Add a new business

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In Receipt Bot, all documents and expenses are linked to a ‘Business’. However, you do not need to have a ‘Registered Business’ as such to get started with bookkeeping automation; it is a broad term for a person, business, company, department, partnership or charity to whom the invoices and bank or card statements are addressed. This information is used for document classification (purchase invoices vs sales invoices) purposes. The country information is used to apply correct currencies, forex and VAT/GST rates and the industry information is vital for auto-assigning accounting categories. Therefore, it is essential to provide this information as accurately as possible.

Note: Receipt Bot currently supports documents in the English language for the list of countries mentioned in the following article Supported countries and languages. If your accounting documents are in English but your country is not supported by Receipt Bot, please get in touch with us at hello@receipt-bot.com or through our online chat.

Steps to add a new business in Receipt Bot

In this article, we will cover the steps that you can follow to add business in Receipt Bot:

Step 1 – Launch Add New Business Wizard

Open the ‘Add New Business’ wizard. When you sign-up, you arrive at this screen by default. As you can manage multiple businesses in one account (under single billing) in Receipt Bot, for adding subsequent businesses you can open the ‘Add New Business’ wizard from the gear menu.

Note: The first business added is also used as your ‘Account Name’ in Receipt Bot. However, you can change it later.
Step 2 – Provide Business Information

Complete the new business form providing the following information:

  • Business Name: as it appears on invoices, bank and card statements. To avoid duplication, you cannot add two businesses with the same name in one account.
  • Industry: The industry which best describes the nature of business.
  • Short Name: Short name is mainly used to create a document inbox for emailing invoices and statements, and it is unique across the system. (Just like you cannot have two Gmail accounts with the same ID). So, you might get a ‘Name already taken’ error. Please make the short name recognizable if the business name is longer than 30 characters, the system displays the short name.
  • Document Inbox: Auto completed based on the short name entered. You can find more info about how to use your Receipt Bot document email inbox here. Auto-forward emails for document recording
  • Business type: Select from one of the standard business type options.
  • Contact Number (Optional): If you like us to contact you via phone for any support matters, please provide a phone number. (We do not share this information with anyone).
  • Country: The country where the business is registered or based.
  • Base Currency: Your business currency, is auto selected based on country. Invoices/receipts in other currencies will be translated into this currency. If the base currency in Receipt Bot does not match the base currency in your accounting software, then your document exports will not work.
  • City/State (Optional): It is helpful to provide it if there is State-specific VAT/Tax information on documents.

Once the information is complete, click “Next” button.

Step 3 – Choose Accounting Software Integration

Receipt Bot can be integrated with Xero and QuickBooks Online to export the extracted data from invoices and receipts and record financial transactions. Of course, you can use Receipt Bot without any integration for expense/revenue management or use the Data Download Utilities to download and upload data to your accounting software if you use software other than Xero and QuickBooks Online.

In this step, you can choose between the following two options:

Option 1 – Integrate with Xero or QuickBooks Online

In this case, Receipt Bot gets your accounting master data; 1) Accounting Categories (Chart of Accounts), 2) VAT/GST (Sales Tax) Rates, 3) Payment Methods, 4) Suppliers/Customers and other secondary master data such as Project, Tracking categories, Classes, Locations etc. from your accounting software. If you selected this option, please refer to the relevant user guide for Xero Integration or QuickBooks Online Integration.

After the integration process is completed, you will be navigated to the Business Dashboard page.

Note: It is imperative to integrate at this stage if you are using QuickBooks Online or Xero. As part of the extraction process, Receipt Bot links the documents with the Suppliers, Accounting Categories, VAT Rates and Payment methods that you have set up in the accounting software. It makes invoices and receipts export to accounting software error-free and saves you time. If you choose ‘no integration’ at this stage, you can integrate later as well, though best do it as soon as possible.

Option 2 – Use Receipt Bot without any integration

You can use Receipt Bot without any integration for data processing and expense/revenue management. In this case, Receipt Bot creates default master data for Accounting Categories (Chart of Accounts) and VAT Rates. Receipt Bot automatically creates Suppliers and Payment Methods based on the uploaded documents.

Once you have selected the applicable option, click on the Finish button. It will close the Add business Wizard and will direct you to the dashboard of the newly created business.

Steps to add a new business using Receipt Bot mobile apps

You can add new business to Receipt Bot using the mobile apps as well and it follows the same steps as for the web app.

Step 1 – Navigate to the Add Business page.

Navigate to the Add Business

Step 2 – Provide the necessary information in the add business form and click the submit button.

Navigate to the Add Business

Your business will be created in the Receipt Bot and now you can upload documents using the Receipt Bot mobile apps as well.

Note: You can not integrate a business with accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks Online when creating a business from the mobile app. Please use the Receipt Bot web app to integrate your business.

Next Step: Upload Documents

Now you are ready to upload documents and start enjoying automated bookkeeping. To learn about uploading documents, please refer to the Upload documents user guide.

If you plan to set up a custom chart of accounts for your business, you can follow this help article: Create and update accounting categories.

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