How Cloud Pro Expense works

You photograph a receipt, the app reads it for you, a person checks it, and the approved expense goes into QuickBooks with the photo attached. Nothing reaches your accounts automatically.

Someone photographs a receipt → an accountant checks the details → anything large is signed off by a second person → an accountant posts it to QuickBooks or exports it to Excel.

The manual is open to anyone. Sign in to use the app, or read what Cloud Pro Expense does first.

Common questions

I am not getting the app's emails. They come from cloudproadvisor@benbloss.com. Look in your spam or junk folder first; if they are there, mark one Not spam. Then add that address to your contacts, which is the surest way to keep them in your inbox. Also check Email me about receipts is ticked in Settings. If your organisation's email filters still catch them, ask whoever looks after your email to allow that address.

I submitted receipts for a colleague and was not emailed. Nobody is emailed about receipts they sent themselves. Everyone else who checks receipts is, at most once every half hour.

Why did the reference number start again at 001? Unless your organisation has chosen otherwise, references run per person, per month: EXP202609-MS-012 is Mats's twelfth receipt dated September 2026, and his first October receipt is EXP202610-MS-001. The month in the middle keeps them apart, so no two are ever the same. A super admin can switch to one running number, or one that restarts each financial year, under Admin → Reference numbers.

I cannot approve my own receipt. That is deliberate — somebody else has to. More under If something goes wrong.

Submitting a receipt

Take a photo of a receipt on the Receipts page opens your camera, and the photo uploads as soon as you take it. You can also choose a photo or a PDF, or send up to ten at once.

Drafts. A receipt the app has read but you have not yet submitted is a draft. Every draft of yours, however it arrived, is counted under Continue where you left off at the top of the Receipts page, and the button there walks you through them one at a time — check the fields, submit, and the next one appears. Drafts also show in the list below with a grey "draft" badge. With several drafts you can also tick the ones that are ready and press Submit ticked receipts: each is checked exactly as if submitted on its own, and any that still need something stay as drafts and are named in the message.

What you are claiming. Under the drafts, Your drafts come to gives their total in your organisation's currency — and so does each step of checking them one by one ("Draft 3 of 21 · … in all your drafts") — and as you tick drafts to submit together the Ticked line adds up just those. A receipt in another currency that has no exchange rate yet is counted separately and left out of the total until it has one.

Reading the receipt takes ten to thirty seconds — keep the page open while it works. When it finishes you get the details it found: shop, date, amount, currency and a category. Anything the app was unsure about is highlighted, and it shows how confident it was.

A receipt too long for one photo. Some till receipts are longer than a phone can photograph legibly in one frame. Photograph it in overlapping parts, from the top down, one photo straight after another, then use One long receipt in several photos on the Receipts page and choose all the parts. The app puts them in the order they were taken and joins them into one image, so the receipt is read and stored as one — the joined picture is what an accountant sees and what goes to QuickBooks. Up to six photos. Check the small previews run top to bottom before you press Join — photos that came through WhatsApp or email lose their original times, so the guess can be wrong; the ◀ ▶ buttons under each preview and Reverse order put them right. Photos only: a PDF or a scan goes in as a single file. The i button beside the heading repeats this.

Always check the amount and the date before submitting. The app is good but not perfect, and you are the person who saw the receipt.

Choose how it was paid: employee paid (you spent your own money and want it back) or company card. This decides how it is recorded in QuickBooks, so it matters.

If the receipt shows the last four digits of a card, the app matches them against your organisation's registered cards and fills in Card used for you. Check it. If it says the card is not registered and it was your own card, leave it as none and choose employee paid.

The two have to agree. You cannot submit a receipt that names one of the organisation's own cards and also says you paid for it yourself — that would ask for a refund on money you did not spend. Either change Paid with to company card, or set Card used to none if it really was your own card.

Press Submit and it goes for checking. You will get an email when it is approved or rejected. If it is rejected, the reason is on the receipt — correct it and submit again.

If your organisation codes spending to a programme or fund, a Class box appears. Pick the one the expense belongs to. It only shows when your organisation actually uses classes in QuickBooks, so if you do not see it there is nothing to choose.

