Ahead of Making Tax Digital we launch a series of cloud accounting app reviews

But in a very cluttered marketplace which ones are the best to back and where do you start?

Langricks Assistant Manager Chris Howells hopes to give you some of the answers in a series of videos – starting today – to help sort the wheat from the chaff.

He is going to look at five of the hottest apps on the market to give you the answer to a problem you want to resolve in your business or give you the confidence to go and explore the app market for yourself.

App No. 1 Receipt Bank
“>

Receipt Bank is one of the most popular apps out there at the minute. We’ve all seen the adverts on the TV showing someone taking a picture of their receipts and as if by magic all their paperwork headaches disappear. It isn’t quite that simple of course, but Receipt Bank is a step in the right direction.

Using AI, the app captures the supplier, date, net VAT and gross amounts from an invoice. In the app, you can then set things such as default nominal code for a supplier, default descriptions and default payment terms. If you use Xero or Quickbooks, Receipt Bank then imports all of these invoices straight into your accounting software without the need for manual entry or handling tedious receipts.

It is worth noting that this app may not always be beneficial. If you use a lot of different suppliers for example setting them all up on the software is not realistic.

The software also doesn’t pick up the descriptions from the invoices. This isn’t an issue if the items you buy from one supplier are usually for the same thing. However, for more detailed things where more information is needed or where there are multiple items on an invoice that need splitting out with their own description, changing the description for each invoice can be time-consuming.

With a free trial on the table though, we would definitely recommend giving the app a try.

If you like the app’s functionality, but would rather sign up to a pay-as-you go basis, Autoentry is also worth having a look at.

If you have any questions regarding Receipt Bank then email chris.howells@langricks.com and he will be able to answer your questions.  Next time we will be looking at time tracking and expenses management app – Harvest.