Attaching receipts to already posted transactions
CreatrixTiara
Member Posts: 6
So I tend to do a combination of manual and automated bookkeeping, but not all of them start off with uploaded receipts (especially for things like Uber where the receipts are emailed).
Is there a way I can upload a receipt to a transaction AFTER I enter it into my accounts? Right now the process seems to be Upload Receipt -> Post Receipt to Account -> Merge with Related Transaction which seems highly inefficient.
(I'm checking right now with a current merged transaction and weirdly enough the receipt doesn't seem to have come along with the merge)
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Hey @CreatrixTiara . This is a request that we do get our fair share of, but this isn't something that's currently available in Wave. We appreciate your feedback on this and I'll gladly pass this onto the team so that they know we have another user reaching out about it.
Hey Guys.
Trying to figure out the optimal approach to using Wave. I was downloading all transactions from my bank and also scanning all receipts. When I process the receipts I seem to end up with duplicates in the Transaction side. I was expecting the receipts to just be added to the correct transaction automatically, this doesn't happen.
Is this not the intended use? Am I doing something wrong? How do you guys use the receipt portion of wave in a useful way?
Hey @onpoint. I completely hear where you're coming from here, and the workflow can be a little confusing. Essentially, if you're uploading your receipts, those transactions are already going to be created automatically, with the information from that receipt. Since you've got your bank connected/you're downloading your transactions from your bank already, then you're going to see those transactions in your accounts twice. Best bet here is going to be either deleting the bank connection transaction, or simply merging those two amounts together, which I'd personally recommend. You're not doing anything wrong at all!
Thank you @ConnorM. I really appreciate your response. A little disappointing that this can't somehow be automated but I guess that's too much to ask
Once we get through the backlog we should be fine. I appreciate you letting me know the process. Have a great day!
This whole process of uploading receipts (easily the worst part of your otherwise great software) is such a pain and too time-consuming for what really only needs to be an attachment to a transaction. Couldn't you just add an option to upload a receipt in the individual transaction details as a quicker alternative? That way, we don't have to waste time with "processing" and matching up receipts to actual transactions. This would save an immense amount of time and frustration and make things so much easier.
I understand having an alternative option through your current method, possibly for receipts for which a transaction isn't present for some reason, but given that 100% of my purchase transactions are imported automatically through bank connections, doing receipts separately is a huge waste of time.
Or if it can't be an official "receipt", could you at least add the ability to attach an attachment to a transaction for record-keeping? I'll use that as an easier receipt work-around and promise not to tell anyone. :-)
I'm in the same boat - see the feature suggestion that I posted. The receipt process is unnecessarily cumbersome. Hopefully Wave can do something about it.
Hey @recresults! Thanks for reaching out about this! I recognize this is a pain point for you and your business, so I hope that this is something we can change soon. I don't have any further updates to provide at this stage. We appreciate all your feedback you have provided here!
Okay so here's my feature request - format taken from the sticky post.
Briefly describe your business. What do you do? Who are your customers?
I have two businesses, but the one I'm primarily using Wave for currently is an HVAC service company. We serve mainly commercial clients.
What is the business, financing, or operational problem that you are facing, that your suggestion is intended to address?
The operational problem we are facing is that the workflow for saving receipts is a bit of a nightmare. Uploading receipts currently must be done separately from any other transaction records. This means there will always be a duplicate transaction created when uploading a receipt, which must be manually located and merged.
This causes the following workflow.
1. - Upload the receipt, either via phone app or website
1.5 - STOP - are you using the phone app? Then you must wait until getting to the PC to finish the workflow - otherwise there is no way to ensure you don't forget to merge some of the receipts.
2. Once at a PC, fill in the receipt details and post to accounting
3. Find the transaction created when receipt was uploaded (note, if the transaction must be split, don't forget to edit the transaction now, since you cannot split transactions during the upload process.
