I was just informed by Wave staff the forwarding emails has been shut off and each receipt has to be a new email as an attachment. Many receipts that are received are in the body of the email. This would now require us to save the email as a PDF, then open a new email, attach the PDF, then send to Wave. This increases time and workload that a small business simply doesn't have. Previously, we would just forward the email and it would process. It is critical that this be turned back on
Thank you
Since starting in Wave, the team informed us that forwarding receipts was never really allowed. We learned that it was a happy accident which happened to be working for the customers. Our receipts team did some other work (unrelated to the forwarding issue) and since then this function has seemed to turn off again. I'm sure the response would be "well can someone break it again so that we can forward receipts again" and I think this makes sense, though the mentality behind the team is that as we advance in a more mobile age, our team has been focusing more on our mobile receipts app. As more people operate on a mobile platform we are putting more of our efforts into getting our receipts app to be the best we can make it!
Thank you @Barsin for the explanation. The mobile app is great for physical receipts where you can quickly take a photo of it. However, the mobile app does nothing for anything e-commerce where there are e-mailed receipts and not physical receipts. We are slowly moving away from physical receipts and have noticed that even brick-and-mortar locations are moving to e-mailed receipts. Home depot and any place that uses Square for example. Please forward to the appropriate team that we need this functionality as small business owners.
I completely agree with GlennF. I just tried forwarding a receipt; checked my Wave account to find it missing; and went to the Help Center which brought me to the disappointing news posted here : (
How long does it typically take for receipt to appear in your account online after sending via email? I assumed it would be instant, but apparently not.
Obviously the Wave team doesn't travel or charge their customers with the receipt details from those travels. Uber/Lyft/Airlines - they only send you an email with an attachment. As a consultant that travels every week, having to stop, get out the laptop, print to a PDF, etc. But until this "fix" I have just forwarded the email and it worked. You might actually want to look at the usage patterns and talk to customers before "fixing" something that was actively being used.
To @GlennF - this is what mobile looks like. Let us use the tools we need when and where we are. Don't force us into using a desktop while you plan and work on something new.
@Callllcat It shouldn't take longer than a few minutes -- how long have you been waiting for the receipt to land in your account? Let us know when you get a chance so we can do some further investigating if needed.
@DavidBerndt You can take a screenshot of the PDF file (from the attachment that was sent to your email) on your phone, and you should still be able to upload it using the Receipts app as expected. I've just recreated this on my test account with a plane ticket that I also recently purchased, which worked fine. Hopefully the same outcome can work for you. If you could test it out and let me know the results, that would be appreciated.
@JamieD - Yes that can work - assuming it all fits on a single screen. But it still adds steps over a simple forward that has worked for the last 2 plus years and then was disabled without notification
This is extremely frustrating as I've been a wave user for 5 years + and have never had a problem emailing a receipt until last week. Out of all the hundreds of vendors I email receipts from throughout the year, I can think of 1 that sends receipts as Attachments. That isn't how the internet works. Receipts are in the body of an email and wave has always been able to read them.. until now. Fix this wave, please! I don't want to use another service that offers this (shoebox, expensify) but this is a major issue for our company and how we manage expenses and submit them to our accounting software
For crying out loud Wave... How to completely screw up a decent workflow. Please would you mind fixing / rebreaking the forwarded receipts thing asap! I haven't had a physical business receipt for years, it's only pdfs or in-email receipts, and mostly the latter.
@Barsin could you advise me when the in-email receipts stopped working/being processed so I can go back through my emails and pdf+upload the missing receipts/invoices?
Hi @wildmercury , I've checked in with the team and they've let me know that significant changes were made on July 10th and 11th, with one of those being the day responsible. I'd recommend going back to July 10th!
@James_Hudson@Barsin and other admins. I'm sure you did your research on the receipts app and it's usefulness to your client base. I'd be really interested to know what sort of percentage of your clients still collect and process physical receipts and the frequencies. I've done a quick straw poll here in London of everyone in this coworking space of ~30 solo-preneurs/startups/freelancers and there is only one group of 3 that have more than a couple of physical receipts each month to process or claim, and that's just for fuel.
Looking back at last year there were only 24 physical receipts that I processed.
