If your business deals in manual accounting processes, you must often find yourself drowned in an ocean of receipts.

It’s no secret that companies are burdened with receipt tracking processes. They end up incurring unnecessary costs and long turnaround times, which affects customer experience and gives way to fraud. You may not realize it but manual receipt tracking can be the biggest bottleneck in the success of your company.

Luckily, there is a lot of receipt scanning software in the market that can overcome these challenges and automate business processes. 

The article gives an insight into what a receipt scanning software is and how an automated receipt management software works. 

What is receipt scanning software?

The primary responsibility of receipt scanning software is to scan, read, and extract data from receipts. To perform these roles, the software engages Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Optical Character Recognition is a technology used to extract data (text) from images or scanned documents using its ability to identify and recognize individual characters. AI, then extracts meanings from the texts and also understands & recognizes each part of the receipt. 

For instance, AI can understand which part of the receipt contains the total amount, customer name, VAT value, items, and so on. The entire process of receiving the document, extracting data, and classifying the extracted data happens in a matter of seconds. 

Why should receipt scanning software be used?

Having understood what exactly a receipt scanning software is, let us now move on to the five primary reasons why you should use automated receipt scanning software to boost your business. 

• Minimizes the occurrence of fraud with the aid of automated fraud detection
• Greatly reduces turnaround times
• Keeps human errors at negligible levels
• Cuts down costs by 75%
• Guarantees HMRC compliance and security

Minimizes the occurrence of fraud with the aid of automated fraud detection

The first and foremost advantage of using receipt scanning software is the prevention of fraud and data loss/theft. Fraud prevention should never be overlooked considering the many companies that have incurred heavy losses due to fraud. 

A receipt scanning software identifies discrepancies in receipts and removes them from the program. 

Some receipt scanning software can automatically detect whether a receipt has been submitted or flagged in the past. It looks for photoshopped and modified receipts by scanning the existing data. The software notifies if any element has been compromised (like total amount, merchant’s name, etc). 

Reduced turnaround times

In this fast-paced world, businesses should not be held back by traditional expense approval processes but strive to initiate employee reimbursements as quickly as possible. This is where turnaround time comes into play. A receipt scanning software can process receipts at a great speed thereby reducing turnaround times. 

If you are using a top receipt scanning software like Dext, data extraction can be achieved in seconds as against manual processing that involves sorting receipts, reading & scanning the data, and then inserting it into a program. Sounds excruciating right? It indeed is. 

With cloud-based receipt management software, employees don’t have to wait an eternity to reimburse their travel expenses. A faster turnaround helps clear their dues faster.

Keeps human errors at negligible levels

Errors in manual data processing can be quite high, making a huge impact on a company’s finances.

Fortunately, you have receipt scanning software to your rescue. You can significantly lower human errors by eliminating keystroke errors, duplication mistakes, and other common human inaccuracies. This improves the accuracy of the data and helps your stakeholders make well-informed, data-driven business decisions.

The accuracy of the software can be as high as 90%. If you want to make it 100%, bring an employee in this process—your accountant or bookkeeper. With Human In The Loop (HITL) automation, you get the best of both worlds (human and software).

Cuts down costs by 75%

Taking off the burden of receipt processing from the shoulders of your employees can reduce your company’s costs by 75%. Wondering how? This is because your employees can move away from tedious data entry jobs and focus better on core operations. 

To substantiate this fact, studies have found that intelligent automation software can save costs up to 75% and the payback time ranges from a couple of months to several years.

For example, let us consider the time required to process a single receipt manually. Employees can process about 50 receipts per hour on average. These employees need to be paid an hourly wage. 

Using receipt scanning software, employees can process a minimum of 200 receipts per hour. The processing cost per receipt is very minimal. Comparing the cost of manual and automated receipt processing, your cost can be saved up to 75% by the automation software with better efficiency and faster pace. 

Guarantees HMRC compliance and security

Some receipts may contain sensitive data like card numbers, names, and mailing addresses. When processing such sensitive information, HMRC compliance is mandatory. Any violation or infringement can cost up to 2% of your annual income as a penalty. 

Infringements can also be in the form of storing personal data that you should not store or use. HMRC compliance is of supreme importance to maintain your customers’ trust and loyalty. This directly impacts your business. Receipt scanning software defines sensitive data as fields with personally identifiable information (PII) and engages in data masking to anonymize them or make them invisible. 

Bottom Line

Which receipt scanning software is best for your company is highly subjective and varies from one company to another. You might be wanting an app to process your receipts or may have an app yourself and just want to enhance its performance with OCR and HMRC compliance.

It’s no secret that companies are burdened with receipt tracking processes. They end up incurring unnecessary costs and long turnaround times, which affects customer experience and gives way to fraud. Therefore, you must switch to an automated receipt scanning software which can simplify your receipt management process.

Identify your requirements and conduct a thorough study of all the receipt management software available in the market to determine which one is best for your business.