QuickBooks Desktop 2021 - Receipt Management (Plus and Enterprise Subscribers Only)

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Intuit recently released QuickBooks 2021 Desktop. Insightful Accountant has been evaluating various pre-release versions of these products for months and has spent hours communicating with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we can help you learn about the new products. This article is one in a series of individual product features intended to provide additional content to that within our QuickBooks Desktop 2021 product synopsis.

QuickBooks Receipt Management for Desktop

It can literally take hours for a business to collect and categorize all of their receipts even if they manage to keep track of them. With this new QuickBooks Desktop feature, you will no longer need to spend time manually entering expense receipts because you can efficiently import them.

QuickBooks Receipt Management is only available to QuickBooks Desktop Plus and Enterprise subscribers customers. It allows you to import receipt images through a mobile (Apple or Android) App. You can also upload receipts directly from QuickBooks Desktop.

QuickBooks Receipt Management will then extract data from the receipt images using optical character recognition, artificial intelligence and machine language algorithms to create transactions for your to review. You will then review the receipt data and match-up any unmatched information before posting it to your accounting. And, because the image is stored with your QuickBooks data, the digital copies of the receipts are available for audit in the future.

Setting Up Receipt Management on Your Desktop and Mobile Devices

In using Receipt Management every user must have an Intuit account associated with the specific company file for which receipts will be uploaded and posted to the accounting. This is true whether the user will be accessing Receipt Management via a mobile device or via QuickBooks Desktop or both.

Configuring Receipt Management on Your Desktop

Initially you need to log in to QuickBooks as the Administrator for the file you wish to configure for Receipt Management. The access the feature from the QuickBooks menu by selecting Vendors, and then choosing Receipt Management.

Choose the Intuit Account you use for the Company file you have open, if you are not already logged-in to your Intuit Account you will be required to do so. If you do not already have an Intuit Account, you will be required to create one.

Receipt Management is now active on Your Desktop. If you have other QuickBooks User who you wish to give access to upload receipts or create new transactions to match receipts with, you can assign them different access roles depending on their permissions by selecting Manage users under Receipt Management.

Be aware that these QuickBooks Users will need to have permissions including Bank Registers (all Bank Accounts), Checks, Credit card charges, Credit card registers, Customer Center, Vendor Center, Chart of Accounts List, Class List, Edit Bills and Pay Bills. These permissions are assigned and controlled from the User Security features for your specific version of QuickBooks (ProPlus, Premier Plus, or Enterprise).

Depending on what you want your Users to do, select either Give Desktop and Mobile access or Give only mobile access.

Depending on the option you selection additional information is displayed. For Desktop & Mobile App access the following window is displayed.

For Mobile App access only, the following window is displayed.

Regardless of which role you select for the specific User, select Continue to proceed. 

When the Intuit account user management window is displayed, click the blue Add user button, and then enter the users email address. Keep the role as Basic user, and then select Save.

QuickBooks will transmit an email to the User to finalize their new permission status. When the User accepts the email invite, they will be required to either enter their Intuit account information or create a new Intuit account associated with the company file, once they do so they will have the ability to manage receipts via the method(s) you have authorized.

Using the QuickBooks Desktop iOS Mobile App

Download the QuickBooks Desktop iOS Mobile App, this should be the newest version of the App, ‘QuickBooks Desktop: Expenses’ from the Apple App Store.

Install the QuickBooks Desktop iOS Mobile App.

Using the QuickBooks Desktop Mobile App on your iOS device sign-in to your Intuit Account and select the Company file to upload the receipt to. Choose Continue.

Tap Take a picture.

Tap the Camera icon to take a picture of a receipt.

If you are satisfied with the picture, tap Use this photo.

Add a Name and Memo to your receipt capture. Then tap Upload.

Tap OK when the Receipt Upload Successful message is displayed.

Using the QuickBooks Desktop Android Mobile App

Download the QuickBooks Desktop Android Mobile App, this should be the newest version of the App, ‘QuickBooks Desktop: Inventory & Receipt Management’ from the Google Play Store.

Install the QuickBooks Desktop Android Mobile App.

Open the QuickBooks Desktop Mobile App on your Android Device, then tap Receipt Snap.

Tap Capture receipt.

Tap the Camera icon to take a picture of the receipt or tap the Photos icon to upload your receipt. If needed, you can crop and rotate the photo.

When you are satisfied with the picture, tap Upload receipt.

Add a Name and Memo, then tap Upload receipt, then tap OK.

Sign-in to your Intuit Account and select the Company to upload receipts to, then tap Continue. You will normally only need to do this once unless you have multiple company files that you need to upload receipts to.

