Overview of receipts
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Overview of receipts
Even the most organized among us can have problems keeping all our receipts in the right place. When you're busy trying to run your small business along with rushing around shopping for business an...
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According to some definitions an address is considered personal information. In my business I have to reimburse some people for travel expenses. Generally, their travel receipt contain their name and address, making the receipts sensitive information. Does that mean that such receipts should not be scanned into Wave?
hi @Old_Professor, ultimately this is up to your discretion and what you/your clients feel comfortable with, however, no one at Wave never sees your customer's personal information. You can read our full privacy and security policies here, and share them with your customers as well if you'd like!
Categorizing expenses from uploaded receipts seems very awkward. For example, I pay $100 for parking out of my own pocket. The simplest way to record this is a CR to owner investment/drawings and a DR to travel expense. But the interface seems to want this to record as a "withdrawal" (which to me sounds like owner draw [a DR not a CR], not an owner investment to cover a paid expense [a CR not a DR]) and categorize as travel expense; if I change to "deposit", then the category changes to "refund of travel expense". Neither of these makes sense. Can you please explain what "withdrawal" and "deposit" mean in the simple language of debits and credits? To "withdraw" or "deposit" a travel expense is completely meaningless, or at least hopelessly ambiguous.
I agree with the previous comment. The language change is VERY confusing and I see a lot of people struggling to wrap their head around "withdrawals vs deposits". If I upload a personal receipt for a business expense it should be simple to label it as a credit to owner investment and a debit to a relevant expense account. I guess using Account and Category is a simple enough way to express this... but deposit and withdrawal is making things unclear. It almost seems like I have to label my deposit into the company as a withdrawal when I upload a receipt. Can someone explain this to me in simple terms?
To further complicate things, your help page suggests a method that seems overly complicated:
https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/208622836-Handling-business-expenses-with-a-personal-bank-account
I would love to see some sensible support on this; Using your personal credit card for an occasional business expense shouldn't have to be a huge bookkeeping hurdle. I hate to jump on the bandwagon of upset customers because I understand you're trying to improve your platform. I'd just like some straightforward clarification on this issue. I have a degree in business, I understand the fundamental concepts of accounting... but I'm really lost with the new wording.
Hey @dofzin, great question and I understand how the language here is a bit confusing. A withdrawal transaction shows money going out of your business, in other words an expense, and a deposit transactions is money going to your business, an income transaction. So for the example you mentioned, $100 travel expense, paid out of your own pocket that expense/withdrawal transaction is Debiting your travel expense account and Crediting Owner Investment / Drawings.
This Help Centre Article explains debits & credits in Wave, which may also help!
Hey @Hugaluga, thank you for reaching out. In regards to handling business expenses with a personal bank account, I know it can be a complicated task, but it doesn't have to be a huge bookkeeping hurdle, that is the last thing we want for you. Essentially any purchase you make for your business with your personal account needs to be categorized to Owner Investment/drawing. This requires a journal transaction in your business account where you are Debiting the appropriate expense account and crediting Owner Investment/Drawings.
You may also be interested in having a read through this Community post, in particular the last post where we have outlined exactly what's involved in these transactions. I hope this helps to explain things!
when adding a receipt using the android app, once its added to the account file, if the bank account is linked it duplicates the transaction. so it shows the bank transaction, and the receipt transaction as two different spends, this means you have to go through every receipt, find the corresponding bank transaction and merge them together. It takes ages and makes the receipt app totally pointless
Hello,
I like the receipt utility. But I have one concern pertaining to security. After uploading the receipt and finishing the transactions, the receipts can be accessed through a link within the transactions. It looks like anyone that has this link can access the receipt (no log in required). This is a huge security issue.
For instance, one of my receipts has following link: https://wave-prod-recpt.s3.amazonaws.com/media/receipt_images/22217405/****intentionally modified this link****.pdf
Note that I modified the above link; but my point is that anyone with the real link can access the receipt without having to log in.
Hey @TFCUK, I completely understand where you're coming from on this. Right now if you have your bank connected, it will import all of your transactions which can result in duplicates if you have already created transactions or uploaded receipts. We are working on building a mechanism which will acknowledge if the transaction already exists and prevent duplicate transactions but for now you will have to keep an eye out for those and merge/delete as is necessary. I am sorry for the inconvenience I know this can be tiresome.
Hey @APh, thanks for reaching out. You're right that receipt links are clickable outside of your Wave account, but I'm not sure how someone would access one of your receipt links without first having access to your account. It is advisable that you log out of your account when not using it, which would prevent anyone from accessing your data and also advisable to take caution if you are using your receipt links outside of Wave.
how do i create a receipt on payment received from the client? i obviously need to enter all payments received against my invoices to get a statement?
Hey @NewWave_user2 , thanks for reaching out!
Once your client pays an invoice and a payment has been recorded on the invoice you will have the option to send a receipt. This receipt is autofilled and will be sent straight to your customers email!
