Invoices need QR codes to achieve a mobile future

by
Cloud Accounting Software

I got this QR code from Google images. I have no idea what it might contain

I’ve just got back from the Xero Roadshow. For me the most interesting part of the day was hearing Gary Turner, the UK MD, talk about where Xero is heading.

As you would expect they think the future of accounting software is mobile. In my view there is one major challenge, at present bookkeeping still requires a significant amount of data entry. It’s just no fun inputting an invoice into any system with only a touchscreen keyboard.

One solution might to be to use a camera to take a photo of an invoice and then using an OCR tool to convert that into the necessary data fields. Though this would probably be pretty hard given the myriad shapes and formats that invoices have.

A more workable solution might be to instead adopt something similar to QR codes (a modern day barcode system). A QR code should easily be able to contain all the necessary data contained in an invoice. Then all it would take to add an invoice into an accounting system would be to take a photo of the QR code and let the software do the rest (mapping to a particular account might then need a bit of manual input).

A QR code solution would turn a boring two minute task into a simple five second mobile friendly task.

The really hard bit would be to get the many accounting software vendors to accept a standard. Getting someone like Sage or Intuit (QuickBooks) to lead is never going to happen. How hard would it be for the much more adaptable Xero, KashFlow, Freeagent and Clear Books to agree something between them though?

2 thoughts on “Invoices need QR codes to achieve a mobile future”

  1. We use Receipt Bank to capture the data from receipts and invoices (you can snap iPhone pics) and turn it into workable data for Xero. The technology is there (or on it’s way) – it’s the rest of us who need to play a bit of catch up.

    As far as QR codes, they just don’t seem to be catching on in the UK like they have in other places. I think the biggest drawback of using QR code technology for accounting is the fact that the overall adoption rate of the technology is still very low. But with mobile technology on such a sharp rise, maybe that will change quickly.

    (and the Xero Roadshow was great! Well worth catching again in the future!)

  2. Hi Jenni,

    Thanks for the comment.

    I don’t mean it has to be QR codes. They do appear to have been over hyped and generally a bit useless but some sort of barcode like system to avoid the manual entry would help loads.

    I think what Receipt Bank are doing is great but they have an army of people doing the data entry themselves, we should be able to move past manual data entry.