A rather strange article in this months PQ magazine with this threads title (bottom of page 10 if you have a copy).
Was anyone at the ICB gathering this year and if so, was the speech from Michael Wood (co founder of receipt bank) as bad as it comes accross in PQ?
Now, ignoring the fact that the ICB seemed to choose a guest speaker whose business is aimed at attempting to put everyone who had paid to be there out of a job, the key points that I took from the article :
Bookkeepers currently spend their time doing menial tasks.
All clients should be moved onto the cloud
Software will replace the need for bookkeepers.
Now, of course someone is going to try and make it sound as if the product that they produce is the future so I had a look at the receipt bank site which states that to process 675 receipts a month costs £190 (a month!!!!!). Now that doesn't include someone scanning in every one of those receipts but obviously that person can now be minimum wage rather than a bookkeeper.
Now, I've been known to enter 120+ invoices in an hour but lets call the average 75 (which is more than generous) and which I would say is not too far difference from the speed that you would scan then at.
Now lets say that the average bookkeeper charges £20 per hour
so, 675 invoices, would take around 9 hours at £20 per hour would be £180.
Receipt bank on the other hand would cost £190 + VAT + (9*£7 for scanning documents (no requirement for a trained bookkeeper)) = £291.
Admttedly if people use cloud solutions as is being suggested then data input is much slower but is this not simply another reason why nobody should be using cloud sollutions.
Even looking at that with an accountants rather than bookkeepers hat on, it seems to me that its cheaper for accountants to use trained bookkeepers at a really good hourly rate than the offered scanned document solution.
Also, as an accountant you would be trying to look closer to £12 than £20 per hour.
The one thing in receipt banks favour could be that transposition errors should be oblitterated. Do people that use it find that it is always 100% correct when it reads the receipts?
In conclusion though, my view is that the cloud is too slow, it holds its users back, it undependable, it's unsecure, and now it's apparently creating it's own industry to fix issues that didn't exist before it...
My advice to bookkeepers is quite the opposit to that given at the ICB conference... Nobody should use any cloud based software solutions and clients should be encouraged to abandon such silliness.
My advice to accountants... Use skilled and experienced bookkeepers.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
One of my clients does marketing type stuff, and uses a cloudy accounts thing.
Some time ago (a year?) he rang me and asked how long I thought it takes on average to input an invoice. I automatically assumed he was talking about in the cloud software he uses. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I think it was something along the lines of that it can vary according to a number of factors (e.g. it takes longer if I have to set up a new supplier), but probably in the order of one to two minutes.
Shortly thereafter he CC'd me in on an email that he sent to one of his clients.
It turned out, his client was developing a receipt scanning/recording service specific to Sage - and his question to me was to establish timings (and therefore costs) for inputting into Sage. Which he didn't mention on the phone.
I did email my client to point that out. However...
I'm not going to identify the company, but looking at their website, the amount they charge per invoice is slightly lower than the cost of me putting a single invoice into my client's cloudy accounts package - and much higher than it would be if I was inputting into Sage, so probably is based on the timings I originally gave *for the cloudy system*, but improved upon to make them look cheaper.
Oops.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
More than a year ago I received a marketing email from Receipt Bank. I looked into the costs and found out it was cheaper for me to input at my hourly rate than it was to pay RB.
But I liked the principle, so had a look at alternatives. I found Shoebox, but a/ it wasn't exactly accurate on scanning (mobile phone) and b/ by the time I had scanned it and uploaded to Shoebox I could input into VT (and I'm not fast). Needless to say I abandoned the idea.
I have no idea of the accuracy of RB, and in Shoebox's defence it may have been that it was american (although why it couldn't record 4th April as 4th April was beyond me. (Think it recorded September or summat daft, from memory)
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
Sorry but am I reading this right. Receipt bank can post a transaction and can identify the supplier, amount, vat, expense accounts (including splits) and invoice number all from a scanned document?
-- Edited by matt123 on Friday 13th of November 2015 09:01:57 PM
Just done the trail. Out of 6 invoices 4 of them were accurate. It seems really good for single line invoices but anything with multiples and it struggles.
You can forward the receipts in a number of ways but our preferred way it to put them in their mailing bag and post them away.
They are then processed in receipt bank within 3 working days usually.
Cost of the bag is £3 per month. You could use your own envelope if you want as is a freepost address which you can print from your account with Receipt Bank. The key thing is to include your customer reference number.
