What should a business with fewer than 10 staff look for in a receipt capture app for Xero?

Short answer: for a business with fewer than 10 staff, pick the app that finishes the job in Xero, not the one with the longest feature list. Check that a photographed receipt becomes a transaction with the image attached, that you pay only for the people who capture receipts, that an admin can see what the team sent, and that a free plan lets you test it on real receipts first. Quenta, which connects to Xero, charges £6 per user a month (or £60 a year), has a free plan of 10 receipts a month per organisation, and gives admins a Team receipts view.

This is a buying guide, not a ranking. Nobody can honestly name one best app for every team, so the checks below are the ones that decide whether a five-person business still has a pile of receipts three months in. Quenta's answers come from its help guides and pricing page.

What does a small team need from a receipt app?

A small team needs the receipt to end up in Xero as a transaction, with the image on it, without somebody retyping it later. The owner or office manager of a business with a handful of staff usually keeps the books alongside everything else, so any step that waits for a quiet afternoon becomes the pile that builds up before reconciliation.

That gives six checks, in the order they usually matter.

Does it create the Xero transaction, or only store the receipt?

Some tools file the image and leave the data entry to you. Quenta reads the merchant, date, total, currency and VAT details, then creates an authorised spend-money transaction on the bank account you chose, with the original image or PDF attached. The steps are in the guide to how Quenta works.

If you only want the attachment, Xero lets you attach a file to a transaction by hand, and how to attach a receipt to a Xero transaction covers it. The typing is the part an app should take off you.

How is it priced when staff come and go?

Ask whether you pay per person, per company or per receipt, and what happens when somebody new joins. Quenta Pro is £6 per user a month, or £60 per user a year, tax included. A licence is for each person who actually captures receipts, and an administrator pays once for the whole workspace.

Seats fill themselves: a spare licence is claimed the first time a new person captures a receipt. If there is no spare, the capture is refused and the person is told to contact their administrator, so nobody is billed for a seat by surprise. For a team of five paying monthly, that is £30 a month, and £300 a year if you pay annually. Annual billing is optional, and the administrator manages the card, the seat count and cancellation in Stripe's customer portal.

Can you test it on real receipts before paying?

Quenta has a free plan with no expiry: 10 receipts per organisation per calendar month. It is counted per organisation, not per person, so a team of five shares the 10, and deleted receipts still count. That is enough to photograph a week of real receipts and see whether the Xero transactions look right, but not enough to run a team on.

Pro is capped under fair use at 350 receipts a month per workspace, so it is not unlimited. For a team of under 10 that ceiling is a long way off, but you should know it is there.

Can an admin see what the team sent?

Admins can open Team receipts to see receipts submitted by people in the same Xero organisation, filter by teammate, and review them. Quenta relies on Xero for who belongs and what role they hold, so you add or remove people in Xero and do not keep a second user list. The team and settings guide has the detail.

Submit-only Xero users can send receipts without being shown bank-account information. When a teammate could not choose the account the money came from, the receipt waits in Review and an admin allocates the paid-from account later.

How do receipts arrive from people who will not install anything?

The two routes that need no installation by the sender are email and the web. Quenta gives forwarding addresses for digital receipts, and a workspace address that accepts mail from any sender, so you can hand it to a supplier or an assistant. Anyone who knows an unrestricted address may be able to submit a receipt to that workspace, so keep it private. The email receipts guide explains the options.

Staff who are out all day can use the iPhone or Android app, which saves a capture with no connection and uploads it when the phone reconnects. The web app at app.quenta.so takes an image or PDF upload.

Does it learn how your business codes things?

Quenta learns the Xero account you chose for a kind of purchase and applies it to later receipts when you tick Remember this choice. The first receipt in a category may ask which account to use, and after that most receipts need no answer. The guide to coding receipts from your phone shows how this works.

A receipt goes to Review when a field is unclear, an account mapping is missing or a currency needs confirming. For a foreign-currency receipt the bank amount matters: Quenta estimates it and you can enter the real figure.

What are the limits of Quenta?

Quenta works only with Xero. It does not reconcile for you, because Xero does the matching and you confirm it. It does not decide whether you can reclaim VAT on a purchase, and foreign-currency receipts are posted without VAT.

Quick answers

Is there a free receipt app for Xero? Quenta's free plan covers 10 receipts a month per organisation, with no expiry.

Do I pay for every employee? You pay for each person who captures receipts. A spare licence is claimed on their first capture.

Can staff send receipts without seeing the bank account? Yes, submit-only Xero users can send receipts, and an admin allocates the paid-from account later.

Is it made by Xero? No. Quenta is made by We UC Ltd and connects to Xero.

To see the whole flow for Xero users, read receipt scanning for Xero. Try it today.

Quenta is an independent app from We UC Ltd. Xero is a trademark of Xero Limited. Quenta is not affiliated with or endorsed by Xero.

Photograph it and forget it.