Receipt Bank called

Receipt Bank called

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From Peter Saxton

I just had a phone call from Receipt Bank. I asked about pricing. They wanted to charge at least £10 per month for each client no matter how small. They don't calculate a subscription by how much you use them it is more how many clients you have. Most of my clients are quite small. It would appear that I'm not suitable for Receipt Bank. They were explaining how such good value they were. I pointed out that I could pay about £120 for Scan2Invoice and use it as much as I wanted without anything else to pay. "Not heard of them". I said I thought you would be aware of your competition. They are a Xero add-on and they seem to do exactly the same as Receipt Bank. At this point they seemed to realise I wasn't a mug.

Have I misunderstood Receipt Bank? They seem ridiculously expensive compared to similar products on the market.

Replies (36)

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By stratty
21st Feb 2017 10:46

I don't rate them.

Signed up for a "trial" period and they charged a flat rate even though the clients had no usage. Not impressed at all.

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Jennifer Adams
By Jennifer Adams
21st Feb 2017 11:06

I talked to them at Accountex last year and I thought they are expensive. I've just had a talk to MyFrimsApp - they have their own equivalent to Receipt Bank coming but you have to pay £250 + VAT (Platinum) for this facility. With MTD coming this must be an area that others will get into. I'm tempted to leave and see?

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
21st Feb 2017 11:18

Peter look at OCREX its cheaper than Receipt Bank and they have pricing where the accountant is charged on the amount they process over as many clients as you want so you don't pay for unused capacity like RB.

So far it also seems more accurate than RB as you don't get the duplicated suppliers like I seem to get with RB.

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Replying to Glennzy:
By petersaxton
21st Feb 2017 11:28

Thanks
That seems a more sensible way to price.
You should look at Scan2Invoice though. It's a one off fee - even if there are payments for upgrades it seems good value.

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RLI
By lionofludesch
21st Feb 2017 12:28

There'll be more stuff on the market later this year.

I don't want to tie myself in to anything just yet. It's too much hassle to switch software providers.

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Replying to lionofludesch:
By petersaxton
21st Feb 2017 12:47

The problem is there isn't much time left.

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Replying to petersaxton:
RLI
By lionofludesch
21st Feb 2017 13:26

Only HMRC don't realise that.

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RedFive
By RedFive
21st Feb 2017 13:07

Thanks Peter that's a great link and worth looking at.

Out of interest what scanner did you go for, and how much was it?

I'm in same boat as Lion in that I'm still waiting to see what happens in this fast moving market....I do have a fair few clients on QBO now and that has become my cloud choice. Xero just too expensive and too flashy for me.

I'm a big fan of bank feeds on QBO (thanks to advice from Glennzy) and integrations such as this look good - no way am I paying another fee per month for something like Receipt Bank though. I'm in the tight up north brigade and have to cushion the cost of QBo already for my poor dears.

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Replying to RedFive:
By petersaxton
21st Feb 2017 13:35

Xerox Documate 4830
http://www.xeroxscanners.com/en/uk/products/item.asp?PN=DM4830
It was about £1,500 inc VAT

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By pedre
21st Feb 2017 13:17

I'm with you. Being a part time practice, I only have 2 clients that I thought could have benefited from Receipt Bank, but they wanted me to sign up 'at least 3', then pay '£25 per month for an account manager'.

I would have been happy to pay for two clients (and manage them). They've now pushed me away from the service with their unwillingness to work together.

In the meantime, I'm using Entryless. The first 300 invoices per month are free. The features are basic however.

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Man of Kent
By Kent accountant
21st Feb 2017 13:37

Jeez what a load of tight ars*s - it must be bloody grim "Oop North" (and in South London)!

Get with the program - Xero, Receipt Bank and a little bit of Autorec all the way!

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Replying to Kent accountant:
RedFive
By RedFive
21st Feb 2017 13:46

Do you actually do anything then? ;-)

And £1500 for a scanner? - blow me I can feed my family of four for a month, run 2 cars, pay my mortgage and all household bills, have many nice meals out and still have change from that for a night down the flicks!

