The way you store business receipts can make or break your finance team’s monthly closing. Where do you usually store them? In a file or a specially allocated drawer? Or do you scan pages of receipts manually and upload them to Google Drive or Dropbox? The examples above are a few ways that limit your ability to make informed business decisions—where a complete spend overview is lacking.
What you really need is a digital receipt management tool that removes the friction and keeps your records audit-ready at all times.
Why Organising Business Receipts Matters
Efficient record-keeping is essential to avoid a mental breakdown when tax season comes around, but more importantly, it’s key to growing a successful business. Still wondering if keeping every proof of purchase is worth it? The short answer: yes.
Tax compliance
Think of receipts as a paper trail for your business expenses. Without them, you could lose out on valid tax deductions or face penalties during an audit. In Malaysia, for example, businesses are required to keep financial records—including receipts—for at least seven years.
Total visibility
When you keep every receipt, you get a complete picture of all your finances. Are meals and entertainment costs creeping up? Are certain departments overspending? Did someone accidentally make an unapproved purchase on the company card? Receipts provide the granular data to make informed decisions.
With a proper receipt management system in place, you gain visibility and control without chasing anyone down.
Increased accountability
While trust is a good thing to have, especially when it comes to employees, it also creates an opportunity for fraud or misreporting if anyone were to betray that trust. With receipts, finance teams can verify claims, validate vendor payments, and flag duplicates.
Bonus: it also matters because you’ll always be audit-ready.
How Automation Comes into Play
Keeping receipts in envelopes or manually adding expenses to spreadsheets? What is this, the 90s? Automated receipt management helps you capture, categorise, and store receipts in real time. It cuts down on manual work and reduces the chance of human error. Especially when the human error rate for data entry can be as high as 4%.
Let’s play a game. Put a finger down if you’ve experienced any of these:
- Receipts are lost or damaged
- Receipts are faded
- Employees forgot to submit receipts
- Entries are delayed or duplicated
- Spreadsheets are out of sync
- Multiple spreadsheets are being used
- Receipts don’t match the transaction
If you put more than two fingers down, it’s likely that you’ll benefit from using a business receipt organisation software. Even if you run a small business, you’ll have greater efficiency. Here’s how automation works:
Receipt capture
When it comes to using Swipey, you can upload or snap a picture of a receipt after a transaction is made and add notes for context. This essentially eliminates the need for claim forms or doing tedious tasks like gluing receipts to an A4 paper.
You can do this through the app or desktop, and it’ll save finance teams a good amount of time when reconciling accounts at the end of the month.
Automated expense insights
In the Receipt Audit section of your Biz Insights on the Swipey dashboard, your finance team can check who or which department spent the most that month, what they spent on, and identify the culprit(s) who haven’t uploaded a receipt after making a business purchase.
Both the leadership team and finance team can easily get these numbers and other relevant data immediately in just a few clicks—an example of automated expense management tools in action.
Accounting integration
Syncing to an accounting platform like Xero or QuickBooks takes your finance game to the next level. It’ll streamline your data seamlessly, giving finance teams the most up-to-date information. And that’s how you can simplify and close your books faster at the end of the month.
Breathe Easier During Month-End
Proper receipt management may not feel exciting, but it’s a key factor when it comes to running a financially healthy business. With Swipey, you’re not just collecting receipts. You’re building a system that ensures transparency, reduces admin time, and supports smarter spending decisions.
Ready to say goodbye to paper clutter? Try Swipey or book a quick demo to see it in action.
