AccPilotWhat keying receipts really costs your firm
A simple sum to work out what manual receipt entry costs your firm each month: receipts × minutes each × staff cost per hour. With a worked example.
Ask a partner what data entry costs the firm and the usual answer is “nothing extra lah, the staff are already on salary.” The receipts come in, somebody sorts them, glues them, photostats the faded ones, keys them in, checks them and files them. It is just part of the job.
But it is not free. Every hour spent keying a petrol receipt is an hour not spent on a review, a tax computation or a new client. And in the year-end rush it stops being “already on salary” and becomes OT.
Most firms have never put a number on it. It takes one afternoon and a calculator, and the number usually starts a useful conversation. Here is how to work it out for your own firm, with your own figures.
The sum
Receipts a month × minutes per receipt ÷ 60 × staff cost per hour = monthly cost of handling receipts by hand.
Three inputs. You already know the first one roughly. The other two you measure.
1. Receipts a month
Count, don’t guess. Pick a normal month (not year-end) and add up the documents your staff handled across all clients: receipts, supplier invoices, bills, petty cash slips. If you invoice clients by volume or keep a job log, the number may already be there. If not, count a few typical clients and multiply out.
2. Minutes per receipt
This is the one firms underestimate, because keying is only part of it. Time the whole journey of a receipt through the office:
| Step | What to time |
|---|---|
| Sorting | Unpacking the bag or envelope, putting receipts in date or client order |
| Gluing | Sticking small receipts onto A4, cutting long ones to fit |
| Photostatting | Copying thermal receipts before they fade |
| Keying | Typing vendor, date, amount, tax and account into your accounting software |
| Checking | Fixing typos, querying unreadable receipts, asking the client |
| Filing | Punching, filing, labelling the lever-arch file |
The easiest way: give one staff member a batch of 50 receipts from a real client, start a stopwatch, and stop it when the last one is filed. Divide by 50. Do it with two or three different staff and two or three different clients, because a neat client with printed invoices is not the same as a shoebox of crumpled thermal slips. Use the average.
3. Staff cost per hour
Take the full monthly cost of the person doing the work, not just the salary on the payslip. Add the employer’s EPF, SOCSO and EIS contributions, plus any allowances. Then divide by the working hours in a month.
Monthly cost ÷ working hours a month = cost per hour.
If the work is done in OT at year-end, use the OT rate for those hours instead.
A worked example
A made-up firm, with made-up numbers. Use your own.
- The firm handles 10 clients that send receipts monthly, about 150 documents each: 1,500 documents a month.
- The stopwatch test, from sorting to filing, averages 3 minutes per document.
- The accounts clerk costs the firm RM3,520 a month all in, and works 22 days × 8 hours = 176 hours. RM3,520 ÷ 176 = RM20 an hour.
The sum:
| Documents a month | 1,500 |
| × minutes each | 3 |
| = minutes a month | 4,500 |
| ÷ 60 = hours a month | 75 |
| × cost per hour | RM20 |
| = cost a month | RM1,500 |
| × 12 = cost a year | RM18,000 |
Seventy-five hours a month is about 43% of that clerk’s 176 working hours. Almost half a person, every month, moving paper and typing what is already printed on it.
And that is a normal month. If the same 10 clients hand over a year of receipts at once in the year-end rush, the hours land in a few weeks instead of being spread out, often as OT, and the firm takes on fewer new jobs because the team is full. If that sounds familiar, see how to spread the year-end rush.
What the sum leaves out
The calculation only counts minutes. A few costs don’t show up in it but are just as real:
- Mistakes and rework. A transposed figure found at review means pulling the file, finding the receipt and keying it again. Found by the auditor, it costs more.
- Faded receipts. A thermal slip nobody photostatted in time can’t be keyed at all, and can’t be produced if LHDN asks. Records have to be kept for 7 years; more in how long to keep receipts in Malaysia.
- Finding things later. Every query from the auditor or the client means someone digging through lever-arch files.
- Storage. Shelves, boxes and floor space for 7 years of paper, for every client.
- Staff. Good people do not stay long in a job that is mostly gluing and typing.
You don’t need to put a ringgit figure on all of these. Just know the real cost is higher than the sum.
What to do with the number
Once you have it, a few questions follow naturally:
- Is the firm charging for it? If 75 hours a month go into receipt handling, is that time in the fee, or is it quietly eating the margin?
- Which clients cost the most? Run the stopwatch test per client. The shoebox clients often take two or three times as long as the tidy ones. That is useful at fee review time.
- Which steps can go? The paper originals still have to be kept: LHDN’s ruling on records asks for original receipts and invoices to be retained, and so does the SST Act for registered clients, see how long to keep receipts in Malaysia. But gluing them onto A4 and photostatting them are habits, not rules. With a clear, searchable digital copy to work from, the originals can go into one envelope per month, and the glue, the photostat and most of the lever-arch filing can stop.
- What would the hours be worth elsewhere? Reviews, advisory, more clients without hiring.
Where AccPilot fits
AccPilot takes out the typing and most of the paper handling. Receipts come in by web upload, phone snap, email, or the client upload link your firm sends. AccPilot reads the vendor, date, amounts, tax and line items, splits a photo with several receipts into separate documents, and marks each one Ready or Check with the reason. Your staff review the Check ones, then export one clean Excel that imports into your accounting software (what the export looks like). Every document stays stored and searchable by vendor, date and amount for 7 years, so the gluing and photostatting can stop. The originals still go into the month’s envelope.
The minutes per receipt don’t drop to zero. Someone still reviews the Check documents, decides the posting and signs off the accounts. That judgement stays with your firm. Plans come with one credit per receipt pooled across the firm and no per-client fee; see the pricing page for the plans, and we go through the prices on the demo call so you can put the plan cost next to your own number.
Run the stopwatch test on your own receipts first. Then, to see the same batch go through AccPilot, book a free demo.