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Replying to Kent accountant:
RLI
By lionofludesch
21st Feb 2017 13:55

Quote:

Jeez what a load of tight ars*s - it must be bloody grim "Oop North" (and in South London)!

Get with the program - Xero, Receipt Bank and a little bit of Autorec all the way!

The less I waste on software, the less I need to work.

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Replying to lionofludesch:
Man of Kent
By Kent accountant
21st Feb 2017 15:28

Like i said, get with the program. You'll save time having to pop down the market for quills, ink and parchment.

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Replying to Kent accountant:
RedFive
By RedFive
21st Feb 2017 16:07

He he, Kent's been on the Sipsmith I think, he's quite animated about this :-)

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Replying to Kent accountant:
By petersaxton
21st Feb 2017 14:02

why do you think Receipt Bank is worth the extra? I dont mind paying for something if it's good but there's plenty of cheaper options that are just as good.

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Replying to petersaxton:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
21st Feb 2017 14:55

Hi Peter

At the minute I use RB if the client has a decent admin person who is capable of running it themselves. I find the app and the exps part are good if clients are able to use it. I have managed to convert a few hairy builders who used file invoices in the footwell of their vans into user the RB app.

I use Ocrex for in house stuff where I do the scanning and management of input as its cheaper.

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Replying to petersaxton:
Man of Kent
By Kent accountant
21st Feb 2017 15:26

Worth extra? The client pays for it and in most cases does all the scanning.

Being able to view all client's RB progress on one screen saves time managing the process.

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By BigBadWolf
21st Feb 2017 14:04

I have just moved over from Receipt bank to Ocrex's Auto Entry - it's fantastic in that you can use it for converting Bank Statements to csv, as well as both sales & purchase invoices all from the same place. Its pay as you go, set up as many clients & users on there as you want for no extra cost.

It integrates with all the major cloud players.

The only thing its missing at present is the ability to create employee expense claims like you can in receipt bank

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Logo
By marks
21st Feb 2017 23:36

Receipt Bank is only worth it if the client has on average 50 purchase invoices a month and therefore you would be charged £10 a month. Also good for clients that have a few main suppliers and the odd other supplier as you can set up to auto publish so it can go from scan/phone to receipt bank to Xero without you having to lift a finger.

For smaller clients, say 30 invoices or less a month, autoentry is more cost effective as you can buy 500 credits for £75 or 15p on average which you can use across any number of clients. You can also import sales invoices and bank statements (3 credits per statements) for jobs that you need to import these in.

We mainly use Autoentry as we find its processing more accurate than Receipt Bank. Autoentry recognises duplicates eg where you have an receipt and also the credit card chitty for it and doesnt post both. It also doesnt post things like suppliers statements. Receipt Bank doesnt do this so you can end up with the same receipt being processed twice.

So really depends on average of number of invoices the client has each month and the number of suppliers they have each month. We use both RB and Autoentry on a client by client basis but the staff prefer Autoentry for ease of use and accuracy of processing.

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By JimLittle
22nd Feb 2017 12:26

I use entryless and is fairly simpler than receipt bank which I find confusing in parts.

I find Receipt Bank quite patronising towards accountants and they have the audacity to charge accountants £25 for a dashboard.

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By jaybee661
24th Feb 2017 08:43

"£25 per month for an account manager..."

"£25 per month for a dashboard..."

I have used Receipt Bank for many years and must have missed these two charges.

I have clients that happily scan all their paperwork using their mobile phone so I no longer need to visit them to collect paperwork, I have electronic copies all stored in Receipt Bank plus I have electronic copies stored in Xero, plus they're all coded up ready for entry into the system, plus I have totally changed my client's life as they hate paperwork. One particular client said he'd 'never seen anything like it'.

For all that I pay £9.99. And that's too expensive is it? I must have missed something on this thread.

