ANYONE WHO dreads the end-of- the-month rummage through sheafs of receipts can use their mobile phone camera and an online service to take the hard graft out of calculating expenses.
Dublin-based start-up Plendi has developed a mobile app aimed at helping small businesses, sole traders or freelancers to save time by automating the work involved in gathering the expenses information they need to be reimbursed by their client or company.
Customers use their iPhone or Android phone to take a photo of their receipts and send each picture to the Plendi server. The company’s data entry staff put the information in the system, converting currencies and tracking VAT.
“We do all of the tedious, boring stuff,” is how co-founder Fergal Murray describes it. “We’re trying to get rid of the ‘gulp’ moment when people look at their glove compartment and have to go through mountains of receipts. The idea is to snap it and forget about it.”
Under EU law, digital copies of receipts are valid for tax audit purposes. On the technology side, the cameras built into the latest smartphones are able to take pictures of receipts at a sufficiently high resolution, Mr Murray says.
Plendi’s system can export the receipt data into an Excel spreadsheet file with VAT details extracted or send the scans as a PDF document. “Often when people are expensing clients, they typically attach a PDF to the back of their invoice so there’s proof of expenses incurred,” Mr Murray adds.
Founded last year, Plendi has a “modest” target of reaching 10,000 customers by the end of this year. The company recently signed a partnership agreement with the UK-based online accounting system FreeAgent. Users of Plendi’s mobile app can sign up with FreeAgent and everything they scan appears automatically in the accounts software. Plendi claims this saves time and money and reduces tax bills.
FreeAgent will market Plendi to its existing customer base and the Dublin firm aims to sign partnerships with other accounts software companies in the coming months.
“Our solution becomes even more useful if the receipts go into accounts software which is where they need to be,” Mr Murray says.
The service has a 30-day free trial offer and a yearly subscription costs €39.95. A BlackBerry-compatible version is in development. Plendi, which recently received €50,000 in seed funding from Enterprise Ireland’s Internet and Games Competitive Start fund, employs five full-time staff and two others part time.
