Capturing receipts

Every job has supplier costs behind it - materials, hire charges, trade accounts - and until they're captured, your project profit is only ever half the picture. The Receipt Hub lets anyone capture a receipt, has AI read the supplier, date and amounts, and then has someone with confirm access check it against the right project before it's pushed to Xero as a draft bill with the file attached. The receipt always lives in BuilderDash first, so your project costs and profit stay up to date even if Xero is temporarily unavailable.

How to capture a receipt

There are three ways to get a receipt into the Receipt Hub:

• Web. Go to Accounts, then Receipts, and select Upload receipt. Pick a photo (JPG or PNG) or a PDF.
• Email. Forward the receipt to your workspace's dedicated receipts email address. Each attachment becomes its own receipt; if there isn't an attachment, the email itself is turned into a PDF. You get a reply confirming what happened - that it was received and how many receipts were added, that it was already in your hub if you forward the same one twice, or a note that it couldn't be added if the sending address isn't recognised - so a forward never just disappears.
• Mobile. Field or site workers can snap a photo of a receipt on the BuilderDash mobile app while they're at the till or the merchant counter. If signal is patchy, the photo queues on the device and uploads automatically in the background as soon as a connection is available, so nobody has to remember to come back to it. Mobile capture is capture-only - confirming a receipt happens on the web.

The Receipt Hub is switched on for everyone by default, on both web and mobile, so capturing a receipt is never blocked on someone's role.

How to confirm a receipt

Confirming a receipt and pushing it to Xero needs the confirm permission, so in practice field or site workers capture and an office user confirms.

1. Open Accounts, then Receipts, and click a receipt marked To confirm or Needs review.
2. Compare the original file against the supplier, date and net, VAT and gross amounts the AI has read. If a supplier was created from an earlier receipt in the same batch, or the first read looks off, select the magic-wand Re-read with AI button to run the AI over the file again and refill every field.
3. Every receipt starts as a single whole-invoice total - one net, VAT and gross figure with one category and one VAT code - which is all most receipts need. Choosing a different VAT code re-splits the net, VAT and gross from the gross amount, so picking No VAT, for example, sets VAT to nil. The figures stay editable if you want to override them.
4. Set the Project the cost belongs to, the Category (your Xero expense account) and the Tax code (your Xero tax rate).
5. Select Confirm & push to Xero. A draft bill is created in Xero with the original file attached and the project reference written onto it, and the cost is added to the project.

Once confirmed, open the job and go to its Receipts tab to see the linked receipts and their total - the job's Profit figure includes these supplier costs too.

Splitting a receipt into lines

If a receipt mixes VAT rates or covers items in different expense categories, select Itemise in the amounts box to split it into separate lines - each with its own description, category, VAT code and VAT amount. The header Net, VAT and Gross then become the total of the lines, and each line is pushed to Xero as its own bill line. Itemising is entirely optional and never forced, even on a long receipt - most receipts are fine left as a single total.

Inbox and Activity

The Receipt Hub has two views. Inbox is your working list, grouped by status - Needs review, To confirm, Sync failed, In Xero and All - so you can see what still needs attention. Activity is a full upload log: a searchable table showing, for every receipt, the date and time it arrived, who uploaded it, how (browser, email or mobile), the file, the amount and its status, newest first. Search by file, supplier or user, and click any row to open the receipt.

Good to know

• Receipts always create a draft bill in Xero - you still review and approve it in Xero before it locks. BuilderDash never authorises a bill for you.
• AI reads the receipt, but a person always confirms it. Nothing reaches Xero until someone with confirm access checks it - the suggested VAT rate is a hint, never taken on trust.
• The VAT amount you see is the VAT that's sent to Xero, exactly as read from the receipt, rather than recalculated from the net and a rate - so receipts with rounding, delivery charges or mixed rates still land correctly. If the net, VAT and gross don't quite add up, the net is corrected automatically to gross minus VAT so the figures reconcile, and there's also a Set net to gross - VAT button if you want to do this yourself.
• If a receipt doesn't show a payment due date, the bill is pushed to Xero with the due date set to the issue date.
• If Xero's calculated tax disagrees with the receipt's tax by more than rounding, the receipt is flagged Needs review rather than synced quietly.
• The Category and Tax code dropdowns are pulled from your own Xero organisation and cached in BuilderDash. Use Refresh from Xero if you've added new accounts or tax rates and don't see them yet.
• If a push to Xero fails for any reason, the receipt is marked Sync failed with a Retry option - nothing is lost, and your data stays safe in BuilderDash regardless.
• Only confirmed and synced receipts count towards a project's supplier spend and profit. Receipts still being read or reviewed don't affect the numbers yet.
• The project number is written into the bill's reference in Xero, so you can find the right job from Xero too.
• Creating a supplier from a receipt reuses an existing supplier of the same name if there is one, so the same supplier forwarded on several receipts is only ever created once.
• The Receipt Hub is switched on for everyone by default, on web and mobile. An owner or admin can turn it off for a specific person under Settings, Team, edit user, Features - this removes their access to capture receipts on both web and mobile. The workspace owner always keeps access. Confirming and pushing to Xero is a separate permission, so you can leave capture open while limiting who confirms.