4. Go to the transactions page, and find the imported transaction which matches the receipt
5. Merge the transactions and check for errors, since merging will not always keep the correct data.
This must be done for every single receipt. For a business like mine, this is not practical and is very unfortunate because there is such a simple fix for this issue.
What outcome do you see your suggestion creating - i.e. what would your suggestion enable in your business; not what would it look like in Wave?
My suggestion would allow me or my employees to easily and quickly upload receipts to existing transactions, avoiding the extra time, potential duplicates, and errors caused by the current process.
OK, now how do you picture this outcome being achieved in Wave?
Who else do you think would find this outcome useful?
It's very very simple. Just add an "attach receipt" function when viewing existing transactions. I truly think ANYONE who uses Wave for keeping up with receipts will find this very useful. This would be such a helpful and practical thing to do, and it is directly in line with the posted priorities set by the Wave team.
"Bringing together all the different places in Wave where we ask you for banking information, so all this information can be entered only once, and maintained in one place."
Hey @millerhandc! Thanks for the solid post. I've moved your +1 for this feature idea into the appropriate thread, and appreciate you reaching out. Rest assured, this is one of the best spots that our developers take a look into when considering future updates to the platform.
Just wondering if anyone can help me on this. I'm trying to add an RECEIPT to an EXISTING transaction, is there any option to do that ?
Hey @Creon_Media! I've merged your post into an ongoing thread that's requesting this feature. Definitely appreciate your want for this feature, though it doesn't currently exist.
Hi, thought I'd follow up on this. I was surprised to discover that while I can attach the image of an expense receipt through the Wave Receipts mobile app, I CANNOT seem to do this through the desktop version when adding an expense. Does this mean that if I want to attach a receipt to an expense I have to create it through the mobile app every time? Or am I missing something?
Thanks for letting us know. It appears there is a lot of demand for the ability to attache receipts (and other documents) to expense inputs.
Hi @rmaerov . To be clear, when you add a receipt in the mobile app which creates a corresponding expense transaction, you can do the exact same thing in the web app under Purchases > Receipts. There is no ability in either the mobile or web app to actually attach a receipt to a pre-existing transaction at the moment, but you can always merge the receipt created transaction with another one.
+1 for drag-n-drop attachments to existing transactions. I can't believe this isn't a thing yet!
YES to this. The receipt workflow is so overly complicated and time consuming as-is.
Count me in for the ability to add a receipt to a transaction.
Another idea would be to upload the receipts, via mobile or web, they are not added to the Transactions page - but you can associate a receipt to a transaction once that transaction has been pulled from your bank account - like you do with a Bill - or even an Invoice. This would allow me to add as many receipts as I would like, find the matching transaction pulled from the bank, and then use the Category drop down and select an item like "Payment for a Receipt in Wave >" to match the Receipt to the transaction. When matched like this the Receipt would no longer be displayed in the list, like Invoices and Bills, and maybe have a MATCHED flag or something on the Receipt page.
Adding noise to this feature request, would love to be able to both add receipts to transactions (instead of having dupes and then trying to merge), AND be able to do the "email to upload" feature with simple email receipts from online transactions that don't use attachments. Right now have a convoluted and complicated Zapier flow setup with a couple of manual steps in between to try to help myself do this more than once a year (because I hate bookkeeping in general lol). Expense tracking is my primary use of Wave, would be awesome to have some additional features here.
+1 as well! Would be an amazing feature!
This would be a game changer!
Uploading/Drag n Drop receipts direct to transactions will be huge for WaveApps.
I can see iPad Pro / MS Surface products with cameras being used for receipts too
Please Wave Team we need this so badly!
To take it one step further: Make the iOS Receipts App a full functioning "Transaction App"
Direct upload to existing transaction, or create transactions on the fly. No need to merge, match, verify 3 times. It's unnecessarily over complicated at the moment
@GrantWHall @snarkstudios @LittleBiz Thank you for going into depth about how adding new features for attaching receipts to transactions would improve your workflow! Our product teams have been building out a roadmap for how to make the receipts function in Wave more prominent for our users, so your insight will be incredibly helpful here.
