⟵ All work

03 / Soldo · Receipt capture

Making receipt status clear

Showing whether emailed receipts matched a payment or need attention.

Stage: Discovery and prototype · Not live

Soldo Document library: the Needs attention tab with each forwarded document, its match status and an Attach button

The problem

People forwarded receipts by email and heard nothing back, so they forwarded again, raised a ticket, or found out at month end.

My main decision

Reply to every forwarded receipt: matched, or what to do next. Then give people one place to fix what didn’t match.

Stage

Discovery and a clickable prototype. Not live.

My role
Discovery, Maya’s journey and scenarios, the email flow, the Documents page and the clickable prototype.
With
Product, engineering, research and support at Soldo.

A receipt often arrives before the payment

An Uber email lands in seconds. The card payment can take a day or more to settle, and the amount can differ from the receipt. So a receipt that can’t be matched yet isn’t necessarily wrong: there may be nothing to match it to.

Each card already had its own email address for receipts, but it was buried in Settings and different for every card. Nothing confirmed a receipt had arrived, and when matching failed nobody was told.

What a receipt can be

I designed around the states a receipt moves through, so every one of them tells Maya something.

Matched

  1. Forwarded
  2. Processing
  3. Matched, reply sent

Needs attention

  1. Forwarded
  2. Processing
  3. No match, or several matches
  4. Maya resolves it
The states the prototype shows. A receipt that needs attention stays in Documents until Maya resolves it.
  • Matched: the reply shows the receipt next to the payment it went to, so she can trust it without opening Soldo.
  • Needs attention: the reply says what probably happened, such as a payment that hasn’t settled, a different amount or another card, and what to do next.
  • Many at once: forward five invoices, get one summary back: matched, partly matched, not matched.
  • Resolve it yourself: the Documents page opens on what needs attention. Maya can attach a receipt to a suggested match, add it as an out-of-pocket expense, or delete it.

The prototype shows manual matching. Matching a receipt automatically once its payment settles isn’t designed yet.

Five ways receipts arrive

Maya is our frequent-spender persona: 30 or more card transactions a month and 5 to 10 receipts by email. I mapped one scenario for each channel: paper, an emailed receipt, a hotel invoice, a vendor portal and files shared in chat. Paper was already covered by mobile capture. The other four all ended in email, so email became the way in.

Design explorations

Maya’s journey, the email flow and the Documents page, from the prototype.
Maya’s receipt journey
Nine-panel storyboard of Maya: an in-person purchase, an email receipt, a PDF, a vendor portal invoice, a month-end reminder, hunting for receipts, attaching them, all attached, done

Maya’s job: get through month end without a “missing expense” reminder from Priya. Panel 6 is the problem: four places to search for one receipt.

Five channels, five workarounds (persona scenarios)

1 · Paper receipt

Client dinner, £45, paid at the till.

Already solved by the new mobile capture flow.

2 · Uber email

A £24.50 receipt, in her inbox seconds after the trip.

“There’s a forwarding address? Which of my three cards is it for?”

3 · Hotel invoice

£180, emailed hours after booking.

“I forwarded it. Did it attach? To what?”

4 · Software invoice

£156, downloaded from a vendor portal.

“No bulk upload. I find each transaction in Reports, one by one.”

5 · Files and chat

Two invoices, one shared on WhatsApp by a colleague.

“Do I email them to myself, or photograph my screen?”

The paper receipt was already handled. The other four all end in email, so email became the way in, and the reply became the design.

Forwarding, end to end

1 · Forward

From the inbox she already uses

Mail app: Maya forwards the Uber receipt to receipts.travel.maya@soldo.io, the PDF attached

No app, no form. She forwards to her card inbox, and a “Sending…” message with Undo confirms it left.

2 · Reply

Every receipt gets an answer, matched or not

Soldo email: document successfully attached, with the receipt and the Uber transaction side by side and a Complete transaction details button
Soldo email: no match found, with the receipt received, a Match it manually in Soldo action and a list of why it may have happened

Matched: the receipt next to the transaction it went to, so Maya can trust it without opening Soldo.

No match: what probably happened and what to do next. The receipt waits in Documents, it isn’t lost.

3 · Many at once

One summary for a batch

Batch summary email: five documents processed, 2 no match, 2 partial match, 1 matched, each with its status

Forward five invoices, get one email back. What matched, what partly matched, what still needs her.

4 · Remind

Reminders that teach the shortcut

Reminder email: three transactions without receipts, an Attach receipts in Soldo button and a line saying receipts can be forwarded to the card inbox

The month-end reminder lists what’s missing and tells Maya she can forward receipts to her card inbox. The address shows up where she needs it.

Documents in Soldo

What needs attention comes first

Document library: a Needs attention tab with filters for channel, date, status and format, and each document with its match status and an Attach button

Everything that arrived, from every channel, in one list. The default tab shows only what needs Maya, with the reason beside each.

Fix a match without asking anyone

Attach to a transaction: the invoice on the left, two possible matches on the right, with Cancel and Attach

The original on the left, likely matches on the right. Attach, add as out-of-pocket, or delete.

What we will measure

These are proposed targets for a first release, not results.

Proposed targetFewer support tickets

  • −50%tickets about email forwarding

Proposed targetMore automatic matches

  • 80%of forwarded receipts matched with no manual step

Proposed targetMonth-end completeness

  • −30%transactions still missing a receipt at month end

Proposed targetSelf-service resolution

  • 70%of unmatched receipts resolved by the spender, without support or finance