A core bookkeeping automation tool is a document collection / bill entry software. This type of software is incredibly helpful and serves several important functions. First, it acts as a central document collection hub for your business. Employees can upload bills and receipts directly to the application via email or by taking a picture of the bill or receipt on their mobile phone. In addition, anyone outside your organization can upload bills by sending a pdf attachment from an email. This effectively decentralizes the entry of bill data by getting it into your document hub from multiple sources. The second function of this type of software is it reads the scanned copy of the bill and pulls important data from the document such as vendor name, invoice date, due date, invoice number, and amount and then enters the data into fields for your review. After quickly reviewing the data, you publish both the bill data to your accounting software and a pdf copy of the actual invoice to the transaction in your accounting software. You can set it up so that no bill goes into your system without your review or have bills automatically enter the system once they are uploaded after you become more comfortable with how it works. The software also remembers previous entries so if you use a vendor frequently, it will pull all the data from the current bill and then remember the general ledger account you assigned to that vendor previously.