@SBenoit @Jasie @Joe_G I appreciate you including a +1 for these feature ideas. Would you be able to go into some detail about how such a feature would benefit you and your businesses? We always want to know more about how our users may benefit from product updates, so any insight you can provide would be great!
[Duplicated post...]
I'd be glad to, Qais!
I'm a professional bookkeeper with about a dozen Wave clients. Some of my clients like to use the Receipts feature to upload their records, but it makes a lot of extra work for me to tie it back to a matched transaction. This is the normal flow:
1. The client uploads a receipt to the Receipts page: Even if the conditions are ideal, the best we can expect is the name of the vendor, and the total amount. No subtotal, no tax, no description, and definitely no amounts. Most of my clients leave it in this state which I prefer to the alternative of them randomly posting receipts as malformed transactions to Accounting which breaks reconciliation until they are merged.
2. I check the Receipts page: (well, if I remember to... bonus: have a red dot, bell or something to show if there are new receipts that haven't been acknowledged) When I'm in the receipts portal, I frustratingly try to see what has been uploaded recently, because unfortunately there's no way to see when Wave received a particular receipt, and there's definitely no way to sort anything, only basic filter (all, processing, ready, or done). I don't post all receipts to accounting as it's more trouble than it's worth in this current state, so just seeing which ones are 'Ready' isn't enough, I need to figure out which one was the last one I ignored.
3. I post the transaction to Accounting: I open each receipt to show the posting dialog, then open each receipt image because there's no way I can read it that small. This opens in a new tab that I put somewhere else on my monitor (I can't imagine doing this from a single laptop monitor...). I fill in the details I can from the receipt image, and if I can't tell what card was used I'll have the Transactions page open (a third window...) to see if I can find it, so I can pick the right anchor account. I try to categorize it to the right line-item account, but strangely I cannot pick asset accounts (like when they purchase inventory), so I have to leave those as uncategorized for later. For taxes, if there are any I have to figure out what the subtotal is because the checkboxes rely on the always-blank subtotal field, and doesn't back-calculate it from the total (which your Transactions page does beautifully now). If this step becomes too tedious for what it's worth (like with gas receipts), I just skip it and leave it in 'Ready' state.
4. Process posted transactions: I flip over to the Transactions page because now I need to process this transaction further. The required steps: a) merge with sister transaction. The dates are often off, especially since Plaid imports on posting date, not transaction date, so I need to adjust that sometimes. The amounts are often off if the source receipt was in a foreign currency, so I need to adjust that before merging. b) change the category if I wasn't able to set it during posting (eg: asset accounts). c) mark it as reviewed because that's not an option from the Receipt dialog.
5. After processing all the receipts I have the patience to handle, I'll quickly double-check that the reconciliation didn't break, which typically means I missed merging a transaction.
So, that's what it looks like now, for me.
We spend all this time putting in the details for each of these receipts in a separate dialog, and when we 'Post' it to accounting, it creates a whole new transaction, and even if you edit this new transaction, the original receipt's details doesn't change because it's a whole different database. I don't know why we would bother saving a whole new set of data with the receipt, when the only thing that's important metadata for the receipt is: a) who/how/when it was uploaded, and b) what data was automatically recognized in the receipt (which doesn't need to be edited; it is what it is). Everything else should be stored in the Accounting database, when the receipt is utimately posted, and then those records would be linked so the transaction is associated with the receipt (and it's metadata). That way we won't have this immutable record of a posted receipt just sitting there causing OCD flair-ups.
