Scout SuiteHow-to guide
Catching up on a pile of receipts
For a Group starting out with a year of paper in a shoebox. Receipt catch-up reads the pile for you and matches what it is sure about, so you are left checking rather than typing. It does not do the whole job on its own, and this guide is honest about which bits still need you.
Open Receipt catch-up
Under Finance → Banking → Receipts, the first card is Got a pile of old receipts? Choose Start a receipt catch-up. The page tells you what is about to happen before you upload anything.
Only people who can manage the Group's money can use it. A Team Leader who looks after one section's pot cannot.
Choose the files
Photos or PDFs, up to 500 in one go and 10MB each. Drag a whole folder onto the box, or click to choose. JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP and PDF are all read.
They go up in the background a few at a time, rather than all in one enormous request. That is why a big pile keeps going instead of failing partway, and why the page stays usable while it works.
A file that is too big, or a type we cannot read, is reported by name rather than being quietly skipped. The rest of the pile still goes up.
Leave it reading
Two bars show how many files have gone up and how many have been read. Reading is a separate job per receipt, so one unreadable photo does not hold the others up, and hundreds take a while.
You can close the page. Come back to Receipt catch-up later and the numbers carry on from where they got to. Nothing is lost by walking away.
Receipts that look like ones you already have
Two kinds are flagged. The same file uploaded twice is certain, because the file itself is identical. A different photo of the same till slip is a guess: the same shop, the same total and the same day.
Nothing is ever deleted or refused. A flagged receipt is stored, read and kept in the list with a note, because a Group really can buy two identical coffees on one day. If it is not a copy, choose Not a copy and it will not be flagged again.
Match the easy ones
Auto-match confident ones matches a receipt only where one bank line is clearly the right one: the amount agrees to the penny, both dates are known and within two days of each other, the shop resembles the name on the bank line, and nothing is already recorded against that line.
If two bank lines fit equally well, the receipt is left for you and says so. Two £20 Tesco lines on one day are a question for a person, not a coin toss. The summary lists everything it matched with an Undo next to each one.
Matching a receipt explains the bank line for its full amount. It does not mark a subs invoice paid, see Reconciling the bank.
Work through what is left
Needs a look groups the rest by why: could not be read, read only partly, no bank line found, possible duplicates, and the ones matched automatically so you can check them. Each filter carries its count.
Tick several and deal with them together: Read again for ones that failed, Match for ones with an obvious bank line, Delete for ones you do not want. Pressing a button twice is safe; nothing is done twice.
After three tries at reading a receipt we stop and say so. Open it, read it yourself, and type the total, shop and date in.
When you are done
Matched receipts show against their bank lines in Banking → Bank, exactly as if you had matched them one at a time. Unmatched ones stay in the receipts list until someone deals with them, so nothing disappears because you stopped halfway.
Once the Group is using Scout Suite week to week there is usually no pile to catch up on: a leader logs an expense with its receipt as they go, see Paying leaders back.
Money
More in this topic
Subs, Gift Aid, and reconciling the bank.