Enter a paper receipt in QuickBooks Online without retyping it
The path from a photo on your phone to a saved expense, with the two places people lose time.
QuickBooks Online has an expense form with eight fields worth filling. A paper receipt carries all eight. What follows moves them across without typing each one twice.
What you need first
- A QuickBooks Online account with permission to add expenses
- The Slipstack extension pinned to the Chrome toolbar
- A photo, scan or PDF of the receipt
The steps
Open the expense form first
In QuickBooks Online choose New, then Expense. Leave the form open in the tab. The panel reads the form that has focus, so the order matters.
Xero, Wave and FreshBooks work the same way.
Send the receipt to the panel
Open the side panel and drop the file on it. A photo from a phone works as well as a flatbed scan. Pasting from the clipboard with Ctrl+V saves the download step.
Check the four fields that decide the entry
Vendor, date, total and tax carry the posting. Each one shows how sure the reader is; anything under 80 percent is worth a glance at the image beside it.
Corrections stay with the document, so an export later carries your version.
Fill the form
Press Fill form. The panel highlights each target field, writes the value and leaves the amount in focus. Read the result once, then save inside QuickBooks as usual.
On the free plan you copy field by field with the button next to each value.
Where that leaves you
The expense is saved with the same numbers that are on the paper, and the image stays in the library in case the entry is questioned a year later.
Questions that follow
Does this connect to my QuickBooks account?
What happens to a receipt that will not read?
Read a receipt of your own
15 documents a month on the free plan.
Read next
Sales tax rate on a receipt
What the percentage line means, why it rarely matches the state rate, and how it is read.
Side panel capture against a connected receipt app
Two ways to get a receipt into the books, and the jobs each one is actually good at.
Where receipt data goes after capture
Four destinations, what each one expects, and the file that gets it there.