving and Closing
Within, seconds your document is coded and published into QuickBooks as an Open Bill pending payment. Like I said for now all you can add is an account but if you published the document to QBO you could later open it and edit to add required items if necessary.
The last step in optimization is after you have posted the payment to the open bill you will be able to match the bank feeds in QBO if you have already imported your banking activity. This type of audit proofing your bookkeeping helps prevent fraud and assures accuracy.
After you have paid the open Bill, your downloaded bank and credit card activity should match to the paid Bill.
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The downloaded bank and credit card activity can be matched to the paid Bill. To learn more about bank feeds follow this link.