03. Expense receipts to Xero

I. Introduction

If expenses are paid from your company credit card or bank account, you can process these to Xero as either

• Draft bills  – this is the default behavior of EzzyBills, or
• Spend Money transactions, posted to a bank account in your Xero.

With automatic bank feeds, both ways are equally convenient. Which one to use is your personal preference.

II. How to upload Spend Money receipts?

To process as Spend Money transactions, you have the options of

1. Email to EzzyBills (Step 3 below)
2. Scan using EzzyBills Mobile App (Step 4 below)

III. Step-by-step guides (Xero & EzzyBills)

Step 1: Set up bank accounts in Xero

Set up bank accounts in Xero, with or without bank feeds, if you have done so. Note down the last 4 digits number, to be used by EzzyBills.

Note that the last 4 digit number 5678 is not the last 4 digits of the general ledger “account number”, rather your credit card, or your bank account number. For security reason, generally only last 4 digits are required to enter in Xero (Screenshot below).

Notes: You may also set a pseudo bank account without bank feed. EzzyBills can still export the receipts to this bank account in Xero as Spend Money (you will need to manually click “Mark as Reconciled” for each transaction in the Options). This may be used for owners spending on business using personal funds (such as cash, personal credit card etc.).

Step 2: Register bank accounts and Add approvers in EzzyBills

Go to Settings > “Approval & Expenses” > “Expense Approval Tables” > “Company Credit Cards“. [screenshot below]

• Click “Add a New Row”
• Enter data for “Name” and “Approver Email”, and “Business Bank Account” with the last 4 digits only. Click the “Green Tick” in the actions column to save changes (screenshot below 1) and it will generate an upload email address for you to email receipts (screenshot below 2).

[Screenshot 1] enter the account & approval data.

[Screenshot 2] after saving, you will see the Upload Email Address on the line.

Further notes:

• If “Bypass Approval” is ticked, no approval email will be sent to the approver; the expense will be exported directly to Xero.
• You can choose to leave Bypass Approval unticked – which means an approval email will be sent. Only after an expense is approved, will it be exported to Xero.
• You can choose not provide “Approver Email”, then the approval needs to be done within EzzyBills web portal after login.

Step 3: Email receipts to EzzyBills

• Compose a new email, adding receipts as attachment and forward the in-body email receipt you received from vendor, to the email address generated in step 2.

• (you can skip step 2) simply forward receipts #.yyyy@ezzybills.com (where #@ezzybills.com is your upload email, and yyyy is the last four digits of any bank numbers in Xero). In this example, email to ocqb.5678@ezzybills.com.

In a few minutes, EzzyBills will process it and export it to your Xero account as a Spend Money transaction, against the associated bank account in Xero [see screenshot in Step 5].

Step 4: Use EzzyBills Mobile App to scan paper receipts 

• Download the EzzyBills app from the App store. Login to the app using the same login as your EzzyBills account. Or login with QR code scanning.
• Select the Gear Box in the top right-hand corner. Then under Alias Name, add the same name you set in the List of Approvers (Step 2).
• After the initial setup above, simply click Scan Now to scan a receipt and it will be automatically processed as a Spend Money transaction.

Please note that

• In the Settings for the mobile app, if you do not specify an Alias Name, receipts will be exported to Xero as Draft bills.
• If the Alias Name specified is associated with a bank account in Xero, receipts will be exported to Xero as a Spend Money transactions.

Screenshots of “Spend Money” created by EzzyBills

• In Xero, this transaction appears under the bank account ending in 5678  in the “Account transactions” tab.

• click this transaction to open.
• Copy of the receipt is attached. EzzyBills also creates a “Go to EzzyBills” file link to the EzzyBills copy of the receipt.

IV. Reconcile bank feed in Xero

Note: this step is done purely in Xero (not by EzzyBills). We provide here for your reference. You will find instructions in Xero.

When bank feed lines come through, under “Reconcile” tab, xero will automatic find the match. You only need to click “OK” to reconcile.

Now the status shows as “reconciled”

V. special case: a single company credit card with multiple users.

In this case, your business has a corporate credit card: a header account, with many individual card numbers – one  for each staff.

In Xero, set up one single bank account for the corporate card. The transactions/bank-feed will come to this single bank account.

In EzzyBills,

• in Settings, in the “Expense Approval Tables > Company Credit Cards” table, set up all the sub-accounts. Note that the Name can be a card sub-number or an employee’ name.

See one example screenshot below – where 5678 is the last 4 digits of the corporate card number. 380 and 381 are the individual card numbers for two of the staff members.

Note:  on the Spend Money transaction created in Xero by EzzyBills,  the “individual card number” is provided in the “Reference” box, following by the invoice number (if there is any). You can then use this to identify which staff this transaction is for.