Intuit is constantly developing and improving QuickBooks, particularly the online version. And while it’s still not nearly as robust as some of the more complex accounting software solutions that are geared specifically toward government contractors (nor should we expect it to be with the price point difference), it will still get the job done, particularly for small to mid-size contractors that don’t have a bunch of overly complex contracts.
One of the features of QuickBooks Online (QBO) that I think is useful is the Receipt Capture functionality. It’s not brand new – Intuit released it in 2019, but most QBO users don’t know it exists and aren’t using it. While this is not something that specifically benefits government contractors, tracking receipts, particularly credit card receipts, is a significant headache for practically every business. It’s even worse for government contractors due to the higher level of scrutiny and oversight and lack of a defined materiality threshold from DCAA.
In QBO, under the Banking section, there is now a “Receipts” option. This screen allows you to bring receipts into the books by dragging and dropping them, uploading them from Google Drive, or via email forwarding (which you can set up automatically!). Employees that have access to QBO can snap pictures of their receipts and upload them directly to their mobile device. Or, if they don’t have QBO access, you can create a Google Drive location for all employees to submit their receipts to and link this location to QBO. Alternatively, employees could all forward their receipts to one accounting point of contact within the company that does have access to QBO – and that person’s email address can be set up utilizing the email forwarding option.
Once the receipts come in, QBO automatically reads the data and attempts to determine relevant details such as date, vendor, amount, account, etc., creating a transaction. You don’t have to worry about posting something incorrectly – all transactions created in this manner still need to be reviewed and accepted within the system. Still, much of the legwork is complete, and the receipt is already attached to the transaction. Having those receipts in the system record is convenient, and this overall functionality significantly improves individual receipt scanning, naming, and manual input of credit card transactions.