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Replying to jaybee661:
Man of Kent
By Kent accountant
24th Feb 2017 10:55

Nope you've got it ;o)

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By lh3f9764bg1g
26th Mar 2017 16:15

I'm wondering about Scan2Invoice . . . . . has anybody actually used it? It looks to me that it ties into QuickBooks or XERO (with other packages pending). However . . . . . if I have QuickBooks and some of my clients DO NOT then how can I use Scan2Invoice for them? I can't quite get my head around it . . . . . would we need a separate Scan2Invoice account/installation for each client? And what about the clients not using QuickBooks or XERO? Can't I use Scan2Invoice to extract a load of invoice info into something like, say, Excel? I'm also worried about it from a practical point of view . . . . . how do you guys go about scanning those flimsy, tiny invoices (e.g. from filling stations)?

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By nodhedz
28th Mar 2017 09:45

I spoke to RB and didn't mind the £9.99 fee per Client but couldn't understand why I had to pay £25pm for the dashboard when I was bringing Clients to them!

Has anyone got their Clients using the Xero App for scanning bills? Seems ok for those with a small quantity of scanning to do each month.

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Replying to nodhedz:
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By DMGbus
28th Mar 2017 14:06

Quote:

I spoke to RB and didn't mind the £9.99 fee per Client but couldn't understand why I had to pay £25pm for the dashboard when I was bringing Clients to them!

Has anyone got their Clients using the Xero App for scanning bills? Seems ok for those with a small quantity of scanning to do each month.

The important thing to remember about RB scanning and uploading to Xero is the fact that MANY ERRORS OCCUR, here's some of this week's examples:

1. Car parking ticket clearly showing both itemised VAT and VAT number - no VAT reclaimed by RB

2. Invoice from a US supplier in US $ with no VAT shown (and no VAT number) - RB computes VAT and reclaims it

So RB users need to be prepared to "audit" what RB produces otherwise expect incorrect VAT returns (and definitely NOT "100% accurate" (**) reporting for MTD in due course).

(**) RB allegedly told HMRC that their scanning process was 100% accurate as part of the MTD con job.

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RLI
By lionofludesch
28th Mar 2017 14:39

I recently dealt with something called Kashoo - Canadian company, I believe - the client had got it through his bankers, Lloyds.

Anyway, you can attach a photo of your invoice to each entry (just like John the Plumber). Unfortunately, the resolution on the client's phone wasn't really up to it and I couldn't decipher what he'd bought or how much he'd paid for it.

So good luck with that OCR software that'll run your accounts for you.

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RedFive
By RedFive
01st Apr 2017 19:31

I'm genuinely looking for some advice about real world operation of this.

Following this thread I have trialled OCREX AutoEntry and also purchased a very nice Fuji ix500 scanner (a bargain at £350).

I trialled using a Sage 50 client and also a QBO client and I'm not seeing the cost / benefit.

It takes me 9 minutes to enter 50 purchase invoices into Sage 50.

The ix500 scans those documents in 30 seconds. I then upload that PDF to AutoEntry maybe about 30 seconds.

I then go and make a cup of tea or do something else while AutoEntry processes in the background. Nice email saying it's all done some time later and I check through the uploads, then export to excel before firing up Sage 50 and importing in. Maybe 2 minutes not including the faff on I had setting up supplier codes to match Sage. QBO process quicker as you just hit 'upload', but still have to 'approve' each entry e.g. had 1 invoice that was 10 pence wrong.

So that's about 3 minutes for the scanning process (being generous).

6 minutes saved - and 50 credits cost me £9.

Extrapolate that up and it's costing me £90 per hour to scan rather than manually input. Or put it another way why would I spend £9 to save 6 minutes, £18 to save 12 minutes etc?

All my clients are on fixed monthly fees but I'm maybe around the £50 - £75 per hour charge our rate so I'm not recovering that way. Am I too cheap?

Other than getting the clients to scan themselves which would work for less than 10% of my client base I can't see how I can make this work.

Before I send the ix500 back to Amazon (which I don't want to because it's got a cool blue light on it) can my more experienced peers enlighten me as to what I'm missing?