Anecdotal I know, but maybe North America still relies heavily on paper receipts/invoices? Anyway, would love to know.
Hi @methodagency , thank you for sharing your thoughts about this. Comments like yours really help our Product Team when it comes to building future improvements for existing products.
You're right in saying that there is a global shift in paperless receipts, and our receipts app optical character recognition primarily picks up the data on a paper receipt. If you wanted an image of your paperless receipt to appear, you could turn off the OCR under Settings > Receipts (in the web version of our app) and manually enter the information into your receipt upload. The image will then upload with whatever entries you put in.
I understand this is not the ideal workflow for your digital receipts. My apologies again. Our developers are aware of the concerns in this thread. We appreciate everyone reaching out and giving us some more info on your workflow and how you operate in Wave apps. This helps our team with future updates.
Just adding my name to chorus of people who'd like to be able to forward receipts contained in the body of an email. Happy to see Wave staff here listening, though.
I just discovered the email receipt pipeline was broken around July 10th. We have over 90% of receipts sent in the body of the email. This is literally the only reason why I use Wave vs. other accounting software. Please revert or I will switch!
Want to add my name to the growing list...
My company has been a Wave client for 3+ years, and until last month I was able to process in-email receipts perfectly fine. And then this capability was summarily removed?!? I travel extensively for work, and approx. 1/2 my receipts come as in-email receipts. It used to be really easy for me to just review those receipts on my phone, then forward on to Wave. Not so much now...
The workarounds Wave suggested include:
- take a screenshot of receipt on my phone and forward as attachment (okay, hotel receipt runs three pages long...)
- print to PDF and forward as attachment (okay, let me fire up my laptop on the car rental shuttle bus... oh wait, no wifi...)
Either way it's more steps and more work and far less convenient.
I fully support Wave wanting to make life easier for mobile users - yes please! But turning off the in-email receipt functionality just made it that much harder. Please bring this back ASAFP! It's not like there's any new coding required - this used to work...
Hey everyone. Just want to chime in here to say we are listening to your requests, I don't want you to feel ignored about your +1's on this particular feature. Right now, our Accounting teams primary focus is to get our users migrated over to the latest version of the software, but should we have any specific updates for you, we will definitely post in this thread. Appreciate the time you've taken to create a post and the feedback you've left.
What gives? I've been using your service without issue for over a year, have loved it & told every business owner I know. Then you're acquired and now the forward to @wave receipt option no longer syncs? This feature is THE reason I went with your service. If I'm lucky this feedback will eventually be reviewed by one of your new execs but will probably be dismissed because it's viewed as a corner case or not from a premium plan client or something like that. So charge me. Just don't take away functionality from SMBs who are relying on you - not to mention WITHOUT telling them. What a shortsighted move after acquiring new users. If the break is really due to a migration issue - typical acquisition bologna - then give us a heads up. I mean really, how much do you have to screw up a perfectly great business let alone screw over uses? I, along with the many other business owners in this thread, now have to go back and reconstruct receipts for the last two months. Thanks for the pay cut - VERY UNHAPPY.
Tell me, what's your new policy on how long you'll keep our records & where can I download all of mine since I've now completely lost confidence in your platform?
GIVE US BACK THE FABULOUS FOOLPROOF FUNCTIONALITY THAT WAVE HAD BEFORE H&R BLOCK RUINED IT
This is terrible. I chose wave over quickbooks because email receipts were clumsy and slow with intuit. Fixing a bug that creates more customer work should take precedence over migration work. Please fix forwarding ASAP, this is a lose the customer issue for us.
You should have at least informed businesses that you are turning this feature off (in-email receipts). I just spend half a day finding old receipts to file.
Now I have to print my email, and then attach it to another email to send it to wave.
What was wrong with the old system?
Woah woah... this feature has been turned off?
Im currently trying to set up a gmail filter to forward specific recurring monthly bills to this address.
1. Can you please authorise my Gmail forwarding email request?
2. Are you saying that you wont even except forwarded emails?
I have 10's of recurring bills each month - are you saying the ONLY way to process them is manually?
