Organising your expenses is essential if you have run a small business. You should keep a daily record of your expenses by saving receipts, invoices, and other expenses to your invoicing software. Recording all expenses will help you keep track of your cash flow and simplify your tax reporting.
Despite how important this is, expense tracking can still be neglected at busy times if it’s not simple to do. This article explains how to record your expenses with the help of an alias email and why this is a good solution for expense tracking during peak times.
What is an alias email?
Simply put, an email alias is a forwarding email. You can set up an email alias address with Debitoor and send records of your expenses to that address. Your expenses will then be directly uploaded to your Debitoor account.
Your email alias is not to be confused with the email address you use to log in to your Debitoor account.
To create your alias email, simply go to the ‘Settings’ tab and click ‘Profile’. Here, you will see a button, ‘Create Alias’. Click this and fill out the local name you want to use. You will be able to choose the local name for the email (for example, name of your company) and the domain name will be @debitoor.me. This email address will not be known to anybody else and will only be used for expense reporting purposes.
How to use an alias email to record your expenses?
Once you have created your alias email address, you can start using it right away. With your new email alias, you can send an expense in PDF, JPG, GIF, or PNG format and add the cost and date in the subject bar.
There’s no need to write any other message, just click send. Once you have emailed your expense to your alias email address, it will appear in your debitoor account within a couple of minutes as a newly recorded expense.
This is a super fast way to record expenses that are already on your computer as documents, or when receipts are emailed to you. The attachments you sent to you alias are automatically included in the expense report on your Debitoor account and nothing is amis.
When is the alias email most useful?
The Debitoor alias email address is designed to make it easy to report your expenses. It can be used on the go, at any point, from anywhere.
Use the email alias to record recurring expenses
The email alias is naturally most useful when you have bills sent directly to your email address. They’re already in your email account and can easily be forwarded to your alias address.
This can be especially useful when you have recurring expenses that are sent directly to your email. The types of expenses that are most likely billed in this way will be things like phone subscriptions, internet providers, or even, your Debitoor subscription. With recurring expenses, you can simply set the billing email to your alias email address. Then, these recurring expenses will upload automatically each month on your Debitoor account.
This is one more way you can easily automate your business administration with your invoicing software.
Use the email alias when you’re away from the office
If you find yourself often working away from the office, it’s natural that you will incur various business expenses. For example, a business trip to visit a client could easily lead to travel and possibly accommodation expenses. Accurate expense reporting demands that you save all of these receipts include them in your expense report.
Of course, some of these expenses can easily be recorded by taking a picture of the expense and uploading it to your debitoor account immediately. But what about other expenses which have been emailed to you instead? This is where your alias email address comes in handy, simply forward the email to your alias, and your expense is automatically recorded in your Debitoor account.
Employee expense reporting
It may also be possible to give your Debitoor alias email address to your employees, if you deem necessary. This will allow them to record their expenses directly with your business, without needing you to create their own login to your Debitoor account.
This can be a great way to allow employees to manage their own expenses, without having to give your employees access to your Debitoor profile. And of course, if you feel like an employee may abuse the alias privilege, you can always keep your Debitoor alias email address private - nobody needs to know it apart from you!
Benefits of recording your expenses with an alias email?
There are a number of benefits to using an email alias.
Firstly, it can save you time downloading documents from your email and then uploading them to your Debitoor account. Rather, you can forward them directly to your Debitoor alias and your expense reporting is complete.
Secondly, your email alias provides you with another way to record your expenses at speed and guarantee that you do not forget later on.
Thirdly, it offers you a way to still upload an expense even if it’s not possible to use your Debitoor account. Suppose you forget your login, or are using a different computer; as long as you know your alias address, you know your expense has been accounted for.
Finally, you can give your alias email address to your employees (if you want), giving them a way to record a business expense without having to make a user login for them.