What should it look like? For most users:
1. Client uploads a receipt: Your system does a better job of extracting key details to store along with the receipt as metadata. (It'd be great if we could set up some rules, too, but the bank feed needs that more, haha)
2. I review new uploaded receipts: I get notified with a little bell or red dot or something to let me know there are new receipts to review and acknowledge. I open up the dialog for one and you have an easy-to-use image-zoom tool that lets me zoom and hold details in view so I can type things it missed (this prevents me from having to open another tab). The input fields (which will be the Transactions or Reconciliation page's 'New Transaction' dialog) are pre-filled with as much detail as could be reasonably recognized in the source image. No more tax issues, no more lack of account choices, etc. [Important, if I don't want to do this I need to be able to click an 'Ignore' button that moves the receipt to another section of the Receipts page because it's either not a valid receipt/record, or not worth our time to post/merge].
3. I 'Match' to an existing transaction, or 'Post' as new: Here's the kicker, I would have two options for showing this in Accounting. Either 'Match', which brings up recent transactions that match (or are close) to the key details in the receipt, and it automatically updates the matching transaction with the right details, marks as reviewed (optionally) and attaches the receipt. The other option is to 'Post', as it does now, which is good in the case of accounts that don't auto-fetch (Due to Shareholder, Owner's Investment/Drawing, etc.)
4. Review the posted receipts: Rather than being in a 'Done' list, it should be a 'Linked' list, and it should show all receipts with which transaction it was linked to. Unlink a receipt? It goes to the 'Ready' list, but the linked transaction remains in Accounting.
And in an ideal world, you would be able to do steps 2 and 3 from the Transactions page in reverse, by filling out all the details from the Transactions page, and getting a little notification that there's a receipt that could be matched with it, and pull it in from there with as much detail as could be recognized from the image.
And here's the low-hanging fruit that comes after all the above is ready:
Let users upload any jpeg/png/gif/pdf file by simply dragging and dropping anywhere in an open transaction on the Transactions page! This will automatically upload the receipt and link it to the selected transaction, and in the background, the text-recognition will run so that when it's ready you can review the suggested changes to the transaction (or just leave it as an attachment because you've already added all the relevant details to the transaction.)
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk, haha.
Sebastien.
I agree with the majority, this whole duplicate transaction, merge this, and a lot of other time killing tasks make it difficult to do all this accounting stuff. Especially after physically working in a shop for 8 - 10 hours in the day and then to spend my evening deciphering all this accounting steps... i'm not an accountant.... can't afford one.... there's has to be a better way... SMH
Can't you all just add some A.I. to wave and have it ask me real questions like a real accountant? where's the receipt for this ... what did you buy this for? where did this cash come from? you have a bill due, how do you want to pay for it?... what are these charges for? ect...
Hi Sebastien @SBenoit! Wow, thank you very much for taking the time to write this post. We really appreciate the depth you have gone to explain you current process and the desired process this feedback is really useful for our team to have. I particularly like the 'low hanging fruit' of being able to drag and drop an image into a transaction. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and feedback in the Community with us!
Hi @OLIVERREIFF777! Thanks for reaching out! We do know accounting can be hard to do at the end of the day. As a lot of Wave users do not have an accounting background having questions poised that would help direct people could be really helpful!
I too would appreciate being able to attach a receipt to an existing transaction. The process of getting it done for existing transactions is a big oversight at Wave.
I would like to echo what @SBenoit posted. Their post truly was awesome! My only addition would be, make this possible for hardcopy invoice. Simply put, can I please just upload an pdf or image of my hardcopy invoice after I deliver the product to my customer. My invoices required a delivery/received signature at time of delivery, so I take a picture. I posted the following on another thread concerning custom invoices.
I agree. The ability to attach receipts or even a check that you have received is important. Quickbooks and even akaunting can do it.
Hi, is there any word on being able to attach receipts to an existing transaction, whether bank imported or otherwise? This feature seems to be on all the other bookkeeping software platforms I've seen and would be an amazing time saver. Thanks!
Hey there @Sean78 @Quickbooks
At this point no updates or ETA but it is something our team is very aware of and something the accounting team has discussed before. Thanks for your contribution to our community.