Receipts and automatic reading

Every expense has its receipt: the supplier’s invoice, the till receipt, the payment slip. To Bill reads it to fill in the expense for you, keeps it as it is and warns you if it has already been entered.

Which document to attach

Purchase	Receipt
A supplier’s invoice	The invoice, preferably the PDF received by email.
A purchase in a shop	The till receipt.
Meals, travel, costs advanced by an employee	The receipt, with the expense claim if you make one.
An online subscription	The invoice downloaded from the supplier’s customer account.

The whole document must be legible: the supplier’s name, the date, what was bought, the amount and the VAT. An invoice from a supplier registered for VAT also shows their VAT number.

Paper or a photo

Photograph the receipt flat, whole and in good light. A PDF received by email is better than a photo of its printout: it is sharp and its QR-bill is read without errors. One file per document: PDF, JPG or PNG, 10 MB at most.

What To Bill reads by itself

As soon as you drop the receipt into a new expense, To Bill reads it in two ways.

The QR-bill: always

If the document carries a Swiss QR-bill, To Bill reads its code, without artificial intelligence and without sending anything outside. The QR-bill read box sums up what it found.

• Supplier, Amount to pay, IBAN and Payment reference come from the QR code. The expense is set to Not paid yet – to pay and joins the To pay list.
• Due date, VAT, Supplier VAT no. and Supplier invoice no. come from the billing information the supplier added to the code (Swico format). Not every QR-bill has it.
• The Category takes the one of your last expense with this supplier, if there is one.

Check the VAT and the category, then save. If the total including VAT you enter no longer matches the amount in the QR code, To Bill tells you.

A QR code that is not valid

If the QR code is damaged or badly made, To Bill shows A QR code was found but it is not a valid QR-bill, with the reason, for example a wrong check digit. Then enter the payment information by hand, from the invoice.

The AI assistant: if you switch it on

The AI assistant also reads receipts and invoices without a QR code: the supplier, the date, the amount including VAT, the VAT at each rate, a description and a category. It is switched off by default. An administrator switches it on in Settings › AI. While it is off, the receipt box says This AI help is switched off for your company. and you fill in the fields yourself. See The AI assistant.

Once the assistant has read the document, Receipt processed appears. Always read through what it filled in before saving.

Duplicates

The same receipt entered twice would count its VAT twice in your return. To Bill compares each new receipt with your expenses.

• This receipt has already been recorded: it is exactly the same file.
• A similar expense already exists: the same amount, within a few days, often with the same supplier.
• Already entered on …: same IBAN and same reference: the same QR-bill has already been entered.

Click View to open the existing expense in a new tab. If it is not a duplicate, for example two identical meals on the same day, click Not a duplicate, continue. The warning never blocks saving.

Drop many documents at once

If accounting is on, Accounting › To review takes up to 20 documents at a time. The autopilot reads their QR-bill and, if the AI assistant is switched on, the rest of the document. It suggests the category and posts by itself what it recognises with certainty; the rest waits for your approval. See The receipts autopilot. From your phone, see Scan a receipt.

How To Bill keeps your receipts

• The file is kept as you dropped it, in the protected Expenses folder of the Drive. Nobody can change or delete it there. See The Drive.
• A receipt referred to by an accounting entry can no longer be deleted or replaced: it is kept as it is for ten years. If you edit or delete the expense, the old receipt stays with the original entry.
• The archive of your books contains the receipts with their digital fingerprint, to prove they have not changed. See Archive and retention of your books.

What about the paper original?

The law allows vouchers to be kept electronically, provided their integrity is guaranteed and they remain legible for the whole retention period. If your fiduciary, your bank or another rule asks you to keep certain originals, file them as well.

Legal basis

• A voucher is any written record, on paper or in electronic form, that makes it possible to verify the transaction recorded: Art. 957a para. 3 CO.
• The books and vouchers are kept for ten years, on paper or electronically, provided they remain legible and linked to the transactions they support: Art. 958f para. 1 and 3 CO.
• They must be kept and retained so that any change is visible: Art. 3 GeBüV, the Ordinance on the Keeping and Retention of Accounting Records (German version: fedlex has no English one). Modifiable electronic media are allowed with processes that guarantee integrity and prove the date of recording: Art. 9 GeBüV.
• For VAT, electronic vouchers follow the same rules: Art. 70 para. 4 VAT Act and Art. 122 VAT Ordinance.
• The QR-bill follows SIX’s Swiss standard: Swiss Payment Standards, QR-bill.