Cost Inbox Overview
The Cost Inbox serves as a hub to store Receipts, efficiently streamlining expense management for the bookkeeping experience. Field Crew and Project Managers can simply upload receipts to one centralized location, allowing bookkeepers and accountants to review all expenses in one place before creating a Bill.
Additionally, the Cost Inbox features Optical Character Recognition (OCR), enabling scanned receipts and digital financial documents to automatically extract data and fill in details like dates, material line items, costs, etc.
Uploading Receipts to the Cost Inbox
Whether you're working from your desktop, using the mobile app, or forwarding receipts via email, you can quickly and efficiently store and organize all your financial documents in one place. This ensures accurate job costing and seamless expense tracking, keeping your project finances up to date.
Uploading Receipts from your Desktop
Begin by navigating to Cost Inbox from the Financial dropdown..png "Cost Inbox Overview 2")
Next, click Upload Receipt from the Cost Inbox dashboard.
Either drag and drop the receipt from your computer to the Upload receipt modal, or click Browse and select the receipt from your computer. Then click Save.
‼️Important:
It is important to note that that when a receipt is first uploaded, it is not automatically assigned to a job. To link the receipt to a specific job and vendor, simply select it from the Cost Inbox dashboard and update the details using the Sub/Vendor and Job dropdowns.
Uploading Receipts via Email
By using a dedicated email address, you can streamline the receipt collection process by providing it to your subs and vendors, allowing them to send bills and receipts directly to your Buildertrend account.
This eliminates the need for manual uploads, ensuring all expense documents are centralized, organized, and easily accessible for accurate job costing and financial tracking.
From the Cost Inbox dashboard, click Email Receipts into Buildertrend.
Copy the email address from the Email receipts directly to Buildertrend modal.
You or your subcontractors and vendors can then compose an email, paste the copied email address into the recipient field, and attach any receipts to the email before sending.
💡Pro Tip:
Automating this process can create a more streamlined process.
Create rules to forward sub invoices directly to the Cost Inbox
If you have a dedicated company email for receiving invoices from subcontractors and vendors, you can set up a rule to automatically forward these emails to your Cost Inbox personalized email address.
Create a contact for the Cost Inbox personalized email address
If you don’t have a dedicated email for receiving subcontractor and vendor invoices, saving the Cost Inbox personalized email as a contact will make it easy to forward invoices to Buildertrend quickly.
Uploading Receipts from the Mobile App
To begin the process of uploading a receipt to the Cost Inbox with your mobile device, click the (+) icon to access the "add new" menu.
Next, click the option to Scan Receipt/Bill, then Upload to Cost Inbox.
Use your mobile device's camera to scan the receipt, ensuring that all important details are captured within the blue box. This helps the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology accurately read and process the receipt's information for seamless entry.
To capture a receipt, start by clicking the "take photo" icon. Review the image to ensure all important details are included. Once everything looks correct, simply click Done to complete the process.
Update the Document Name, assign the receipt to a Job, then click Done to save your receipt. Receipt Saved will appear at the top of the screen, indicating it was successfully saved and uploaded into Buildertrend.
Receipt Upload Notifications
To ensure notifications are sent upon upload, ensure Receipt Uploaded & New Receipt Comment are enabled. Adjust User Permissions with the people icon on the top right of your Buildertrend account.
Reviewing Uploaded Receipts
Upon initial upload, on the Cost Inbox dashboard the receipt’s status will appear as Pending on the Cost Inbox dashboard.
Once the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology processes the receipt’s information, the status will change to New. Select the uploaded receipt to review it and make any necessary revisions.
⚠️ The image quality of the uploaded receipt will affect the accuracy of the autofilled information processed by the OCR. It is important that you review the cost lines to ensure they match the costs from the receipt.
Duplicate Receipts
When reviewing your uploaded receipts, if any receipts have identical totals, a warning banner will appear at the top of the Cost Inbox dashboard. By clicking View duplicates, the dashboard will filter and display only the receipts that are suspected of being duplicates.
Any potential duplicate receipt will also display a duplication error within the receipt's edit modal.
After reviewing:
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If it is a duplicate, you can delete the receipt.
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If it is not a duplicate, click remove duplicate status from the warning banner at the top of the receipt to clear the duplicate status.
Creating a Bill from the Cost Inbox
After the receipt has been scanned, sent to the Cost Inbox, and reviewed, you can generate a new Bill using the OCR-populated information.
Start by selecting the receipt from the Cost Inbox dashboard.
From the receipt, allocate this cost to a Job by clicking on the New Bill tab located in the bottom right corner.
Update the information specific to that Bill, then click Save. This expenses will now be visible in your Actual Costs on the Job Costing Budget.
*If you are integrated with QuickBooks Online*
When creating a bill from a receipt using the cost inbox, it is best practice to:
1. Adopt a special bill numbering convention. Our best practice is to indicate the credit card or bank account used for the purchase paired with the date of the purchase.
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In the example: VI (Visa Card was used) + 081224 (Date of purchase)
2. Make sure the Invoice date is the date of the actual purchase.
By adopting this naming convention, you will have an easier time matching these bills to the QuickBooks Bank Feed.
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For more information on how to push the bill created from the receipt to QuickBooks Online, review this article.
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For more information on how to match a bill to the bank feed in QuickBooks Online, review this article.
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For more information on how to push the bill created from the receipt to QuickBooks Desktop, review this article.
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For more information on how to match a bill to the bank feed in QuickBooks Desktop, review this article.
Tax Inclusion
Automatic tax inclusion allows for the Cost Inbox to be utilized by international customers.
To find this setting, navigate Company Settings and click Bills / POs / Budget under Financials.
Scroll to the bottom to find the Automatically include tax items on receipts checkbox. Leave this unchecked if you would NOT like Buildertrend to add the tax information automatically.
Interested in Learning More? 📚
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