If you’re on Xero and you’re not using Hubdoc yet, what are you waiting for? It’s amaaaaazing! OK, amazing might be too strong a word, but I feel this is a game changer as far as Xero is concerned. If you’re not aware what it is, Hubdoc is a tool that you upload your bills and receipts to. Hubdoc will then automatically get the information from them saving you much needed time. You can then publish them to Xero with the original paperwork attached.

The fantastic news is that if you’re on starter, standard or premium plans you get Hubdoc included with your subscription for free. Now you’ve got no reason not to try it! If you give it a whirl and you don’t like it, don’t use it again. But I do think once you’ve got it set up and you start using it, you will never go back.

So the first thing is to find where Hubdoc is. When you log into your Xero account, click on your business name in the left hand corner and look down the list for Hubdoc. Select the “set up Hubdoc” button and follow the instructions on screen. Once that’s all done, every time you go into Hubdoc you can just click “sign in with Xero” to use your Xero credentials to log in.

The main thing with Hubdoc is getting your bills and receipts in there and there are a few ways to do this:

1. Connect a supplier: Hubdoc has a number of companies that it can connect to that will automatically feed bills into your Hubdoc for you. Click on “add account”, choose your supplier and add in your login details.

2. Download the app: By using the app you can take a photo of your receipt or bill and upload them straight to Hubdoc.

3. Unique email address: Every business has a unique email address (you’ll find this in the organisation section). Change the address to something more memorable like your business name and then you can use this to forward all your emailed receipts or bills to.

4. Manual upload: Use the “add document” button and drag and drop documents in.

Now that you’ve got your documents in there, Hubdoc gets to work on fishing out the information it can read. Click on a document and on the right hand side there will be a panel where you can tell Hubdoc any information it might have missed and where you want the document to go to in Xero (i.e. which supplier, account, description etc). When that’s all filled in, click “publish” and Hubdoc will send through the information to Xero with the original document attached.

Head back over to Xero and in your bank account you should see a beautiful wash of green where Xero has matched the transactions to the information Hubdoc has sent over. The more you use Hubdoc the more it will learn where things go and when you are confident it’s doing things correctly you can even choose to use autosync which will send the information straight to Xero without you having to click a button. Imagine that for a second, you take a photo of a receipt on your phone and the next thing you know it’s already in Xero and coded to the correct accounts!

Give it a try and if you don’t like it I’ll eat my hat*

*I don’t technically own a hat so I’m afraid I can’t actually stand by this statement!