Do your expenses in a snap!

Makes doing your expenses a snap

I always get a thrill when I save something, such as time, money or effort. 

Saving money on a purchase or putting some money aside gives a good feeling. Saving time is so very satisfying that I positively revel in the chance to do so whenever I can, such as find a route to my office which may look longer on the map but which cuts out sitting in a traffic jam on the short route.

And yet, there has always been one thing which I loathe about working life and that is submitting my expenses at the end of the month. It is one of those mind-numbing but necessary tasks to get back the money I spent doing my job which needs to come back into my bank account (and pronto while I am at it).

I have worked for numerous companies and all of them have had expense regimes which, subtly, discourage you from submitting your expenses because of their complex measures to make you account for every last detail about why you bought that pencil or bought a cup of coffee which was a penny over the allowance.

A recent company I worked for had an expense system which was online and in which I had to attach images of my receipts, account for the VAT, list who I had eaten dinner with, print off a copy of the report, attach the paper copies of the receipts to the printed report, number the receipts against the report and then send it to the in-tray of the finance department, as well as submitting the online report to my manager for approval.

I was beginning to wonder what on earth the finance department did when I was not doing their expense accounting for them.

A year ago, over dinner with friends and family, we were talking about our invention ideas and I submitted that I would like to start a service which handled people's expenses. There were groans of how boring that would be to run. A few months later, I saw a few companies online that were doing just that.

But, today, I came across a business which has answered all my 'expense related prayers', namely 'ABUKAI'. In short, you install their free app on your iPhone, Android phone or Blackberry, and add some settings such as your email address and default currency. Then, using the app, you take a picture of  each of your receipts. Next, you 'submit' them to the service and a few minutes, they email you a spreadsheet containing a standard template with all of your expenses itemised. It even converts currencies for you into the template.

ABUKAI also emails a PDF document containing the images of the receipt photos you took to provide evidence to your accounts team or accountant for the tax-man.

I was a little sceptical about whether this would work or not, but it worked beautifully. My only challenge was getting one particular receipt which I could not get into focus at first. You get to try it for free and then pay a one-off fee each year for the service.

This is one of those rare apps that takes away the time take to do one tedious chore and gives you back to the time do something more interesting or fun.

(By the way, if you like the service when you have trialled it for free, let them know I sent you their way by submitting my email address: arryawke@gmail.com )

Watch the video below of one company who have just started to use ABUKAI.