Saturday, July 29, 2023

Why do we start Receipt-AI?

Hi, my name is Queenie Peng. Co-founder of Receipt-AI. I’m from Shenzhen, China, a modern city with a population of 17 million. 7 years ago, I came to Chicago. 4 years later, I founded Big Green Company. This is our fourth product since then, and we named it Receipt-AI.

Our Story

Before I dive deep into Receipt-AI, I want to take you back to the beginning of the journey when we just started the company. Just like every other startup founder, we were learning a lot of new things: registering a company, figuring out product-market fit, doing sales during the day and working on the product at night.

Among all these tasks, one problem has stood out to us: Bookkeeping and taxes, filled with terminology and the support is often limited. As a founder, I had to pick up an accounting software, work on our books, we spent hours watching tutorials, asking our friends for help, and finally got the hang of it. I still remember how steep the learning curve was.

Think about the way we handle our finances as employees – we pay our taxes, we got our paychecks, and then we can use the rest on other aspects of our lives. But as a company, it's an entirely different ballgame. We receive our revenue, take out all the business expenses, and then we pay taxes with what's left.

As a company, the more expenses and investments we make, the less taxes we have to pay.

What is Receipt-AI?

Now we know expenses are important to the company. The IRS requests that we keep receipts for up to 7 years. As you can imagine, gathering and organizing these documents becomes a nightmare for any companies.

That’s the beginning of Receipt-AI—it allows users to simply take a picture of their receipt and send it via email or SMS. Receipt-AI then extracts key information (e.g., date, vendor name, and total) and uploads it to your accounting software, like QuickBooks or Xero. Instead of spending hours on bookkeeping and expense reports, Receipt-AI simplifies this process and saves 97% of the time.

This is what the receipts look like on Xero and QuickBooks; they’ve been renamed, organized by date, and just sit nicely waiting to be reconciled. All of this is accomplished by simply taking a picture and text. And on top of that, all the files are encrypted and well-protected in your account.

But, we don't stop there. Our vision for Receipt-AI, extends far beyond just receipt management. We want to handle all accounting work automatically. In the future, we want to be able to generate tax documents based on the size and entity of the company, maximize returns, and reduce all the repetitive work that companies have to do. We want to take care of it all. Instead of spending time on bookkeeping, we want you to focus on growing the company.

Special thanks to my co-founder Ian Heraty, who was brilliant and crazy enough to hop on this journey with me. You rock!

Queenie Peng and Ian Heraty, founders of Receipt-AI, in front of The Bean in Chicago, Illinois.