An important part of being a bookkeeper with clients is having a system to collect and manage receipts. Technology has given bookkeepers a great tool, the modern day scanner. Bookkeepers can scan receipts in bulk themselves, or have their clients do it from the ease of their office. The ability to scan bills and organize them digitally has saved the bookkeeping profession countless hours of manpower.
In the five years that LedgerDocs has been on the market, our development team has kept improving the product to be more efficient, straightforward and simple to use for bookkeepers and their clients. Since we launched our receipt scanner app in the Android and Apple stores, we wanted it to be a powerful tool for clients to send their bills and receipts to their bookkeeper, and for bookkeepers to recommend to their clients to use because it’s so easy and efficient to use.
Step 1: Choosing the Receipt Scanner to Integrate With
When it came time to decide what hardware for the LedgerDocs receipt organizer app to integrate with, we looked closely at the products on the market. We wanted to partner with hardware that a) made it super easy to scan a lot of receipts and bills at once; b) scanned fast and without too many potential disruptions (i.e. paper jams); and c) had a solid track record of showing the ability to update their technology and improve on it.
We focused on two scanner companies: Canon and Fujitsu. In our discussions with both companies, their development teams demonstrated an iterative thought process towards their scanning technologies. They also welcomed feedback from their software partners, which allowed LedgerDocs to take the lessons we learned from bookkeepers using our expense tracker app and pass it on to the scanner manufacturers.
In the end we decided to build integration for the LedgerDocs receipt app with both Fujitsu and Canon scanners. We use both kind of scanners in our office, and have tested the app thoroughly with multiple models. We have also solicited help from independent bookkeeping companies that have put both brands of scanners through the paces for scanning receipts and then digitally collecting and organizing the bills and receipts via LedgerDocs in the cloud.
Step 2: The Best Receipt Scanner App is Always One-Click
When you’re a client trying to send your bookkeeper your new receipts and important documents, the last thing you need is fancy looking software to spend time figuring out. Simple and straightforward will always win over extra bells and whistles.
Fujitsu and Canon each approach scanning documents a little bit differently but with the end goal being the same: to reduce the number of steps needed thereby saving time for the person scanning the documents.
Regardless of whether you choose Canon or Fujitsu to scan your bookkeeping receipts, LedgerDocs integrates and syncs with both brands. If you are looking for a step-by-step guide to connecting one of these two scanners, read one of our blog posts:
Connecting LedgerDocs to your Fujitsu scanner
Connecting LedgerDocs to your Canon scanner
Whichever scanner you use, the process to scan receipts and documents into the LedgerDocs app is done with a single click of your mouse.
Step 3: Managing Receipts & Documents with the App
With the LedgerDocs integration for Canon and Fujitsu scanners, the paper documents have now been turned into digital documents and uploaded to the appropriate LedgerDocs client folder.
In the case where a client has scanned their documents, these new digital docs have arrived in your LedgerDocs inbox. You can now choose to organize and manage these documents the way that works
LedgerDocs’ development team has also spent many hours looking the user flow after the documents arrive in the bookkeeper’s inbox. We want to save even more time and reduce potential areas of confusion.
This is the part that LedgerDocs turns into a bookkeeper’s receipt organizer tool. Online receipts and documents can be sometimes challenging to file and sort away. Since we designed LedgerDocs to solve our own challenges with bookkeeping, we approached the task of organizing online documents so that it can be customizable for the particular style of the individual bookkeeper doing the work.
What we learned was that the best receipt organizer app is the one that allows the bookkeeper to modify it to their own unique workflow and thought process. That’s really the secret strength to LedgerDocs, and the thing that we hear that’s singled out from the bookkeepers that use our app.
Making the Next Gen of Receipt Management App
As scanning technology gets better, the LedgerDocs platform adjusts to take advantage of the new improvements. For example, we utilize Fujitsu’s wireless technology within their scanners to send your documents straight to the cloud and LedgerDocs. With Canon, we found a way to eliminate the need to have your scanned documents need to go to your computer’s hard drive first before being uploaded to the LedgerDocs. Even if it saves a couple of seconds of your time, these moments all add up in a bookkeeper’s day, or their month, or their year. The more time we save bookkeepers, the more value that LedgerDocs passes on to our bookkeeping users and their clients.
Try out LedgerDocs and our receipt scanner app with a free 14-day trial. Once you’ve uploaded your scanned documents to the cloud, test out the customizable folder structure to manage your receipts and store them safely. And if you see a feature that would benefit your bookkeeping practice, let us know in a comment below!
