Processing Receipts with hubdoc
Hubdoc is an online application (desktop and mobile) that simplifies expense management by automating expense data capture and entry. It is owned by Xero, and included free in Xero plans.
What does Hubdoc do?
Here’s a brief look at the functionalities of Hubdoc:
Automatically ‘fetches’ financial documents
Hubdoc is able to auto-fetch documents from over 700 financial institutions, online vendors, utilities, and telecom providers.
Automatically extracts key data
The software automatically extracts information from receipts, bills, and invoices into your accounting software.
Creates invoices
When Hubdoc receives a document, it extracts key data such as vendor details, date and amount. From that data, it creates professional-looking invoices, credit notes and cash transactions, with a copy of the relevant document attached.
Serves as a single online repository of your financial documents
You can email invoices and receipts straight into Hubdoc, upload photos of the documents to the Hubdoc mobile app, or set up automated connections to move bills from suppliers directly into Hubdoc.
Organises your documents
Hubdoc automatically creates folders for documents after they have been uploaded or fetched, saving you the effort of organising the documents on your own. You can keep them in Hubdoc or move them to another cloud storage app your business uses.
Works with other accounting software
Apart from Xero, Hubdoc is compatible with QuickBooks Online. You can move documents in HubDoc to the cloud storage platform that you use, including DropBox, Google Drive, Box, SmartVault, and Sharefile.
Allows collaboration with accountants and bookkeepers
You can share access to your Hubdoc organisation with your bookkeeper, accountant, or a team member, and set rules around access for security purposes.
Pros and cons of Hubdoc
Hubdoc was launched in 2011, and acquired by Xero in 2018. Many daily HubDoc users are small business owners or bookkeepers, or accountants for small companies. A number of things work in the app’s favor, as explained below:
Advantages of Hubdoc
- It can code invoices to recurring suppliers, allowing the processing of multiple transactions through your accounting software.
- Thanks to automation, Xero users only need to reconcile the transactions against their bank statement lines in Xero.
- The app is easy to use. A structured dashboard clearly outlines the actions required from uploading to exporting documents.
- Allows you to easily generate monthly and yearly statement reports for audits or end of year tax filing.
- Hubdoc support is available through Xero Central. It is also accessible through the company website.
- Industry-standard levels of encryption and verification technology
Drawbacks of Hubdoc
Hubdoc doesn’t allow the ability to tag bank accounts with the last four digits of the credit/debit card. This is the most requested functionality for the application among users.
Hubdoc isn’t very flexible with the VAT amount posting, given sometimes between different businesses, the VAT amount calculation could have differences, but this can easily be corrected from Xero if you use both applications.
Overall, Hubdoc does what it promises smoothly, and more than adequately allows small business owners to track their expenses efficiently.
Hubdoc versus similar software
A comparable app to Hubdoc is Dext. Like Hubdoc, it is also available as a mobile app. It is not as intuitive as Hubdoc but offers more functionalities at multiple price tiers for complex expense management requirements.
Is Hubdoc worth it?
Good data entry is key to performing bookkeeping to the highest quality. Where before, you had to spend hours each week on manual data entry, tools like Hubdoc have emerged to automate this task. With Hubdoc, you can automate every step of the bookkeeping workflow in one place.
The app captures and syncs expense and other information seamlessly between accounting apps. You can track and manage expenses on-the-go using just your smartphone/tablet.
By automatically grabbing financial data from documents, Hubdoc eliminates the risk of erroneous human data entry. You/Your bookkeeper enjoy confidence that accurate invoices are being produced.
Hubdoc supports financial management. If you operate multiple businesses, you can add all those accounts to Hubdoc and view financials for all the businesses together in one place.
If you’re inundated with paper bills and receipts, Hubdoc is a way to go paperless whilst keeping your financial documents organised, secure, and available 24/7. It is affordable for all business owners, and deserves to be looked at.
Penny’s Bookkeeping Services have encouraged most of our clients using Hubdoc to not only using Hubdoc to transfer documents as part of the workflow, but also using it for filing. Some small businesses could save the cost of getting other third party cloud drives by saving the documents with Hubdoc. Contact us if you have further questions or needs some guidance to start with.