Cut the Paperwork: AI Tools for Efficient Expense Tracking and Invoicing in Kitchen & Bath Design
So far this season we’ve covered a wide array of areas where AI can help you in running your business. One area we haven’t touched on yet is finances, specifically how AI tools for efficient expense tracking can streamline your business operations. No better time to talk about how you can be leveraging the hottest bots to make managing your money even easier. In this episode we’ll cover how to use modern tools and approaches to manage receipt & expense tracking, mileage and invoices.
Why I Love Shoes but Hate Paper: A Guide to Simplifying Business Finances
Two things people learn fairly quickly about me are: 1) my adoration of ridiculous shoes and 2) my burning disdain for paper. This is likely due to one of my earliest jobs being to file for my parents’ business. Piles of paper meant a ton of work for me. My dislike runs so deep that CVS receipts may just be the most offensive thing I’ve ever seen. So why does any of this matter? Well, in business the money aspect of the organization typically involves the most paper. Invoices, receipts, bills, statements – do you think accountants just hate trees? Or enjoy paper cuts? The whole thing is confusing to me.
At any rate, my hate for paper and obsession with efficiency come together to ensure that I’m always at the forefront of finding all the ways to reduce my contact with paper while ensuring that the business is still dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s for detailed financials and tax filings.
Turn Paper into Pixels: The Easy Way to Manage Receipts
Perhaps the largest paper offender is expenses and receipts. And yes, I get it – we need information about where the money goes. And that information typically comes in the form of printed paper that gets handed to us at the time of the transaction. But that doesn’t mean we have to keep the information in paper format. If you are getting paper receipts, the best thing to do is throw them in the trash, right after you’ve snapped a photo. All modern smartphones have high enough camera quality that a photo of your receipt can be used by apps to aggregate your expenses.
Top AI Tools for Efficient Expense Tracking: Hubdoc and FyleHQ
There are dozens of apps out there for receipt capture and expense management, but my top 2 apps are: Hubdoc and FyleHQ. When it comes to managing receipts, AI tools for efficient expense tracking, such as Hubdoc and FyleHQ, can make the process seamless.
Hubdoc is pretty much like it sounds, a place to capture all your documents. You can forward emails to it, upload documents or capture photos. It then will use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to pull the information from the document so it can be easily categorized or matched with the expense. It integrates with Quickbooks & Xero so matching transactions with the documentation is easy.
FyleHQ is a good fit if you have multiple employees who submit expenses. Fyle helps you collect receipts via text and automatically matches them to the right transactions. Users just text a picture of their receipt, Fyle extracts the data and then its AI codes the expense. If additional expense data is needed, the AI will prompt the user for that input via text.
Integrating AI with QuickBooks and More: Expense and Mileage Tracking Made Easy
It integrates with most of the popular bookkeeping software as well.
If you are already using Quickbooks Online, you can use the mobile app for receipt capture. It appears to have some of the basic information extraction capabilities, but this functionality isn’t as robust as other options. On the other hand, it is also an existing functionality of software you already use.
Another area where AI can assist with your business finances is mileage tracking and classification. Thanks to GPS, your phone can record everywhere you go so no need to be keeping a mileage log notebook or jotting down sticky notes when you get out of the car.
The app I use is called MileIQ, but other options include MileageWise or Timeero. Each of these is an app you install on your phone and give permission to track your location. You then can set usual stops or other parameters for it to auto-classify drives for easy mileage tracking.
If you drive a lot for the business, like in an outside sales rep or customer service role, you might be interested in Everlace which is an app that does both mileage tracking and expense management.
One other area of finances that can cause angst and stress is invoicing. In the Kitchen & Bath design business, generating invoices can get complex, especially if you are doing more than just the cabinetry. AI and innovation can simplify & streamline this, however it takes more effort to implement than using the bots for expenses & mileage.
Automating Invoicing
To get automated invoicing, you first have to be using some kind of project management software. This is the “data” that will be used to create the invoice line items. Creating automated invoicing can use any number of specific tools, apps and methods, all depending on what you are currently using. So let’s just discuss high-level how this can work. As each item in the project management software is either created or reaches a certain status, that information can be added to a data set that will get put in the next invoice. Then when a specific task reaches a specific state, or when the project is marked as a certain status, the invoice can trigger to be created & sent, or just drafted for a human to review & send.
As you can see from our discussion in this episode, there’s no need to compile reams of receipts, keep a mileage log book or even sweat creating invoices when you fully employ AI & automation. By using AI tools for efficient expense tracking, you can eliminate paperwork and save time, making your kitchen and bath design business more productive.
In the next episode we’ll walk through a specific scenario on how to best use these kinds of apps while traveling for business.
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