The fund. If your organisation also records which fund an expense comes out of — restricted or unrestricted, say — a second box appears beside the class for it. It only shows once a super admin has set the fund up, so if you do not see it there is nothing to choose.

Submitting for a colleague. If an admin has marked you as able to submit for others, the receipt form gains a This expense is for box. Pick the colleague and the receipt counts as theirs everywhere money matters — the reimbursement goes to them, it appears in their totals, and the reference number carries their initials — while the history still shows you added it. They can see the receipt too, and it shows in their own list. On Several at once the same box — These receipts are for — sets the colleague for the whole batch in one go; any one receipt can still be changed on its own afterwards.

Emailing a receipt in. Receipts that arrive by email — an online order confirmation, a PDF invoice, a photo a colleague sent you — can be forwarded instead of photographed. Turn it on in Settings and you get a private address of your own — press Copy and save it as a contact in your mail app. Forward the email to it. If it has a photo or PDF attached, each attachment (up to ten in one email) becomes a draft. If the receipt is the email itself — an order confirmation, a ride receipt — the text of the email is saved as a PDF and that becomes the draft, so there is still a document to attach in QuickBooks. Logos and other small pictures in the email are ignored. Either way the draft is read like any other, and you get a reply saying what was added, with a link to check them one by one. Nothing is submitted for you. The subject line becomes the description, so "Fwd: Taxi to airport" saves you typing it. Keep the address to yourself — anyone who has it can add drafts to your account (and only drafts: they cannot submit them) — and swap it for a new one in Settings if it ever gets out.

An invoice and its receipt. When two documents for the same payment arrive together — an invoice and the card receipt that paid it, in one email or one batch — the app combines them into one receipt with both documents attached, so the expense is counted once and QuickBooks gets both. It decides they are the same payment when the invoice or order number matches and the amount, shop and currency agree, or, within a single email, when an invoice and a receipt show the same shop, amount and day. Two receipts are never combined on looks alone — two train tickets bought together and emailed together stay two receipts, each carrying the "may already have been added" notice for you to judge. The extra document is listed under the photo. If it got that wrong, delete the draft and send the documents separately.

More than one document for one expense. Sometimes one expense comes with several pieces of paper the app would never pair on its own — a money-transfer slip and the tickets it paid for, say. Add the receipt as usual, then open it and use Add a document under the photo: drop photos or PDFs on the box, or click it to choose them (up to five at a time, ten per receipt). They are kept with the receipt and attached in QuickBooks when it is posted, next to the receipt photo. They are not read by the app, so they do not count towards your allowance and do not change the details already read. You can add them while the receipt is your draft; once it is submitted, an accountant can. A document added by mistake can be taken off again with its ✕. Anything you had typed into the receipt and not saved yet is kept when you add or remove a document — press Save afterwards to keep it.

"This may already have been added." Every open receipt is checked against the organisation's others. If one has the same invoice number and amount, or the same shop, amount and date, a red notice at the top names it with a link. It is a warning, not a verdict — two identical coffees on the same day are two coffees — so look, and if it really is the same purchase, delete your draft (or, for a reviewer, reject it). If the earlier receipt is a colleague's, you are told only that one exists; accountants and super admins see the details. The Invoice / receipt no. field is what the check keys on; correct it if it was misread.

Deleting a draft. A draft you added can be deleted with the red Delete draft button on the receipt — useful for a blurry photo or a duplicate. You are asked to confirm, and it cannot be undone. Once a receipt is submitted it belongs to the review record: it is rejected by an accountant, not erased.

Monthly allowance. Every receipt the app reads — a photo, a file, a bulk upload, an emailed receipt — counts once towards your organisation's allowance for the calendar month; the Receipts page shows how much is used. On a paid plan, going over costs a small amount per extra receipt and nothing stops. On the Free plan (or a complimentary one) uploads pause at the allowance until next month, or until a super admin upgrades on the Billing page. Two documents combined into one receipt count once each, and deleting a draft does not give the count back — the reading already happened.

Finding a receipt later. The Receipts page filters by status, month and shop name — and, for accountants and super admins, by person (the person the expense is for). The filters live in the web address, so a view you use often can be bookmarked. Accountants and super admins see everybody's receipts there; everyone else sees their own, including any a colleague submitted for them.

