by Marjolyn Noble
Technology is now driving change like we’ve never seen before. We now have the ability toquickly save and manage your business receipts within your accounting system. To do this we can use service providers such as Squirrel Street, Receipt bank and Entryless, just to name a few. Hubdoc is a more recent introduction to this market place. Xero purchased Hubdoc 18 months ago and has quickly seized an opportunity to transform the product it provides to us, the business owner..
Not so long ago, you had to purchase a separate Hubdoc subscription to manage your digital receipts at a cost of $27.50 per month. This cost is reasonable considering the convenience it provides. The benefits of using such software is helping your business to be audit proof. If you’ve ever had the unpleasant experience of being subjected to an ATO audit in the past, you would know the pain of having to produce receipts on-demand. You couldn’t present a shoebox full of paper to the Auditor and say go find it because they would say no it’s not for me to do the searching. The onus is on you to produce that document, not to mention the cost to involve your accountant! Furthermore, the GST laws are very specific. You can only claim your GST input credits if you hold a valid tax invoice, the details of what that is we won’t go into this blog, however if you would like more information, reach out.
With Xero’s recent acquisition of Hubdoc they are now making this software part of their business subscriptions for an additional $2 per month. Effectively you’re getting two softwares for the price of one, saving $25 if you used hubdoc in the past. This is a fantastic tool to help you become paperless, and dare I say, audit proof. Here comes my crystal ball prediction. I feel in 2-5 years’ time this will be mandatory because we now have the technology to do this. This is pure speculation on my part, let’s see how this transpires. Single Touch Payroll is just the beginning, next in line is e-invoicing, the rumbling of which is starting now, so digital receipts will be hot on the heels, what do you think?
If you are a current bookkeeping client of EASE, you may already be using Hubdoc. The feedback is that most are delighted with the results. Having access to your business receipts is helping to reduce the questions from us to clarify certain expenditure. It also supports your GST claims because we can quickly see if the expense qualifies for the GST credit. The other fabulous benefit of this program is the automation from repeating expenses. It allows us to create rules and auto sync transactions which are easily transferred into your Xero file for data matching. Having said that, it doesn’t work for all transactions but it certainly saves some time & assists with accuracy. Lastly, it ensures that receipts are available where we need them for your Company Tax Return. This will be a real time saver, yours and ours.
From our experience to date, and to make the most of this program, it does require a good system in place. It’s important the receipts and invoices are transferred into Hubdoc on a regular basis, ideally when received. Hubdoc issues a business email forwarding address for any receipts which are received by email and a phone app so you can photograph receipts for any cash purchases or receipts you get on the fly.
How does it work? So rather than doing the data matching and expense allocation in Xero, the coding is managed from Hubdoc and then transferred into your Xero file for match up against the bank feed or saved as a bill to be paid in the future. Hubdoc can also be synced to your Bank account to auto fetch monthly bank statements and credit card statements and from key suppliers such as Telstra, Optus, BP fuel, just to name a few.
If you would like your business to be set up with this fantastic program, we invite you to reach out to us at Ease to organise a time to discuss your requirements and we can either help you to establish an account or provide some training so you can manage this in the future. If you are an existing bookkeeping client we will be in contact to organise a transition of digital receipt management if you prefer this option. As mentioned previously this is totally optional however, for the points previously discussed, there is no time like the present to embrace this technology.
Xero is certainly going above and beyond to help streamline the administration process, just look at the introduction of bank feeds, automatic superannuation, ease of single touch payroll reporting, and as this service is now all-inclusive the only thing you’ve got to lose is your receipts!
Marjolyn
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