Smart Capture for bills has arrived

Roan Lavery
CEO, Co-founder

The truth is out there - sometimes dealing with bills can be as enjoyable as being abducted and probed by aliens. But we’re here to elevate your admin, so FreeAgent’s Smart Capture now lets you process bills as well as receipts.

Last November we had lift off with our new Smart Capture feature, which zaps the dates and amounts from your receipts into your FreeAgent account - and automatically suggests a category for your expenses. Many of you told us this feature helps you blast through your daily admin and streamline your processes. One FreeAgent user, Kelly Mercer, said: “I love how the software talks to my bank and allows easy capture of receipts for logging expenses.”

In fact, lots of you enjoyed the feature so much you wished it could do more. Roz Hewitson, FreeAgent’s Product Manager for Smart Capture said: “After great feedback on the release of Smart Capture last year, we wanted to continue to make recording business outgoings easier for our customers. With expenses and bank transactions supported, the ability to extract data from bills was the key missing piece.”

That’s why we’re so delighted to announce touchdown for this expansion which means Smart Capture can process all the stuff you know you have to pay for in advance - like rent, electricity, internet and insurance. So your money-out management can follow one quick and clear process - saving time and the need for manual data entry, as well as pesky and costly errors.

How does Smart Capture work for bills?

In the same way as receipts, you can drag and drop paid or unpaid bills into the desktop version of FreeAgent or snap a picture of a bill using the mobile app. You can also upload PDF files or photos of bills (individually or in bulk). Once the file is in FreeAgent, key data will be extracted and the file can be converted into a bill. With the help of AI, FreeAgent will then suggest an appropriate category and automatically match the bill to a bank transaction once the bill is paid. Then all you have to do is hit ‘approve’. Job done!

Scale up with Smart Capture Unlimited

You can use Smart Capture to extract the date and amount from 10 files (receipts or bills) each month for free, as part of your FreeAgent subscription. However, if you want to extract the date and amount from more than 10 files per month, you can subscribe to the Smart Capture Unlimited add-on, which costs £5 (+VAT) per month and will allow you to extract the data from as many receipts and bills as you need!

Ready to take Smart Capture for bills for a test flight? Head on over to the Smart Capture area in your FreeAgent account, or find out more in our Knowledge Base.