Spark Receipt: Cost-Effective and Efficient Solution
For about 2.5 months now, I've been using Spark Receipt. It's time for a quick review.
To provide some context - I've been using a comparable service from a larger financial company for about 3 years, which charges me about twenty times the annual fee compared to the LTD of Spark Receipt. In this review, I will compare both services.
A quick note upfront: I only use the part of the service for tracking expenses and corresponding incoming invoices. I haven't tested the other features (documents, income, etc.).
One can quickly get the hang of how Spark Receipt works. The dashboard is very intuitive and clear, runs smoothly, and responds quickly. Expenses can be recorded either manually, by photo scan, or via email, with data extraction in the latter two methods working very reliably. There were initial issues with the date format, but these have been resolved in the meantime.
For comparison, I've sent many invoice emails to both services simultaneously, and the reading and extracting process with Spark Receipt is virtually immediate, whereas it always takes 2-3 minutes with my usual service provider (which is not a problem for these types of services).
The photo scan feature of Spark Receipt is first-class and significantly better than my other, long-established service. As mentioned, the photo scans are made using each service's own app under practically the same conditions (as I take the photos one after another). So, the same phone, same light, same distance, etc. - the difference is really noticeable. Plus, with Spark Receipt, you can also crop the scan right away - a very useful feature. But more importantly, the data extraction is reliable.
In the last 4-5 weeks, bulk processing of invoices has also been implemented. Initially, I had several problems (especially with date formats), but now it works without any issues.
Data export also works wonderfully and is sufficiently customizable.
In summary, I can only congratulate Antti for this piece of software. Spark Receipt already makes a very good impression.
Maybe a few suggestions (from my perspective) for the next few months:
- Webhooks would definitely give Spark Receipt an additional boost.
- Classification of the expense receipts would be advantageous (invoices, receipts, etc.).
- It would also be important for me to have an automatic extraction of the respective invoice number, which would save me a lot of time, as I need this information for further processing of the invoices.
- Synchronization of scans. I would like to have the option to synchronize scanned receipts with my own cloud service. I really wish you all the best, but theoretically, you could shut down the service after 2-3 years. Companies must be able to store and provide their receipts for many years. I would feel more comfortable if I could synchronize the scanned files immediately with Drive (or a similar cloud) and thus guarantee access.
Ok, that's it from me :-)
Antti_SparkReceipt
May 9, 2024Thank you so much for the detailed review! I am sure it will help others to get an idea what the app is about and what it can do! 😊 And here's a short reply to your suggestions:
- Webhooks would definitely give Spark Receipt an additional boost.
I agree, this is a very important differentiation factor for SparkReceipt vs some established competition. Plus it would alleviate some immediate stress about integrations etc. And help with the cloud sync concern too (see the later question).
- Classification of the expense receipts would be advantageous (invoices, receipts, etc.).
That is also true - receipts and invoices are inherently different things while sometimes used exchangeably. Especially, invoice can be paid or unpaid - whereas receipt is the proof of purchase. I will mark this down to the backlog for consideration. The expense status tracking (paid, unpaid, approved, rejected etc) has been requested and this could be implemented in sync with those.
- It would also be important for me to have an automatic extraction of the respective invoice number, which would save me a lot of time, as I need this information for further processing of the invoices.
This is already planned - I have found out that in some jurisdictions, e.g. in Germany, this is a required field in the expense. So therefore high priority.
- Synchronization of scans. I would like to have the option to synchronize scanned receipts with my own cloud service. I really wish you all the best, but theoretically, you could shut down the service after 2-3 years. Companies must be able to store and provide their receipts for many years. I would feel more comfortable if I could synchronize the scanned files immediately with Drive (or a similar cloud) and thus guarantee access.
I understand, and with e.g. regular Excel exports this can be achieved quite easily since they contain both the data in a spreadsheet and the raw files. The only issue with this is that it is not automatic and requires you to manually dump the resulting zip file to the cloud. I hope that with the incoming webhooks this could be achieved as a semi-automatic thing. Direct integrations are in theory possible, but they can be a real hurdle since cloud storage access is considered sensitive and would require me to go through an approval process with every provider.
Best regards,
Antti