An enhanced Receipts experience
JCowan
Member Posts: 10 admin
Please note that this discussion has been closed, but you can continue to follow the conversation in our updated post here.
Hi Wavers!
We’re excited to announce that our team has been hard at work leveraging your feedback to develop a new and improved receipts feature. The new receipts feature will launch in June, and with it, we will be retiring our Receipts by Wave mobile application along with some other areas of the original receipts feature.
We’ll continue to keep you updated via email, but with these changes, we want to reassure you that you won’t be losing any of your receipt data, and are confident that the new feature will help you save time and be more successful with your bookkeeping needs. Learn more below, and check out the FAQ’s where we’ve tried to address any immediate concerns.
So, why the change?
With the original feature, you would upload receipts and move them through statuses in order to post to your accounting. This allowed you to maintain a digital copy of the receipt in Wave and generate a new expense transaction. But for those who have their bank accounts connected to import transactions (or upload their statements electronically), this resulted in duplicates.
The recommended workflow has always been to merge the duplicates, but we understand that having to do so is not ideal. And based on your feedback, we understand that rather than convert the receipt into a new transaction, you would simply prefer to attach it to an existing transaction. We’re happy to report that we’ll be delivering just that.
How does the new Receipts feature work?
With the new feature, you’ll simply open up the transaction details for an expense transaction, and then be able to click “Upload a receipt” to attach a file from your device. That’s it! No more image processing. No more receipt statuses. No more duplicates.
For mobile users: Wave’s Transaction and Dashboard pages are fully responsive on mobile, so you can login to Wave on a mobile browser, and easily navigate to the Transactions page. Locate the relevant expense, open up the transaction details and click “upload a receipt” to snap a photo with your camera app, or select an image from your device. That’s it!
In this way, you can manage and categorize your transactions as you normally would, and easily attach and store receipts for the relevant purchases.
What's going away?
The following areas will be retired with the launch of the new Receipts feature in June.
- Receipts by Wave: the mobile app was built around the original receipts workflow, which made you work harder than needed. By bringing the new, simplified feature directly into the web-based app, your receipt and overall transaction management are unified in a single experience (whether you’re on mobile or desktop) rather than split across apps.
- OCR image processing: with the new feature, receipts will simply be attached to transactions, so the images will no longer need to be processed to create transactions.
- Receipts page (Purchases > Receipts): this page serves as a hub to manage your uploaded receipts, and move them through statuses to post to your accounting. The new feature eliminates this manual process, so this page is no longer needed.
- Email receipts feature (receipts@waveapps.com): since receipt images will no longer be processed, we will be removing this feature. Moving forward, you can download your digital receipts and attach them directly to transactions (or take screenshots to then attach them).
- Receipts Settings: these settings pertained to the OCR and email receipts feature. Since both of these features will be eliminated, the Receipts Settings will also be removed.
Anything else I need to know?
Again, we’re confident that the new receipts feature will help you save time and be more successful with your bookkeeping needs. Below, we’ve listed out some FAQ’s to address any immediate concerns you may have.
Q: What happens to my existing receipts?
A: Every receipt that you’ve previously uploaded into Wave (whether through the mobile app, email receipts feature, or the Receipts page) will continue to be stored within your Wave account, and can be exported through the Receipt Export.
Q: What if I have receipts that are not yet in the “Done” status? Do I have to do anything between now and the launch of the new feature?
We encourage you to leverage the current workflow, and post the receipts to your accounting. That said, if you have receipts that do not reach the “Done” status, you will not be losing the receipt image. All receipts you’ve previously uploaded, regardless of status, will be included in your Receipt Export.
Q: How will I know which transactions have a receipt attached?
A: With the launch of the new feature, we’ll be introducing a filter on the Transactions page that allows you to search for and verify which transactions have attached receipts. You can also open up the transaction details for an expense, and click the Receipt tab to view the receipt image!
Q: Can I keep using the mobile Receipts app?
A: Once retired, the app will no longer be connected to Wave. While the app will still be accessible on your device until you uninstall it, it will not be usable.
Q: If I only used Wave for the mobile receipts app, can I continue to use Wave to capture and store my receipt images?
A: The new receipts feature is optimized for a mobile experience. With our fully responsive Dashboard and Transactions page, you can easily login at waveapps.com on a mobile browser, and head to the Transactions page to snap a photo or attach an existing receipt image.
Comments
The receipt functionality that is being removed (OCR, ability to email in and the app) was one of my primary reasons for selecting and staying with Wave for the past 5-6 years. Without this functionality, I will likely need to find a different vendor for my accounting needs as this functionality is critical to me.
Yes!!!! You have made my year. Happy to return to using Wave for all of my accounting needs again with this update!
Yes! Finally!!! The biggest missing piece to this amazing website. I applaud this decision.
So we can no longer just take a picture of a receipt to create a transaction and have the information prefilled (mostly)? If so, I need a new software because it was the best feature you offered.
Ya, this is not for the customer this is for WAVE. The functionality was always there. The app made it convenient for the client. Nice spin.
The extreme convenience of capturing your receipts on the go so that you won't have to save them and remember digging them out at a later time is one of the golden features of Wave. I sincerely hope you have a similar functionality in this new set up?
I don't understand why this is easier. Before, I would either scan with the app or send an email and the expense was created per the receipt by Wave reading the receipt. Now, I will need to manually create the expense and then upload the receipt. That's another manual step.