Hi @MattSylvestre . If you find the pre-existing categorizations don't quite fit what you're looking for, you can always create a new account by heading over to Accounting > Chart of Accounts and creating a new account there.
Hey @Piper . After the receipt has been scanned into the system and approved, it will appear in your Transactions page as an expense. There, you can select the transaction and click on "split this withdrawal." You can then continue to split it out as many times as necessary, categorizing each and every split into a different expense.
In this same transaction window, you will also see a hyperlink to view the original receipt for reference.
Thanks. Cool!
hello team, hope you are well. I run a tour operator with Indirect Expenses (Rent, Electricity, Maintenance, Cleaning..) and Direct Expenses (Tour Expenses: Lunch for clients, Entrance Fees, Vehicle Rental, Fuel)...how should i separate them? also, is there a way to create folders in the Direct Expenses for each tour going out? (ex: Tour 1; Tour 2; Tour 3) in order to allocate expenses to a specific tour. Thanks indeed! Massimo
1) Indirect Expenses: Receipts for running of the business
2) Direct Expenses: Receipts for the specific tours into different folders
Hey @Massimo1974 and Welcome to Wave's Community Forum!
It sounds as though what you may be referring to are 2 types of expenses known as "Operating Expenses" and "Cost of Goods Sold" (COGS). I'd encourage you to take a look at this article that outlines the differences between the two: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/101314/what-are-differences-between-operating-expenses-and-cost-goods-sold-cogs.asp
In terms of how you can handle these in Wave, you can add the expenses categories to your Chart of Accounts and select whether the expense is an operating expense or COGS. This will then be able to be used when categorizing the receipts accordingly.
In terms of the second question, there is a discussion ongoing about project based accounting here: https://community.waveapps.com/discussion/comment/18648#Comment_18648
I have used the IOS app to upload a receipt but it did not appear on my wave account on my desktop?
I would appreciate your assistance. Thanking you kindly.
Hi,
I've a question here.
In purchase,
If I posted a receipt to a wrong payment account, then edit the generated transaction to the right payment account, the posted receipt still has the old wrong payment account, it has not been updated.
Is this expected behavior?
So to make the posted receipt correct, I'll have to delete both the transaction and the receipt records, upload the receipt again? Because there's no edit in the posted receipt record.
Thanks.
Hey @ShanelledaCosta. Just to clarify, were you able to make sure that you were in the correct business that you uploaded the receipt to? If you could include a screenshot of the receipt that processed in the mobile app, as well as the Receipts section in the web version of the software, that would be super helpful in investigating what could be happening here.
Hey @Morayfield
At this point in our current receipts feature once you post a receipt to the transactions page it unfortunately cannot be edited. You'll want to delete the receipt and re-upload the image, during this uploading process you can edit the receipt details including the proper account type. Moreover some may also consider the workaround which would be a journal transaction from the incorrect account to the proper account.
But I imagine you may want to do the former so that you can keep a properly attached receipt image to your transaction instead of having a third journal entry to show this movement.
Hope this helps! Have a great weekend.
Hi, I'm new to this whole digital way of organizing and book keeping. Any suggestions on organizing my receipts in the most efficient and quickest way? I have built up receipts for my first year of trading and now want them filed and uploaded so i can be up to date and sort out my tax in the future. I understand i have left this awhile and should of sorted this out in the past but too late for that now sooner i take action the better i guess. Would really appreciate some guidance thanks
Hey @Jay100 . I'd recommend trying to use our mobile Receipts app to get these receipts into Wave. This should hopefully make it the easiest for you so you can take a picture and upload it into Wave automatically. I'd then approve the Receipts after about every ~10 uploaded so you can keep a steady flow of receipts being uploaded and being imported into your business.
I've recently synched my bank account with Wave so have all my transactions in place but without their corresponding receipts. When I upload a receipt, a new transaction is created, which means I've now got two of the same transactions (one imported from my bank and the other with the receipt). How do I avoid this so I just have the receipt stored somewhere without creating a new transaction? Thanks!
Hey @MironD123
So the current way would be to merge these two transactions. Select the check boxes beside the two transactions, and at the top you will be able to merge them. With that being said, our developers seem to be looking into a way to simply attach a receipt image to your transaction. So once your bank imports the transaction you can just attach a file to it. This is in the works! But for now try merging the two transactions.
Can employees use the purchases > receipts functions to submit expenses?
@drjasonharrison Technically you could add your employees as collaborators on your account, however, they will have access to other parts of your data such as Invoices, Transactions, Balances, as well as anything report related (the receipts would also only post to your account for data collection).
@Qwikcars123 It depends on the type of image that you've uploaded. If it's a screenshot of a webpage for your receipt, you won't be able to see it in the preview, but you should be able to click on 'view original receipt' to see the full receipt.
Any update on this? I attached lots of transactions through credit card and bank. Then I use this as checklist to make sure I have all the receipts. Need to be able to just attach receipt file to transaction.
Sometimes my receipts are double sided. How do or can I assign two receipt photos to one transaction?