I completely understand your frustration and again I know our apologies aren't progress for you or your business, but unfortunately it's all I have to offer at the moment. I just want to reiterate to you and all of the folks on here that this has nothing to do with the H&R block acquisition. The timing was just unfortunate but not at all consequential from the merger.
If you'd like to do a full data export of all of your bookkeeping that can be found under Settings > Data export. Our system privately holds on to any personal data for about 3 years to be compliant with the know-your-customer act. This is only relevant if you're processing payments. Otherwise if you close your wave account the information is gone from our system completely, and cannot be unarchived.
As a support agent I'm not fully certain what was wrong with it, however I do know that it may have been a bit cumbersome when it comes to our back end system, and a lot more focus is shifting to our mobile receipts app.
+1 for being able to forward emailed receipts. I'm bewildered that this is clearly a high-priority issue for customers yet all the admins keep saying it's not a priority for the development team. I just switched to Wave and now I'm going to have to switch again? Does anyone know what accounting software does accept emailed receipts? Printing everything to pdf is simply not a viable option, especially for automatic expenses.
Frankly it's dumb that you have to email attachments from the primary email too. There should be a unique receipt email that corresponds to our Wave account and a place in the settings where we can add approved sender emails. That way certain people could simply (or even automatically) forward their email-body receipts as-is directly to Wave. One step. The way it is now they can't even send receipts to our bookkeeper to deal with. So everyone has to print to pdf, send as an attachment to the email associated with the Wave account, which someone else has to check and send to Wave just so it can come from that email, and then tell our bookkeeper that they've sent it? I'm sure the Wave team thinks we're being petty and entitled but it literally requires three people and hours of time. I specifically came to Wave because I thought they were the one solution that didn't suck at receipts.
Hi everyone. I'm sorry that we're unable to offer forwarding receipts, but this has been ticketed as a feature request so that we're able to track exactly how many posts are created and how many users are requesting it. Once again, thanks for all of your input and feedback!
Adding my business to the dozens of others that are affected and I'm sure hundreds of others that have yet to figure out this does not work anymore. How do you remove a feature customers have come to rely on and not notify anybody? Like others, I now have to go back through and find receipts that I assumed were being handled correctly. Fun fact: I bet your marketing depart isn't aware that this feature is turned off, as it's still listed on the website: https://www.waveapps.com/receipts.
Comments
I was just informed by Wave staff the forwarding emails has been shut off and each receipt has to be a new email as an attachment. Many receipts that are received are in the body of the email. This would now require us to save the email as a PDF, then open a new email, attach the PDF, then send to Wave. This increases time and workload that a small business simply doesn't have. Previously, we would just forward the email and it would process.
It is critical that this be turned back on
Thank you
To be completely honest @GlennF
Since starting in Wave, the team informed us that forwarding receipts was never really allowed. We learned that it was a happy accident which happened to be working for the customers. Our receipts team did some other work (unrelated to the forwarding issue) and since then this function has seemed to turn off again. I'm sure the response would be "well can someone break it again so that we can forward receipts again" and I think this makes sense, though the mentality behind the team is that as we advance in a more mobile age, our team has been focusing more on our mobile receipts app. As more people operate on a mobile platform we are putting more of our efforts into getting our receipts app to be the best we can make it!
I completely agree with GlennF. I just tried forwarding a receipt; checked my Wave account to find it missing; and went to the Help Center which brought me to the disappointing news posted here : (
How long does it typically take for receipt to appear in your account online after sending via email? I assumed it would be instant, but apparently not.
Obviously the Wave team doesn't travel or charge their customers with the receipt details from those travels. Uber/Lyft/Airlines - they only send you an email with an attachment. As a consultant that travels every week, having to stop, get out the laptop, print to a PDF, etc. But until this "fix" I have just forwarded the email and it worked. You might actually want to look at the usage patterns and talk to customers before "fixing" something that was actively being used.
To @GlennF - this is what mobile looks like. Let us use the tools we need when and where we are. Don't force us into using a desktop while you plan and work on something new.
I think you meant @Barsin
@Callllcat It shouldn't take longer than a few minutes -- how long have you been waiting for the receipt to land in your account? Let us know when you get a chance so we can do some further investigating if needed.
