Skip to main content Smart Capture extends its reach to bills
Last November, we launched our Smart Capture feature, a tool that automatically extracts key data from clients’ receipts, matches it to a bank transaction, and uses AI to suggest a category.
Many practices and their clients told us Smart Capture helps them blast through daily admin and wished it could do even more. That’s why we’re excited to announce that Smart Capture can now beam up bills as well as receipts, creating one clear process for all money-out transactions.
This enhancement further reduces the need for manual data entry, saving you and your clients valuable time in managing this essential part of their business admin.
Roz Hewiston, Product Manager for Smart Capture, said: “After great feedback on the release of Smart Capture last year, we wanted to continue making the recording of business outgoings easier for our users. With expenses and bank transactions supported, the ability to extract data from bills was the key missing piece.”
How does it work?
In the same way as receipts, you and your clients can:
- drag and drop bills into the desktop version of FreeAgent as well as via the mobile app
- upload PDF files as well as photos
- upload files individually or in bulk
Smart Capture then gets to work, extracting the data and pre-filling some key information (such as the bill value and date). It also uses AI to suggest a category and then automatically matches the bill to a bank transaction for approval once it's been paid. It’s as easy as spotting a UFO on a clear night.
With this one clear process for both expenses and bills, it’s now much easier for your clients to manage all their money-out transactions; errors are likely to be reduced, and you’ll save time chasing clients for any missing information.
Smart Capture is a great way to support clients of all sizes, moving them away from a ‘shoebox’ of receipts to a digitalised experience, giving you more time to focus on growing your practice (and maybe even ponder the mysteries of the universe).
In this short video Eoin McNamara, FreeAgent's Practice Implementation Consultant, takes you through how you and your clients can use Smart Capture to automatically extract key data from bills.
How much does Smart Capture cost?
Each FreeAgent licence can use Smart Capture to process 10 files (bills and expenses) per month free of charge, but if your clients have a lot of files to process, they might want to consider subscribing to the Smart Capture Unlimited add-on for £5 (+VAT) per month instead. This add-on will let your clients process as many files as they like.
If you and your clients don’t want to use Smart Capture’s special features after the allowance of 10 has been used up, it’s still possible to attach files to expenses and bank transactions in FreeAgent manually without having to pay anything extra.
Much like Captain Kirk commanding the USS Enterprise, you have full control over whether you would like your clients to pay FreeAgent directly (£5 + VAT per month) or whether you would prefer to pay.
If your practice chooses to pay, the cost will be added to your monthly invoice and you’ll gain access to discounts. You can get in touch with your account manager to discuss pricing structure and discounts and for help identifying your Smart Capture Unlimited clients.
How to activate Smart Capture Unlimited for a client
You can activate the Smart Capture Unlimited add-on via the Add-ons area of your Practice Dashboard.
Check out our Knowledge Base for an introduction to add-ons and for more about Smart Capture Unlimited.