A client mentioned receipt bank to me the other day, so I looked on their website and found a few things to be 'interesting'.

Firstly, and as a bit of an aside to my main observations, the site itself is fundamentally broken in my book - it doesn't show any basic content unless you allow Javascript from both receipt-bank.com and netdna-ssl.com (a third party domain). I can understand Javascript being necessary for *functionality* when the website is doing something more than just basic content delivery, but that basic content delivery should always still happen without the need for Javascript. This is called degrading gracefully.

The main reason I looked is because the client wasn't clear about storage of the receipts: He assumed they'd store them on an ongoing basis, but also mentioned that you can cancel the sub, or change the 'level' (based on the number of receipts) if necessary - and my immediate thought was that ongoing storage is likely to be a problem given the need to keep things for a certain amount of time after the fact, and it's also going to be subject to the service level being paid for: reduce that, and aren't they likely to reduce the storage quota as well? The client didn't know.

My conclusion after looking is... I don't know either for certain, but some parts of the site make me think they do archive the data, others give me doubts.

Here, for example: https://www.receipt-bank.com/about-us/

That page says, of the company Receipt Bank's founder tried first (and bought): "Not only did it solve the issue of the lost time and money but it also solved the issue of storing records." - the inference being that ReceiptFarn stored the scanned invoices, which in turn leads to the inference that Receipt Bank will do the same.

Looking at https://www.receipt-bank.com/small-business/small-business-uk/

Under "The future of Small Business Productivity" - in the "The Receipt Bank Way" column, it says "No duplication or lost info as all data is saved securely to the cloud." Again, this suggests they keep the scanned data stored.

(Apparently, the "Old Way" is to use a spreadsheet. Is it any wonder the founder was cocking up before he used it, then, as explained in the blog post at https://www.receipt-bank.com/the-origins-of-receipt-bank/ which expands on the About Us page above?)

But that still doesn't clarify the storage: How much storage is provided at each pricing level, does the storage provision change if the level is changed, and what about ongoing storage for the mandatory period?

So I looked at the prices - https://www.receipt-bank.com/pricing/multi-uk/ - hoping that would clarify things.

It didn't. If anything, it suggested to me that there is no ongoing storage. Under "All our plans include" it has a tick box by the counter-grammatical "Seamless integration cloud accounting software or download your info CSV, and images to PDF" - that suggests to me that you [have to] download the resulting PDFs for storage yourself. In a way, that's is fair enough: It unloads the burden of mandatory storage back onto you, but solves the problem of what happens when you stop subscribing or decide to step down a level. However, that's counter to what I inferred from those other pages, above. So which is it?

Clicking on "Select package" doesn't provide an answer, because that leads to a sign up page - but, lo! A link to the terms of service (which are also linked at the bottom of each page) at https://www.receipt-bank.com/terms/ - perhaps that'll help!

Nope. A search for certain key words that would lead me straight to the relevant bits turns up nothing. The word "store" is the only thing that brings up a few results:

Under "Use of the Services by You" it tells you that you mustn't upload, post, transmit or store viruses, etc, or pornographic or explicit material. (So I guess any business in the adult industry will fall foul of the terms, then; text can be considered explicit as well as pictures, and invoices etc might very well include some interesting phrases!)

Under "Privacy and Personal Information" it mentions that the privacy policy covers how Receipt Bank handles and stores your info.

And under "Limitation of Liability" it points out that if it all goes horribly wrong "It's not our fault, guv, so tough luck!" - in fact it specifically advises you "to maintain your own records and copies of Content" which is pretty telling. (And is what I'd want to do anyway - and, in fact, in the case of my clients who use a cloud offering that allows PDF invoices to be uploaded, I archive those that I upload myself.)

So searching for key words didn't work - so I read the terms in full. This still didn't provide a clear answer, but I did spot some interesting things.

"29. You agree to be responsible for keeping your passwords associated with your Receipt Bank account secret and secure. Receipt Bank may be able to help you retrieve lost passwords, but may not be held responsible or liable if it cannot help locate or reset a lost password."

I note that the last bit says "locate or reset" but that sentence says they may be able to help you 'retrieve' a lost password. They should not be able to do that, ever - it should only ever be possible to reset a lost password. (The passwords should be salted and one-way hashed; the operative term being 'one-way'). It may be that this is what they do, and that 'retrieve' and 'locate or' shouldn't be in that term - but that they are there sets alarm bells ringing.

"36. You may cancel your Receipt Bank account at any time and your recurring billing schedule will be ended. There is no cancellation fee, but you are responsible for charges already incurred up until your cancellation, including the pre-payment of the current month of service you have. Receipt Bank is unable to issue refunds after payment is received. Receipt Bank is unable to prorate Receipt Bank, so charges must be paid in full. Refunds may not be given for lost envelopes, or services and privileges associated with them."

Not prorating is common with online things - but I just love that it's unable to do it. Is their software really that crap, or is the truth more along the lines that they are unwilling to do it?

"43. Receipt Bank will scan receipts and paid invoices. If you send in paper receipts without a Payee Name (supplier), Date and Total, that paper may not be scanned or entered into your Receipt Bank account and the data entered may be incomplete. Receipt Bank cannot process letters, lists, manuals, or other documents.