@DavidBerndt You can take a screenshot of the PDF file (from the attachment that was sent to your email) on your phone, and you should still be able to upload it using the Receipts app as expected. I've just recreated this on my test account with a plane ticket that I also recently purchased, which worked fine. Hopefully the same outcome can work for you. If you could test it out and let me know the results, that would be appreciated.
@JamieD - Yes that can work - assuming it all fits on a single screen. But it still adds steps over a simple forward that has worked for the last 2 plus years and then was disabled without notification
This is extremely frustrating as I've been a wave user for 5 years + and have never had a problem emailing a receipt until last week. Out of all the hundreds of vendors I email receipts from throughout the year, I can think of 1 that sends receipts as Attachments. That isn't how the internet works. Receipts are in the body of an email and wave has always been able to read them.. until now. Fix this wave, please! I don't want to use another service that offers this (shoebox, expensify) but this is a major issue for our company and how we manage expenses and submit them to our accounting software
For crying out loud Wave... How to completely screw up a decent workflow. Please would you mind fixing / rebreaking the forwarded receipts thing asap! I haven't had a physical business receipt for years, it's only pdfs or in-email receipts, and mostly the latter.
@Barsin could you advise me when the in-email receipts stopped working/being processed so I can go back through my emails and pdf+upload the missing receipts/invoices?
Hi @wildmercury , I've checked in with the team and they've let me know that significant changes were made on July 10th and 11th, with one of those being the day responsible. I'd recommend going back to July 10th!
ok... thanks @James_Hudson. Hopefully less than 100 email receipts to find, print as PDF and reprocess then...
@James_Hudson @Barsin and other admins. I'm sure you did your research on the receipts app and it's usefulness to your client base. I'd be really interested to know what sort of percentage of your clients still collect and process physical receipts and the frequencies. I've done a quick straw poll here in London of everyone in this coworking space of ~30 solo-preneurs/startups/freelancers and there is only one group of 3 that have more than a couple of physical receipts each month to process or claim, and that's just for fuel.
Looking back at last year there were only 24 physical receipts that I processed.
Anecdotal I know, but maybe North America still relies heavily on paper receipts/invoices? Anyway, would love to know.
Hi @methodagency , thank you for sharing your thoughts about this. Comments like yours really help our Product Team when it comes to building future improvements for existing products.
Hey again @wildmercury
You're right in saying that there is a global shift in paperless receipts, and our receipts app optical character recognition primarily picks up the data on a paper receipt. If you wanted an image of your paperless receipt to appear, you could turn off the OCR under Settings > Receipts (in the web version of our app) and manually enter the information into your receipt upload. The image will then upload with whatever entries you put in.
I understand this is not the ideal workflow for your digital receipts. My apologies again. Our developers are aware of the concerns in this thread. We appreciate everyone reaching out and giving us some more info on your workflow and how you operate in Wave apps. This helps our team with future updates.
Just adding my name to chorus of people who'd like to be able to forward receipts contained in the body of an email. Happy to see Wave staff here listening, though.
I just discovered the email receipt pipeline was broken around July 10th. We have over 90% of receipts sent in the body of the email. This is literally the only reason why I use Wave vs. other accounting software. Please revert or I will switch!
I am happy to pay for this feature.
Want to add my name to the growing list...
My company has been a Wave client for 3+ years, and until last month I was able to process in-email receipts perfectly fine. And then this capability was summarily removed?!? I travel extensively for work, and approx. 1/2 my receipts come as in-email receipts. It used to be really easy for me to just review those receipts on my phone, then forward on to Wave. Not so much now...
The workarounds Wave suggested include:
- take a screenshot of receipt on my phone and forward as attachment (okay, hotel receipt runs three pages long...)
- print to PDF and forward as attachment (okay, let me fire up my laptop on the car rental shuttle bus... oh wait, no wifi...)
Either way it's more steps and more work and far less convenient.
I fully support Wave wanting to make life easier for mobile users - yes please! But turning off the in-email receipt functionality just made it that much harder. Please bring this back ASAFP! It's not like there's any new coding required - this used to work...