Add the app to your home screen (Share → Add to Home Screen on iPhone, or Install app on Android) and it opens like a normal app, straight to the camera.

Currencies and exchange rates

Your books are in one currency — the currency of the connected QuickBooks company. A receipt in that currency is used as-is.

A receipt in another currency needs an exchange rate. The app fills in the published rate for the date on the receipt, from Frankfurter, a free public rates service. Rates are daily: there is one per calendar day, weekends included, and the time on the receipt is not used.

Under the rate it says where the rate came from and which day it is for, with a link that opens exchangerates.org.uk at the same currency pair and day, so you can compare the two in one click. Small differences between rate services are normal.

If you correct the date or the currency, the rate follows. Save and the published rate for the corrected date is fetched in its place, and the message after saving says so. If no rate can be found for that day, the box is left empty and you are asked to enter one, rather than keeping a rate for the wrong day.

A rate you type yourself always wins. It is kept as typed even if the date is corrected afterwards, because a rate taken off a card statement belongs to the transaction. Only changing the currency replaces it, since a rate for one currency means nothing for another. To go back to the published rate, clear the box and save. Rates set before the app recorded their source are treated like typed ones and never replaced automatically.

Check the rate against what your card was actually charged, because for a reimbursement that is the real number.

A foreign receipt cannot be approved until it has a rate: without one nobody can say what it cost. The converted figure is worked out the same way for QuickBooks and for the spreadsheet, so the two always agree.

A rate is stored together with the currency it converts into. If you ever connect a QuickBooks company that keeps its books in a different currency, rates captured for the old one stop applying — a euro-to-dollar rate is not a euro-to-pound rate. Those receipts show as needing a rate again, and the number you entered is kept so you can see what it was. Nothing already posted or exported is changed.

What each status means

Emails the app sends

Accountants hear when receipts are waiting to be checked; refund approvers hear when something needs signing off. Those are grouped — a batch of ten receipts is one email, not ten. You hear when a receipt you submitted is approved or rejected.

Keep them out of spam. They come from cloudproadvisor@benbloss.com. Add that address to your contacts — some were found in spam folders, and a sender in your contacts is the surest way to keep them in your inbox.

You can turn all of those off in Settings. Sign-in, verification and password-reset emails always go out — and so does the reply when you email a receipt in, because it is the only way to know the email arrived. It always goes to the address you signed in with, whichever mailbox you forwarded from.

How the app looks

The app comes in two looks: Light, with white pages, and Dark, with black pages that are easier on the eyes at night. Choose under Appearance in Settings. It is your own setting: it follows you to every phone and computer you sign in on, and it changes nothing for anyone else in your organisation.

On a phone, the menu is behind the round button at the top right. Tap it to open the list of pages; Help opens to the manual, the guided tour and more, and Add a receipt is always at the bottom.

If something goes wrong

The camera button does nothing. Your browser needs permission to use the camera. You can always use "Or choose a file" instead.

It could not read my receipt. You will be told, and the fields are left blank for you to type in. A flatter, brighter photo of the whole receipt usually works better.

My receipt is too long to photograph. Photograph it in overlapping parts from the top down and use One long receipt in several photos — the parts are joined into one receipt. If the previews are in the wrong order, use the arrows or Reverse order before joining. If the joined picture came out in the wrong order, delete the draft and take the photos again, top part first.

I cannot approve my own receipt. That is deliberate — somebody else has to.

"Verify your email address". Check your inbox for the link, or use Resend at the top of the page. Uploading and the admin tools need a verified address.

A sync failed. The reason from QuickBooks is on the receipt. Most often it is an unmapped category or a missing exchange rate.

"Your organisation has used all its receipts for this month." The Free plan (and complimentary plans) stop at their monthly allowance. A super admin can upgrade on the Billing page and the receipt can be added straight away; otherwise it can be added next month. Paid plans never stop — extra receipts are billed per receipt.

I emailed a receipt and nothing happened. Check the reply in your inbox — it says what was added or why nothing was. The address must be the current one from Settings and your account must be verified. An email with no attachment and only a line or two of text is not treated as a receipt — forward the original confirmation rather than a note about it. If the email bounced, the address is wrong or switched off.

Anything else: cloudproadvisor@benbloss.com.