44. If you send in illegible receipts they may not be processed correctly into your Receipt Bank account. You recognize that all receipts may not be entered correctly into your account, and that Receipt Bank does not guarantee proper tagging or data entry on any receipts."

Considering some of the paperwork some of my clients receive from their suppliers - subbies and self employed one man bands in particular, which some of my clients use a lot - those two points (which, to be fair, are unsurprising) show just how flawed the concept is, and just how much better the human brain is than software (um... at the moment, anyway!)

So, of course, they lead to:

"45. Receipt Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of automatically processed information."

That's my absolute favourite one, right there - but don't forget this one:

"46. If you send in receipts with notes or other information on the backs, those back sides may not be scanned or uploaded into your account."

Doesn't HMRC state that you need to scan both sides if it's a digital copy you are keeping? I thought it said as much on HMRC's site, but I can't find it now. Has this changed, or am I misremembering? However, that aside, what happens with receipts that *use* both sides? Although not particularly common, I do see plenty like that.

"48. Receipts with multiple pages will be treated as separate receipts for each page."

That's... interesting. Again, I see plenty of multi-page receipts. So, if Joe Bloggs gives me one for £200, which has a £100 subtotal on page 1, brought forward onto page 2, is there potential for the result to be two items in the accounts, one for £100, and the second for £200?

"51. For your security, do not mail in receipts that have full credit card information printed on them. If any such receipts are received, they may not be scanned or uploaded to your account."

No vendor should be printing full CC details on receipts anyway - so this one is possibly forgiveable, but it does mean that if you don't have your eyes open this could mean you'll be sending off stuff that won't get scanned, and therefore included in your accounts. (Do they send such things back? I'll come back to this.)

"73. Receipt Bank may terminate its legal agreement with you under several circumstances: ... 73.4. If the Service is no longer commercially viable for Receipt Bank."

That stands to reason, really, but I thought I'd include it anyway.

Remember #45? ("Receipt Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of automatically processed information.") - it's effectively reiterated under Service Limitations:

"75. Receipt Bank does not guarantee that the Service will meet your requirements or expectations, that your use of the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or free from errors, that information obtained from the Service will be accurate or reliable or that defects in the software of the Service can or will be corrected."

And remember that bit about not uploading viruses etc? Specifically, that you mustn't do it - you are in breach of their terms if you do, even accidentally. However, that's one way only...

"76. Any material downloaded or otherwise obtained when using the Service is obtained at your own risk. You will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or other device used to access the Service that happens as a result of the obtainment of any such Content."

... because if their system infects your computer with malware, tough luck!

After that there's a section ("Limitation of Liability") that just reiterates some of the above, and then some fairly generic stuff (not responsible for content of pages linked to, trademarks, etc).

To be fair to them, a lot of the things I've highlighted are what I would expect from this type of company - fairly standard offloading of just about all responsibility to the customer, so although I'm 'singling them out' for the purpose of this discussion, I'm really trying to make the point that customers really need to read and understand the implications of the terms they sign up to.

But all of that is a bit of a digression anyway - it still hasn't clarified whether or not they store scanned stuff, or whether you're supposed to download it and store it yourself (other than the bit that advises you to do that), and nor what amount of storage is provided/how it relates to the different price plans.

Oh... and above I pondered what happens with stuff that doesn't get scanned. The only mention of returning stuff I can see is under 'Mailing' - 39 and 40. 39 deals with receipts sent in by one person for another user (which may not be returned without the other user's permission) and 40 deals with receipts sent in after a subscription has ended.

So what happens with stuff they can't scan? Do they return it, or not?

And the other thing, of course, is the prices! The first thing I thought when I saw them is "EEK!"

For the clients I have that use a cloud accounts package with an awful user interface, which is slow and clunky to use, the prices would probably represent a small saving over my time inputting - but I think it would only be small, because more time is spent on other aspects of the work.

For the clients I have where I use Sage, those prices would represent an increase in their costs. In some cases, a huge increase. Yes, there's more than just the inputting: You have to consider filing, etc, as well - but (a) there's so much other paperwork that still has to be filed, etc, this is a non-issue, and (b) any saving is offset by the need to mess around making sure the paperwork sent to Receipt Bank is suitably neat and tidy (see #39 in those terms) - and, of course, because of the legibility, etc, issues, that includes separating out those items that will still need to be input manually and filed in-house.

I suspect I may have either peeked behind the curtain, or revealed exactly what it is the emperor is wearing - or both.

And an afterthought that has only just occurred to me:

At one client in particular, I have a template email set up because of something that I see quite a lot: Invoices on which VAT has been charged, but which lack a VAT registration number. When I see such an invoice, I input the invoice in such a way that the VAT is held until a VAT number is supplied, and I send out that template email to the supplier with the necessary details added, explaining this and requesting the number.

Does Receipt Bank spot VAT without a VAT number? If so, how does it deal with it?

[Notes length of comment as some formatting is added: Blimey. I really didn't plan for it to be that long!]