The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how human beings and businesses function. Even with some countries removing the lockdown, others continue to have social distancing as a norm. For businesses, while travel and manufacturing have taken the hit, most tech-companies continue to work from home. The pandemic has also affected millions of taxpayers and businesses, causing economic uncertainty.
To ease the burden of tax filing, the IRS has extended the tax filing date (for the US) from April 15, 2020, to July 15, 2020. This extension serves as a boon for finance teams to gather financial records from employees working from home to avoid IRS penalties.
In a world that demands to stay digitally connected, businesses must leverage technology during these testing times. Do you want to switch to a faster, more efficient, and streamlined manner of handling your business expense receipts? Here's how Fyle can help.
Does the IRS accept digital receipts?
The IRS has been accepting scanned receipts since 1997. A digital receipt is allowed as long as it is identical to the original - it should contain all the correct information on the paper receipt.
Receipts are proof of business expenses. For tax purposes, it is vital to keep track of possible deductions, prepare tax returns, and support items on business tax returns.
The IRS audits at least three years’ worth of records and documentation. Thus it is recommended to store receipts for at least three years or more. But, the traditional methods of storing, managing, and organizing paper receipts can also be a time-consuming and tedious process.
This is where Fyle comes in. Fyle was built to accommodate the challenges of today.
Fyle not only helps digitize receipts but also helps streamline your entire expense reporting process. Employees can scan their physical receipts and submit expense reports to the finance team without any physical interaction. Additionally, the finance team does not have to wait for employees to submit their physical receipts and expense reports after the crisis.
How does Fyle help with faster expense reporting?
At Fyle, we understand the pain of managing hundreds of expense receipts. That is why we have come up with a solution to help finance teams tackle the stress of receipt management. Here is how Fyle can help you take care of those pesky receipts.
Accurate data extraction with receipt scanning
Manual expense reporting comes with several problems - data entry error, inaccuracy, inefficiency, and policy non-compliance, to name a few. The finance team can address these problems with the help of our receipt scanning feature.
Fyle is available as a web-app and a mobile app. The Fyle mobile app includes a receipt scanning feature called instafyle. This feature can be used by users to capture receipts and the information it contains with little-to-no manual effort. Additionally, an employee can also directly submit an expense report to the finance team in a single click. This ensures an overall seamless process.
Turn paper receipts to e-receipts with Fyle magic
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Here's how employees can create an expense report using Fyle mobile app:
Step 1: Tap on the instafyle icon and place the receipt in front of the phone camera.
Step 2: Take a picture of the receipt. The OCR technology helps pick up all the details in the receipt. For example, date of purchase, name of the merchant, and cost of expense.
Step 3: The expense report form gets automatically filled with all the information.
Step 4: The e-receipt is attached to the expense report form and is ready to be submitted.
The user can review the expense report before submitting it. They can add the name of the merchant, enter the purpose, and add expenses to different reports. After reviewing the expense form, the user can either submit the report directly or save it as a draft for later submission.
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More than one way to fyle expense reports
Nowadays, bills and digital receipts are sent directly to one’s email address. For example, when an employee takes an Uber or Lyft to meet a client, the receipt is sent directly to the employee’s email.
Fyle helps employees to upload digital bills and fyle their expense reports with ease. They can do so directly from their mailbox, messaging tools, text messages, and online storage tools. This is how Fyle can help you manage receipts in multiple ways:
- Report expenses directly from the mailbox
Whether an employee uses Gmail or Outlook, Fyle is available as a Chrome extension plugin for both. Once the plugin is downloaded, it is installed inside the mailbox. (And no, it does not snoop around the mailbox!)
When an employee wants to create an expense report, they can do so by simply clicking on the fyle button in the mailbox. Essential billing information is then auto-populated into an expense report. With this, the employee can review and fyle the expense report with just a single click.
- Create expense reports through messages
Along with SMS, messaging apps like Whatsapp are widely used and can be found in almost everyone’s smartphone. With Fyle, employees can create expense reports directly from these messaging platforms.
Employees just have to share images of receipts directly via SMS or Whatsapp message to a special number. And voila! Expenses automatically appear in the user’s Fyle account, ready to report.
- Unique Fyle Mail to create reports automatically
Apps like Uber or Lyft send receipts directly to their customer’s email. Fyle Mail was built to accommodate such bills. Fyle Mail is a unique mail address generated for each user. When employees provide their Fyle Mail ID to apps that send receipts via email, the e-receipt will be automatically created as an expense in the Fyle app without having to put any effort.
- Upload single or multiple receipts from digital storage software
Employees do not have to waste paper, time, and effort in printing and collating receipts. An employee can upload images of receipts or e-receipts from their computer, Dropbox, or Google drive. After uploading the receipt, employees can verify and submit their expense reports instantly!
Unlimited storage for seamless receipt management
Along with expense reporting, Fyle can fix the problem of managing business receipts for both the finance team and employees. Whichever method an employee uses to fyle their expense reports, it all ends up in a unified place. The finance team has access to all the employees’ expense records without having to collect from disparate sources. Additionally, storing receipts in the cloud can take care of the major challenges of receipt management.
With Fyle:
- Have a unified storage space
With all the expense reports stored in one place, finance teams can review records easily. Additionally, with searchable receipt storage, the finance team can apply filters to view specific records. This helps finance teams save on critical time, effort, and resources.
- Stay audit-ready
- With all the documentation in one place, finance teams do not have to worry about managing hundreds of fragile paper receipts and records. This also decreases the chances of misplaced or lost documents.
- With the ease in expense reporting, employees can submit expense reports on time.
- Chances of error or policy violations are curbed before submission, the finance team can focus on staying audit-ready at all times.
- All these factors can decrease the turnaround time for reimbursements and help finance teams to close books on time.
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Additional benefits of using Fyle to manage business expenses:
- Our OCR data extraction technology helps curb manual entry errors.
- Multiple expense reports can be submitted with the help of bulkfyle.
- Real-time expense policy violation is flagged in case of overspending, duplicate entry, or missing receipts.
- The e-receipt is automatically attached to the reports. This means, no more missing bills and receipts!
All these factors help relieve the finance team of unnecessary stress, and that they can focus their efforts on what’s important, thus, increasing efficiency.
Join Fyle today!
Companies have always looked for solutions that will drive them towards lower costs, greater agility, and reduced risk. This has driven modern solutions like cloud storage and AI. Using an expense management software like Fyle, businesses can:
- Reduce data entry error
- Eliminates manual effort
- Have a unified receipt storage space
- Do away with scrambling for receipts at the last minute
- Reduce the time taken for expense reporting
- Help employees stay compliant with company policies
Fyle has always been an online-only business, and the onboarding process of our software is done remotely as well. The entire implementation process takes approximately 2 weeks for small business, 5-6 weeks for medium business, and 10-12 weeks for large enterprises.
We follow a carefully curated implementation timeline to ensure our customers know exactly what to expect and when. Here is how much our customers love us!
Are you interested to know more about our implementation process? Schedule a demo with us to know more!
