Cash payment in the showroom. Logged from a photo, coming soon.
Coming soon: staff will photograph the handwritten receipt with their phone, and IBIOS will read the amount, date, and job reference and log the payment against the customer record, without manual data entry.
Why do cash payments create reconciliation backlogs?
Cash is still common in trade showrooms — a contractor picks up a tap set and pays from their wallet, a customer settles the balance on a small order. The physical receipt is handed over. Then what? The receipt sits on the counter. Staff intend to log it later. Later becomes end of day. End of day becomes tomorrow. By the end of the week there is a pile of receipts, a gap between what the cash tin holds and what the system shows, and a reconciliation job that takes far longer than it should.
The manual entry step is the bottleneck. Not because staff are careless — because counter staff are busy. When the choice is between serving the next customer and typing up a receipt, typing loses every time. The backlog builds, and with it the risk of a payment being recorded against the wrong job, the wrong customer, or not at all.
Eliminating the typing step while keeping the record resolves both the backlog and the error risk. Coming soon: a photograph and a tap in IBIOS will take less time than opening the system and finding the right fields.
How will IBIOS log a cash payment from a receipt photo?
Coming soon: a step-by-step account of what will happen from the moment cash changes hands to the payment appearing in the customer record.
Customer pays cash at the showroom
A trade customer collects goods and pays cash. The staff member writes a receipt. Coming soon: before the customer reaches the door, the receipt will be photographed with the IBIOS mobile app.
AI reads the receipt (coming soon)
Coming soon: IBIOS will extract the payment amount, date, and any job reference from the photograph. High-confidence fields will proceed automatically; uncertain fields will be flagged for staff to confirm.
Job record identified (coming soon)
Coming soon: if a job reference is detected, IBIOS will link the payment automatically. If not, the staff member will select the correct job from a quick search, with the scanned amount carried forward either way.
Staff confirm the payment entry (coming soon)
Coming soon: the staff member will review the extracted amount against the outstanding balance, and a single confirmation tap will log the payment with the receipt photograph attached.
Balance updated (coming soon)
Coming soon: the job's outstanding balance will update straight away, and the payment will appear in the audit trail with timestamp, amount, and the staff member's name.
What receipt scanning will change (coming soon)
Once receipt scanning launches (coming soon), every cash payment will be logged at the point of transaction, so the balance in the system will match the cash tin without a manual audit. Staff will spend the end of the day confirming everything is in order, not hunting for receipts from earlier in the week.
Questions about receipt scanning and cash payment logging
Will receipt scanning work on handwritten receipts?
Receipt scanning is coming soon. It is designed to read clearly handwritten figures and printed job references. Very poor handwriting or smudged ink may produce a low-confidence extraction, in which case the field will be flagged for staff to confirm rather than silently guessed, and staff will be able to correct the figure before confirming the payment log.
What will happen if the job reference is missing from the receipt?
Coming soon: if no job reference is detected, IBIOS will prompt the staff member to select the job from a search. The scanned amount and date will be carried forward, and the payment will not be logged until the job link is confirmed, so there will be no unlinked payment record.
Will scanned receipts be attached to the job record as evidence?
Yes, when receipt scanning launches (coming soon). The photograph taken during the scan will be stored and linked to the payment entry on the job record, so staff and authorised managers can open it for end-of-day checks, audit queries, or customer disputes. Receipt images will be retained under your configured document retention policy.
How will receipt scanning handle VAT and non-VAT receipts?
Coming soon: IBIOS will read the gross amount from the receipt and log it as received. Where a receipt clearly shows a VAT breakdown, the net and VAT components will be recorded separately; receipts without a VAT line will be logged at the gross amount only.
What if the scanned amount does not match the outstanding balance?
When receipt scanning launches (coming soon), IBIOS will show the outstanding balance for the linked job alongside the scanned amount before the payment is confirmed. If they differ, the staff member will see the discrepancy and can investigate: a partial payment, an overpayment, or an extraction error. Nothing will be logged until the staff member confirms the figure.
Log cash payments from a photo, coming soon.
IBIOS AI receipt scan (coming soon) will read your handwritten receipts and log them on the spot. Early access by waiting list.