I'm very disappointed. This was the original feature that brought me to your platform years and years ago and I've been a happy user ever since. I'm a software engineer myself and love the UI/UX and have been a long time user of your invoicing, estimating, reports, expenses, and receipts, etc features all year every year. I've been an evangelist for the platform to other entrepreneurs who need an accounting or invoicing solution.
Since I don't use the bank link feature and it doesn't make sense for my business this will be a huge pain for me on a weekly basis now. I'm going to have to figure out how to fix this hole in the workflow now and I can't imagine I'm the only one.
Any chance you would reconsider keeping this functionality and just creating a way for people to opt-in/out of the workflow that makes sense for their business?
The receipt functionality that is being removed (OCR) was the main reason I used you guys. Very disappointing, at least give us the option to use the feature or not.
When coupled with the fact that your import functionality is flakey at best and you randomly stopped supporting the fourth largest bank in Alberta, this means many more manual transactions.
Old way: get receipt at merchant. Snap photo with phone. Deal with it using nice big comfy screen when doing monthly/weekly accounting. (One click to delete duplicates)
New way: get receipt, take photo with phone. Do all accounting on 3 inch screen with no keyboard. Or... move photos to PC. Find transaction. Manually enter and edit transaction. Upload photo manually. Manually verify and enter details (no useful Meta data attached to photo). Manually clean-up and delete photos from phone and wherever they were stored.
Terrible “improvement”.
Ken
I am also disappointed. OCR functionality is so useful and we used the Receipts app all the time. The duplicate we used for verification and accountability.
This is terrible news. The ability to take a picture of my receipts and let the app create a transaction was the reason I started using Wave in the first place and is still the primary thing I need it for. If this does get discounted, I will need to look else where.
I am so disappointed to hear this. Receipt entered transactions is a primary reason I chose this site. It allows me to enter on the go without being tied to the computer. You say that the mobile website will be easily accessible but it sounds like the transactions will need to be entered before you can add the receipts and that adds a lot of time to my record keeping. So very sad to loose the receipt app.
So disappointed!!!
You guys took one of the better functionality of Wave and close it.
It's not making any sense to make the change for the user side, I can't believe you are saying it comes from the users.
I am surely considering looking for a better solution now, and I'm sure I'm not the only one!
So the greatest functionality of your entire platform is being taken away? And now I have to log into the website on my phone to capture a receipt. That's not user friendly. I use apps on my phone. I rarely type in a website or go to a bookmark to use a desktop interface on my phone. To be clear, the app had issues, didn't work well when it wasn't on wi-fi and was never truly fixed, but this seems like a backward step. Time to find a new app and platform. If anyone has any suggestions, please post them.
If there really were people wanting g the ability to attach a photo on the website that could be easily added (oh, like other accounting programs have had for about 20 years) without removing the mobile integration.
Does anyone have recommendations for a reasonably priced but functional service?
Since I pay for the Payroll service, it will be hard to switch mid year, but wave is showing that it’s really only made for very small operations. It doesn’t scale.
I strongly disagree with this decision. Now if make a purchase and it takes 24+ hours for the transaction to sync over from my bank, I have to just store the receipt before uploading the photo.
The old recipe feature was one of the best parts of Wave and set it apart from other free software. If anything a better fix would be to just automatically merge transactions of the exact same dollar amount, the way "You Need a Budget" does.
Wow, what a step backwards and can't believe this is being spun as good news. Not being able to forward an email transaction or take a picture to create an expense is awful. Expensify and other tools have had this for probably a decade.
I don't say this lightly because I've enjoyed having Wave as part of my tech stack for a really long time, but this will likely lead me to start searching for other solutions. No reason why letting people attach images to existing transactions has to delete what are obviously loved features judging from the comments above.
If anyone finds an alternate to Wave that still has the OCR functionality, please post it. I don't link to my bank account so this is a major blow, and will add hours to my accounting.
Thank you!! This is a game changer, and I'm excited to see it rolled out
Reading between the lines, it seems for the migration to the new system Wave won't automatically attach the legacy "Done" receipt images to the transactions they've been posted to (merged or otherwise); if that's true, and we wanted to attach the original receipts to the existing transactions through the new process, we'd have to download them all in bulk, and one-by-one find all the transactions they are associated with to attach them back? This is not a deal-breaker for me personally, but a few of our clients have leveraged the Receipts function for years to attach receipts to transactions, and it would be helpful if the legacy images were automatically re-attached to the associated transactions using the new system, even if it were just a one-time migration process. Thoughts?
You guys are obviously not listening to your customers if you are removing that feature. This list of comments is proof of that. You guys need to reconsider this decision as it's one of the only things that separates you from your competition.
I know that if you proceed, I'll be moving all my books over to a new program in 2022.
While I applaud adding the upload/attach receipt function in the actual transaction view, I echo the majority of others' sentiments. Losing the OCR processing and transaction creation automation is a major blow.
I sure hope you assessed an option to charge for that functionality. It seems that it would be worth a few bucks a month to many.
Please, hit pause on this decision, float a community survey, and reassess.
Yet again you are taking away functionality that you obviously did not understand the value. For those that travel and need the receipts for invoicing, capturing on the fly without having to logon to the website and automatically extracting the data via OCR was hugely valuable. Between this and your inability to find a partner that can work with all major credit cards (yes I'm a capital one user) I also have to look for an option.