Receipt Scanning is provided by one of our partners, Sensibill, to allow you to keep track of your Expense Receipts by scanning them while you’re on the go and reviewing them later in your Uploads. Using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), details are automatically extracted from the scanned Documents and filled out for you when reviewing so you can quickly create Expenses and Bills.
There are multiple ways to upload your Expense and Bill Receipts:
Go to the Expenses section, then click on the Uploads sub-section underneath and click on the Upload Documents button
Go to Expenses section, click on the down arrow next to the New Expense button and click on Upload Receipt
Go to the Expenses section, click on the Bills sub-section underneath, then click on the down arrow next to the New Bill button and select Upload Bill
From there, choose your JPEG, PNG or PDF files to upload. It can take up to 10 minutes for the document to be scanned until it's uploaded into your FreshBooks account. Uploading 20+ Documents can take up to 2 hours for all of them to be scanned successfully.
Once they’re scanned, you can find them in the Uploads sub-section, where they'll remain indefinitely until made into an Expense or deleted.
Review a Document
Access all scanned Documents in the Uploads section and begin reviewing them with the below steps:
Click on the Expenses section
Then click on the Uploads sub-section underneath
Click on Review next to any scanned Document
Under Document Type, choose between Expense or Bill
For an Expense, in the Review screen, click on the More Actions button and select Assign to Client/Project or Currency if needed
Next, look over any populated fields in the Expense Details and ensure they are correct, or if missing, add them in
If needed, include details in the Add description field
For a Bill, in the Review screen, click on the More Actions button to change the Currency if needed
Next, look over any populated fields in the Bills Details and Bill Item(s) and ensure they are correct, or if missing, add them in
If needed, click on Add bill item to add additional lines to your Bill
Click Create and a new Expense or Bill will be created with this Document attached as a Receipt. The Document will also be moved out of your Uploads into the list of Expenses or list of Bills.
Note: While reviewing a scanned Document, click on either:
Download - Use the down arrow button to download a copy of the Document
Zoom - Use the minus and plus buttons to zoom in and out of the Document while you’re looking over the details
Additional Uploads Actions
Hover over any Document to quickly perform any of these actions:
Delete - Click on the trash can icon to delete the Document
Or to update multiple Documents in bulk, check off multiple boxes, then click on the Bulk Actions button and choose either:
Review Documents - Review several Documents to create Expenses or Bills for them
Delete - Move several Documents to your deleted Documents list
Send by Email
Email documents to your unique email address and these documents will automatically be scanned for you to review in your Uploads later. To find your unique email address for email forwarding, use the below steps:
Click on the Expenses section
Then click on the Uploads sub-section underneath
In the Uploads section, click on Upload Documents and select Send by Email
Click on Copy to copy the unique email address, and paste it in your preferred email client as a new contact for future use.
Notes:
Only one document can be emailed at a time; multiple attachments are not supported
The document must be in the body, or attachment of the email, not in a link to download outside of the email
It can take up to 30 minutes after emailing for the document to be scanned and ready to review in the Uploads section
FAQs
Why did my document not scan successfully? Receipt scanning depends on having a clean and well-lit photo to extract information from. There are several reasons why the scan may fail:
Incorrect file type - Only JPEG, PNG and PDFs are accepted file formats
Receipt is blurry - Ensure camera isn’t shaking or too far away from receipt
Receipt is too crumpled - Try to smooth out the wrinkles and ensure receipt is flat as possible
Receipt is too faded - The print ink may have faded, try taking the photo of the receipt with a higher contrast
Receipt is taken on light background or odd angle - try a darker background, or arrange the receipt so edges align with the screen of your camera’s preview image