Hey everyone. Just want to chime in here to say we are listening to your requests, I don't want you to feel ignored about your +1's on this particular feature. Right now, our Accounting teams primary focus is to get our users migrated over to the latest version of the software, but should we have any specific updates for you, we will definitely post in this thread. Appreciate the time you've taken to create a post and the feedback you've left.
What gives? I've been using your service without issue for over a year, have loved it & told every business owner I know. Then you're acquired and now the forward to @wave receipt option no longer syncs? This feature is THE reason I went with your service. If I'm lucky this feedback will eventually be reviewed by one of your new execs but will probably be dismissed because it's viewed as a corner case or not from a premium plan client or something like that. So charge me. Just don't take away functionality from SMBs who are relying on you - not to mention WITHOUT telling them. What a shortsighted move after acquiring new users. If the break is really due to a migration issue - typical acquisition bologna - then give us a heads up. I mean really, how much do you have to screw up a perfectly great business let alone screw over uses? I, along with the many other business owners in this thread, now have to go back and reconstruct receipts for the last two months. Thanks for the pay cut - VERY UNHAPPY.
Tell me, what's your new policy on how long you'll keep our records & where can I download all of mine since I've now completely lost confidence in your platform?
GIVE US BACK THE FABULOUS FOOLPROOF FUNCTIONALITY THAT WAVE HAD BEFORE H&R BLOCK RUINED IT
This is terrible. I chose wave over quickbooks because email receipts were clumsy and slow with intuit. Fixing a bug that creates more customer work should take precedence over migration work. Please fix forwarding ASAP, this is a lose the customer issue for us.
You should have at least informed businesses that you are turning this feature off (in-email receipts). I just spend half a day finding old receipts to file.
Now I have to print my email, and then attach it to another email to send it to wave.
What was wrong with the old system?
Woah woah... this feature has been turned off?
Im currently trying to set up a gmail filter to forward specific recurring monthly bills to this address.
1. Can you please authorise my Gmail forwarding email request?
2. Are you saying that you wont even except forwarded emails?
I have 10's of recurring bills each month - are you saying the ONLY way to process them is manually?
Hey @ALaw
I completely understand your frustration and again I know our apologies aren't progress for you or your business, but unfortunately it's all I have to offer at the moment. I just want to reiterate to you and all of the folks on here that this has nothing to do with the H&R block acquisition. The timing was just unfortunate but not at all consequential from the merger.
If you'd like to do a full data export of all of your bookkeeping that can be found under Settings > Data export. Our system privately holds on to any personal data for about 3 years to be compliant with the know-your-customer act. This is only relevant if you're processing payments. Otherwise if you close your wave account the information is gone from our system completely, and cannot be unarchived.
@bd3517
Again I apologize but at this time our team is not prioritizing this feature at the moment.
@alexk_
As a support agent I'm not fully certain what was wrong with it, however I do know that it may have been a bit cumbersome when it comes to our back end system, and a lot more focus is shifting to our mobile receipts app.
@rickysynnot
Frankly it's dumb that you have to email attachments from the primary email too. There should be a unique receipt email that corresponds to our Wave account and a place in the settings where we can add approved sender emails. That way certain people could simply (or even automatically) forward their email-body receipts as-is directly to Wave. One step. The way it is now they can't even send receipts to our bookkeeper to deal with. So everyone has to print to pdf, send as an attachment to the email associated with the Wave account, which someone else has to check and send to Wave just so it can come from that email, and then tell our bookkeeper that they've sent it? I'm sure the Wave team thinks we're being petty and entitled but it literally requires three people and hours of time. I specifically came to Wave because I thought they were the one solution that didn't suck at receipts.
We used to be able to forward. Now I see that we can't. Will be looking for new accounting software.
Hi everyone. I'm sorry that we're unable to offer forwarding receipts, but this has been ticketed as a feature request so that we're able to track exactly how many posts are created and how many users are requesting it. Once again, thanks for all of your input and feedback!
Adding my business to the dozens of others that are affected and I'm sure hundreds of others that have yet to figure out this does not work anymore. How do you remove a feature customers have come to rely on and not notify anybody? Like others, I now have to go back through and find receipts that I assumed were being handled correctly. Fun fact: I bet your marketing depart isn't aware that this feature is turned off, as it's still listed on the website: https://www.waveapps.com/receipts.