(Edited Dec 2022)
With Cloud accounting, all your documents need to be scanned: Receipts, bills, proof of payments, bank and credit card statements, cheques from clients, etc...
But you don't need to have a physical scan for that, you can use a free Android or Apple App that serves as a scan, and it's going to be MUCH better than a physical scan since it will...
1) sync with your online storage of choice AND
2) read OCR (explained below) AND
3) create smaller files, nothing like 3MB scan.
The best free App we've found (and we've tested few other ones) is Genius Scan a France-based product (Google Store here, Apple Store here). We are not receiving any commission or compensation for suggesting Genius Scan, it's honestly what we use ourselves for our tasks. Plus, the clarity of image is far better than the ones taken from a cell phone camera.
Your accountant will thank you for using such a scanning App! This might also lower your costs and definitively save you time.
The Basic Account is free
Download the App, create a basic account, it's free to use!! And it will be sufficient for all your scanning tasks that you need to accomplish in regards to your accounting.
Features included with a Basic Account
Auto or manually enhance image quality
Auto enhancing makes the JPG, PDF look clear and sharp. You can easily export the files in multiple ways and sync to the cloud with high speed.
Send scanned docs anywhere
Share with your friends by collaborating, or via email, whatsapp, wechat or and via link to other social networks, or online storage.
Easy Cropping
Capture document by phone, easily remove busy background, crop, generate high resolution JPEG or PDF file.
And More: - Upload all your docs to Evernote, GoogleDrive, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive
- 200M cloud space
Auto OCR for easy search (Not available with this App)
With certain Scan App there is the OCR (optical character recognition) feature that extracts texts from images for further editing or sharing.
Why use Genius Scan instead of the phone camera?
Most of us are used to taking a picture with the phone when we see any important information we want to note down in daily life. Then we find that the phone album is overwhelmed by pictures of selfies, sceneries, whiteboards, receipts and more.
Let's face it: it’s extremely difficult to dig out the picture when we need some information.
With Genius Scan instead of the phone camera, just capture the useful information you want, such as receipts, newspaper article, restaurant menu. Since Genius Scan uses OCR technology, you can later on easily find out anything you need in few seconds by typing “Staples” in the search box, and all pictures containing the text “Staples” will be found out.
Also, Genius Scan may help users convert documents into PDF format. What will you do when you see a beautiful paragraph in a book or want to cite something from an article? Write it down? Type it out? It will take so much time. Genius Scan helps users save time by taking photos of desired documents and converting it into text and PDF format when exporting.
Furthermore, the crop and enhance feature in Genius Scan make it an even better tool for capturing information. Use the crop feature to remove useless part of a picture, keeping and enlarging the useful part. Also the 4 enhance modes are designed to make pictures clearer and easier to read.
Keep phone camera for selfies, sceneries, party pictures...
Like I said a little earlier, this is the App we are using ourselves, because it's awesome and we can't live without it anymore! :-D
Need to offload your bookkeeping tasks? We can take it up, contact us here!
Nadine LeBrun
Présidente & Fondatrice
Comptabilité Onyxia Accounting