Price is £9 per month for each batch of 50 invoices.
Once you set up receipt bank correctly the supplier will automatically be coded to the right nominal. Then it is just a click of a button to post across to your accounts software. We tend to link with Xero. All the net, VAT, gross etc is usually correctly read. Where it cant read the invoice it highlights it and is a quick fix to sort.
As said above if you have multiple lines that go to different nominals then you would need to allocate to the correct nominal manually but in our case most of the clients invoices tends to go to the same nominal.
The reason why we use is it costs us say £21 per month for 100 invoices. To process that would take say 1 hour 30 mins. Our staff charge out rate is minimum £30 per hour. Ok there will be some time to post across to Xero but maybe 15 mins so total cost is say £30. The same as the charge out rate. But I know my staff would prefer to spend their other 1 hour 15 mins doing other more interesting accounts work that just posting purchase invoices into the software. i know I would. Plus we can earn from that extra work done in the time saved.
Other benefit is a scanned receipt it saved against the posting in Xero so you can see the actual invoice against the posting at a click of a button. Does away with having to keep all the paperwork.
The overall cost or receipt bank v processing it yourself would say is less. As well as that it takes away the tedium of posting 100s of invoices into the software. I know I would rather do other things and I know my staff would as well.
I agree wholeheartedly with Mark, I have used receipt bank for some of my clients for the last year or so. I've not had any real accuracy issues. At the beginning I was asked some questions about a few invoices, but the system learns.
I don't use the bags, but I do have a scanner that I can pretty much just stick everything in and leave to it's own devices to scan away. I rarely have issues.
Like Mark, I'd rather spend my time doing things that are more interesting or earn me more money, or growing my business.
For me receipt bank gets a huge thumbs up. But I understand that it' small about value, and my view is not the same as someone else's on that one.
I can see the benefit for Mark, as he is an accountant and the data entry side is a tedious task. Quite rightly, his practice time is better spent on the meat rather than the bread and butter.
For a one (wo)man band bookkeeper I can't see any advantage at all, as the cost of RB (or any similar service) eats too much into the hourly rate.
If it was a question of time over money, then I personally would pay someone £8-£9 an hour to do the data entry, but that's a personal opinion and everyone is different.
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John
Any advice given is for general guidance and professional advice should be sought applicable to your circumstances.
Yes, the charge-out rate Mark mentions coupled with the fact that he says he's using Xero - i.e. cloudy software, with the reduced input rate that brings with it - means the numbers might make sense for his use case.
However, for someone using desktop software, with a user interface that allows for inputting at a higher rate it's a whole other kettle of fish.
From which I conclude: People who use cloudy accounts software are more likely to be inclined to use cloudy solutions for data entry, whereas those who use desktop software are less likely.
Colour me truly amazed by that astounding revelation. It's not something I would ever have expected. No way. I'm being really honest when I express just how much of a surprise that is.
Okay, maybe I'm not surprised at all.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
I've been trying receipt bank with Xero today and found a problem. If you're not VAT registered it sends the invoice value to Xero as just the net amount and misses the VAT all together. Is there a setting I've missed?
We use receipt bank and it works for about 75% of clients. It can be difficult to get going with it but once the system is trained it saves a lot of time. I use it for my own accounts.
There are also a variety of input methods. Where I have certain invoices etc. received via email I can filter them to go to Receiptbank, autosync and appear in my KashFlow software. All automatically.
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Phil Hendy, The Accountancy Mentor
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I was actually trying to develop some software that would scan and import to Sage but the software guy I was working with never really got it going (he was tech, I would be sales/admin) - That was supposed to be aimed at bookkeepers. There is a company in america that have a scanner, that will do the same, but they won't sell it over here
I don't use the bags, but I do have a scanner that I can pretty much just stick everything in and leave to it's own devices to scan away. I rarely have issues.
Kris
Hi Kris
Would be interested to learn more about this scanner - what make is it?
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Now, ignoring the fact that the ICB seemed to choose a guest speaker whose business is aimed at attempting to put everyone who had paid to be there out of a job, the key points that I took from the article :
Software will replace the need for bookkeepers.
Would screw up the CB's businessplan - they would have no-one to train, unless of course they just start providing Accountancy training, which is why they are now advertising in PQ magazine.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