Tap OK when the Receipt Upload Successful message is displayed.

Upload Receipts from QuickBooks Desktop

Access the feature from the QuickBooks menu by selecting Vendors, and then choosing Receipt Management.

You can Drag and Drop your receipts into QuickBooks, or

select browse to upload, then select your receipts. QuickBooks Desktop supports PDFs and images with JPEG, JPG, GIF, or PNG format.

QuickBooks Desktop supports PDFs and images with JPEG, JPG, GIF, or PNG format.

Processing can take up to 15 minutes. The more receipts you actually process the faster receipt processing should occur over time as the AI-based machine learning engine identifies patterns associated with your receipt data. I actually found that receipt processing didn't take nearly the 15 minutes, especially from the mobile App.

I actually found that receipt processing didn't take nearly the 15 minutes, especially from the mobile App. Click on the Refresh icon to get the most current extracted receipt data.

Review and Process Receipt Data using QuickBooks Desktop

Access the feature from the QuickBooks menu by selecting Vendors, and then choosing Receipt Management.

Review the extracted information in the ‘For Review’ section. Below you will see the newly processed receipt is highlighted in a 'red box' solely for purposes of this article.

In the right-hand action column selection from the drop-down, 'Review'.

QuickBooks Receipt Management will have extracted the Vendor Name, Transaction date, Bank/Card details and Amount. Examine the data for matched transactions from within your QuickBooks Company file, this data could have been manually posted, or could have been posted via Bank Feeds.

You can perform individual or batch actions on your extracted transaction data including modify, delete, or create expenses:

  • You can edit the Vendor Name, Account, Amount and Bank/Card Details for individual or multiple transactions.
  • You can delete individual or multiple transactions.
  • You can Save to create expense and add individual or multiple transactions to your Register at one time.
  • You can attach the uploaded receipts to expenses individually or in batch.
  • You can pay individual or multiple bills and attach receipts to individual or multiple transactions.

As with Bank Feeds, some transactions can 'auto match' to transactions already in your QuickBooks Account Register(s). In other cases you will save the transaction and add it to the appropriate register you specified. In either case, when QuickBooks matches up the receipt or posts it for the first time, the scanned image will be attached to the record as shown in the transaction below.

You might be wondering about splitting transactions because there is no way to do that within the actual Receipt Management window. You can actually accomplish this within that window after you save the transaction to your register. Click on the 'Reviewed' tab and locate the transaction you need to split, then click on 'View' under the Action column. The transaction is opened for you and now you can modify either the 'Expense' tab or even the 'Items' tab of the transaction just so long as you keep the transaction in balance.  Below you can see that I modified the above transaction into two lines and added Customer:Jobs and made both lines billable. When I 'Save & Close' the transaction it still is linked in Receipt Management.

This is a simple way to accomplish split-transactions without ever leaving Receipt management and almost as quick as any GUI that they would probably build involving a 2nd window that would need to be opened anyway. Plus it allows you to use QuickBooks Items if needed.

Feature Availability: At the time of initial release QuickBooks Receipt will be available only in QuickBooks ProPlus, QuickBooks PremierPlus, QuickBooks Accountant, and QuickBooks Enterprise (all subscription levels).  The feature is scheduled only for release within the United States.

You will find our summary of QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise for 2021 along with other related features in the 'Related Links' at the bottom of this feature.

Editor's Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to my good friend Laura Madeira who allowed me to cross-check my articles with advance copies of her features to make certain that we were consistent in providing accurate information regarding the 2021 release. Laura, and her co-author Karen Siewert, have written three separate articles this year covering different aspects of the QuickBooks 2021 release, please be certain to check them out at Intuit's Firm of the Future blog:

I also want to thank the following Intuit personnel for their dedication in providing information, numerous briefings, and responding to my questions, as well as in guiding the actual product developments within QuickBooks Desktop and this release: Rachna Arya, Nipun Bhatia, Aditya Dixit, Sowmya Murthy, Madhumita Tayade, Muthuraj Thangavel, Tulasi Vijay Kumar Thulluru, and Raman Verma. I also want to say thanks to Michelle Berg, Mindy King, and Shawn Sturgeon from Intuit for additional product briefings and information along with the various members of Intuit's Alpha & Beta Product Testing Teams for QuickBooks 2021.

Of course, there are entire teams, composed of hundreds of Intuit personnel behind all of these people that make the magic happen and we so often forget to say, thank you, to them, so to all involved, “Thank You for Another Great Product"!

Note: Some images used in this feature are displayed directly as provided by Intuit, others may have been modified from the source material Intuit provided.