FreshBooks gets a little more fresh
FreshBooks is best known as the billing system of choice for entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses, taking the pain out of what used to be tedious bookkeeping, which is difficult for anyone wearing multiple hats that just wants to focus on serving their customers.
While FreshBooks already has a lengthy roster of features that makes bookkeeping simple for any business, today the company announced that expense receipts can now be attached as PDFs on invoices, which is an extremely useful tool for any professional that travels or incurs additional expenses a client or employee must bill, and is a simplified option for employers who have employees in the field.
The company said in a statement, “Some say you can’t have it all, yet we disagree. Starting today you can now upload your expense receipts in all file formats: jpegs, gifs, pngs and now PDFs too! Simply upload receipts from your desktop straight into FreshBooks Expenses and in a few clicks, attach them to your invoices. Shazam!”
FreshBooks notes that while attaching expenses to invoices has been an option for some time, they realized that inboxes “filled with online receipts for purchases, getting lost in the sea of e-mail and PDFs of scanned receipts taking up space on your hard drive,” thus leading them to the conclusion that the simplest option would be uploading PDF receipts to FreshBook expenses.
The company points out that this option is useful, particularly when you get an email confirming payment for a purchase (like a conference ticket, hotel reservation, flight, car rental, etc.) which can be immediately attached directly to an expense which links to any invoice. FreshBooks adds that “You can also upload those scanned receipts you’ve already printed out or have in that dusty shoebox, knowing they’ll be safe and organized in your account and re-bill your clients in a jiff! We support all PDF versions (except for password protected PDFs) and you can attach an individual file up to 2MB in size. There is no cumulative file size limit for expense receipts.”
Using the new PDF option
First, go to the “Expenses” tab and either edit or create a new expense. Check the box that says “Attach Image of Receipt” and choose your file. Next, create an invoice, and when generated from a specific Project, it will automatically pull in all expenses associated with the project, and you can simply unselect a box if you don’t want that expense billed.
Then, when the invoice recipient opens their digital invoice, they can click a link below the invoice as shown above and simply see the receipt. “Snail Mail” receipts will include a printed out expense receipt.
The new option is part of FreshBook’s mission to get businesses paid faster, and the easier it is for an invoice recipient, the more likely it is to get paid.
