A receipt proves you paid for something: a till ticket from a restaurant or a shop, a parking, fuel or taxi ticket, a card-payment slip, an app or booking confirmation marked paid. It is not an invoice. Financica files it under expenses as a receipt, a document kind of its own alongside invoices, credit notes and payment requests. Use it to record an expense when no invoice exists or none has reached you.
What changes compared with an invoice
- No invoice number. A receipt is not numbered like an invoice, so Financica never asks for one. The ticket, transaction or booking number goes in Reference.
- No VAT recovery. You can only deduct VAT with an invoice. In Belgium a till ticket, even one from a certified cash register, does not give you a deduction, however much VAT it prints. The VAT is part of what the expense cost you, so every line is booked at its amount including VAT and no VAT is posted.
- No due date. A receipt records a payment already made. The due date is hidden unless the document states one.
- Nothing to send. A receipt cannot be sent, exported as UBL or Factur-X, or rendered as a PDF invoice.
If you want the VAT back, ask the supplier for an invoice and book that instead. Simplified invoices that are invoices in law (a German Kleinbetragsrechnung, for example) are booked as invoices, not receipts.
How a document becomes a receipt
When you upload a document, Financica decides what kind it is. A document is read as a receipt when:
- you have marked a previous document from the same supplier as a receipt; or
- it is titled as one: "receipt", "ticket de caisse", "kasticket", "Kassenbon", "booking confirmation" and similar; or
- it shows the full amount as paid and carries no invoice number.
A document that carries an invoice number and the supplier's VAT number is an invoice, even when it says "receipt" on top: many suppliers print "receipt" on an invoice that has been paid.
To correct the kind before the document is approved, use the Document kind field in edit mode, or choose This is not an invoice in the actions menu ("...") and pick Receipt. Financica remembers your choice for that supplier. If the document had VAT on its lines, marking it as a receipt adds that VAT to the line amounts, so the total does not change.
Posting to your books
Approving a receipt posts each line, VAT included, to the account you categorize it to, with the total going to accounts payable until it is matched to the payment. Match it to the bank or card transaction that paid it as you would any expense.
If a receipt still shows a VAT amount, the checks panel blocks approval. Saving the receipt moves the VAT into the line amounts and clears the block.
Belgian VAT return
A receipt has no VAT tab: there is no tax scheme to choose and no VAT to declare.
Receipts stay out of the VAT return. They are not part of the purchase grids (81 to 83) and have no VAT to deduct. The VAT return page lists them under "Receipts (not an invoice, no purchase grid)", so you can see they were considered.
Duplicate detection
Receipts have no invoice number, so Financica matches them on supplier, date and amount. When both documents carry a reference, the references must match too, so two tickets from the same shop on the same day are not taken for each other. Uploading the same receipt twice links to the existing record instead of creating a second one.
Finding receipts
Receipts carry a Receipt badge in the expenses list, and the Document kind filter in the Filters dialog can show them alone. In the document library their files are listed under Incoming receipts.