Upload or forward a receipt

Add receipts, at the top of Expenses→ and in the Finance menu, opens the page that reads a receipt for you. It takes them in two ways.

• Upload it. If the file is already on the device you are using, choose it under Upload receipts, the first thing on the page. PDFs, photos and iPhone HEIC, up to 5 MB each.
• Forward it by email to [email protected], from the email address on your Sessional account. That is how we know the receipt is yours.

Either way it is read within the hour and waits in the same queue on the same page, with the vendor, date, amount and category already proposed. Check the figures, correct anything that is wrong, and confirm. That is when the expense is created.

The Attach link in the receipt column of an expense you have already typed in files the document against those figures as evidence. It reads nothing, and it is unchanged.

Add receipts is the other way round: it reads the figures and you confirm them. Both are available, and neither replaces the other.

• PDFs, which is what most email receipts are. Forward the confirmation email as it is.
• Photos: JPG, PNG and WebP. A phone picture of a paper till receipt is fine.
• HEIC, the format iPhones use by default. No need to convert anything first.

Up to five attachments per email, 5MB each. Anything that is not a receipt, such as the sender's logo in their signature, is ignored rather than turned into an expense.

Forward a course or training certificate to the same address and it is recognised as one, so it lands in your CPD evidence store→ rather than becoming a draft expense. The provider, title, date and hours are read off it there for you to confirm, and you can file it against a reflection or CPD record. If the judgement goes the wrong way, This is a certificate on a receipt and This is a receipt on a certificate move it across in one press. A course you paid for is often both: forward the invoice and the certificate separately and each goes where it belongs.

One case is deliberately left to you. If the domain the mail came from could not be verified, the file stays in the receipt queue with a note saying it looks like a certificate, and This is a certificate moves it. Adding something to your evidence store is a decision we take only when you are signed in, because a From line can be faked.

Receipts sent by a machine (parking apps, taxis, online orders, course bookings) are usually marked as automated mail, and a lot of systems quietly discard those. Sessional handles them before that filter, so forwarding a receipt straight from the app that sent it works normally.

The receipt reaches your account because of the address it came from. Your account address always works. If you take photos on a phone signed into a personal account, add that address on the Add receipts page and we will send it a link to confirm.

Until that link is followed, nothing forwarded from the address arrives. That is deliberate: without confirming, someone could enter an address that is not theirs and have receipts sent from it land in their account instead of yours.

If a receipt arrives from a sender whose domain could not be verified, it is marked in the queue. Worth a second look before you confirm it, because it means we could not check the email really came from where it says.

Uploading a receipt needs only a verified email address. Forwarding by email also needs your name, a phone number and your invoice address on your profile, because an email sender can be faked and we have to be sure whose queue a forwarded receipt lands in.

The four that forwarding asks for, all of which already appear on the invoices you send:

• A verified email address. Receipts are matched to you by the address they were sent from, so it has to be confirmed.
• Your full name. It goes on the expense record and on any invoice that follows it.
• A phone number. So we can reach you about anything unexpected that arrives.
• Your invoice address, including the postcode. The full address, not the postcode district your public profile uses.

All four live on your profile→. The Add receipts page shows which are still outstanding, ticked off as you add them, next to the upload control you can use in the meantime.

Every image is checked before you see it. Anything that is not an ordinary receipt is held back, is not shown to you, and never becomes an expense. You do not have to look at it, and you will not be notified about it.

A fuel receipt is not a mileage claim, and you should not claim both for the same journey. Mileage is claimed by distance at the HMRC rate. See expenses and mileage→.

Having receipts read for you, by upload or by email, is part of expenses, which is on Plus and Pro. See pricing→.