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Replying to RedFive:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
01st Apr 2017 21:41

Keep the scanner as you will need it.

The value comes with scale and getting your clients involved.

When a client is involved it is costing you £10 to process 50 invoices. for £100 you get 10 of your clients expenses sorted without you having to put in any time, its also a fully paperless system without you having to pick invoices up or client to send to you.

Also from my point of view I have been in management roles for 20 years and become de skilled in the data entry side of things so RB and Autoentry re huge time savers for me, as would lucky to earn £10 per hour if I was doing the bookkeeping.

I certainly could not process 50 invoices in 9 minutes.

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By chatman
26th Apr 2017 10:09

For me, the advantage of Receipt Bank is that they can do the scanning for you. They send the client a strong, plastic, prepaid envelope for the client to send all their invoices in and get scanned. If it wasn't for this, I probably would have gone with Autorec by now. Receipt Bank's accuracy is awful and the account managers are incredibly rude and unhelpful.

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Replying to chatman:
RedFive
By RedFive
26th Apr 2017 12:00

Thanks chatman, that's interesting.

Since my posting I've got 9 businesses on Autorec and integrated them with QBO and Sage 50. The integration with Sage 50 (which Autorec support helped me with) works particularly well and saves the saving to excel / importing in palava. I'm a fully paid up (£75 per month, ouch) advocate now.

One client I have that fits your example - I've given him my version of receipt banks envelopes for him to post his monthly purchase invoices/receipts to me (he creates his sales invoices direct from QBO).

If you aren't happy with RB (and I can see why) then would that not work for you? Do you have a good scanner, as Glennzy says that's already paid for itself and keeps the control in-house which I like.

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Replying to RedFive:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
26th Apr 2017 12:55

I am pleased you have seen the light and Autorec is working for you.

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Replying to Glennzy:
RedFive
By RedFive
26th Apr 2017 13:09

Aye, cheers Glennzy that's another pint I owe you.

In fact took on a Greek restaurant in my parish that I've been fobbing off for ages due to the amount of purchase invoices he has.

Got him on QBO and AutoRec and it's a breeze. Called in last night to drop him his payslips in and ended up with a bottle of red and a smogersboard of Souvlaki for free..........love my job!

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Replying to RedFive:
Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
26th Apr 2017 15:05

Invoice scanning is essential for restaurants and the only way to do it. Even smallish restaurants can have 300 bills per month so only quick way to deal with it.

Its good when the systems work to give you the results you want, adopting the cloud software + scanning software = Fixed price service was the turning point for me growth has been much better offering that approach.

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By chatman
26th Apr 2017 16:28

Quote:
If you aren't happy with RB (and I can see why) then would that not work for you? Do you have a good scanner, as Glennzy says that's already paid for itself and keeps the control in-house which I like.

Scanning takes time. I've got a Fujitsu Scansnap, which is very good, but you still can't whack a load of differently sized or rumpled invoices in and expect them to go through with no problems. I scan invoices for one client, but I really don't want to spend much time doing it.

Having said that, I just checked a couple of typical RB clients, and they only send in about 50 paper invoices per month (they Dropbox the electronic ones), so maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I think.

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By chatman
13th Dec 2017 11:14

marks wrote:

Autoentry recognises duplicates eg where you have an receipt and also the credit card chitty for it and doesnt post both. It also doesnt post things like suppliers statements. Receipt Bank doesnt do this so you can end up with the same receipt being processed twice.

I have found that RB doesn't let you upload the same invoice twice, whereas AutoEntry does. On top of that, the AE upload window sometimes is too big for the screen and does not show you when something has been uploaded. If you accidentally upload a batch twice, you have to wait until it has finished being processed, which can take over 12 hours, before you can delete the duplicates (which you will ahve been charged for) Two different people here have fallen foul of this, so it's not just one person doing something stupid.

EDIT: I have just found out that AE will now delete the duplicates, but it will still charge you. RB doesn't even let you upload them.

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