Document Capture is a major new capability for entities connected to Xero, QuickBooks or Zoho Books. It automates the journey from a paper or digital document to a coded transaction in your accounting software: upload or forward a receipt, invoice or bill; let generate.TAX extract the financial details with AI; review and correct the results; then post the approved transaction into Xero, QuickBooks or Zoho Books.

To get started, open an entity connected to Xero, QuickBooks or Zoho Books and go to the Capture Documents tab. Complete the initial setup (entity profile, tax rates and chart of accounts where needed), then enable Capture. From there, documents flow into the Transactions tab for review and, when ready, posting to your provider.

As capture volumes grow, it helps to see backlog at a glance without opening every entity. We have extended the home dashboard with a dedicated row of Capture cards. These sit alongside your existing dashboard cards and summarise capture activity across your organisation: documents pending review, items awaiting post (reviewed and ready for your accounting software), files posted this month and total files processed. Each card reflects live counts from your capture-enabled entities, so managers and preparers can spot where attention is needed before drilling into individual clients.

On the Entities page, a new Capture WIP column gives you the same visibility at entity level. For each connected client, you can see how many documents are waiting in Review and how many are ready to Post. Hover for a fuller breakdown of files and transaction lines. Click the counts to jump straight into that entity’s Transactions tab at the right stage. Where Capture has not yet been enabled, the column offers a quick Enable Capture action that takes you to the Capture Documents tab to complete setup.

Together, the dashboard cards and the Entities column make capture workload visible across the practice - complementing the per-entity statistics you already see inside each client’s Capture Documents and Transactions tabs.

Capture is designed for everyday source documents: receipts, invoices, bills and similar financial paperwork. You can upload:

- Images  -  JPEG, JPG, PNG, BMP and GIF (including photos taken on a phone)

- PDFs  -  scanned or digital PDF invoices and statements

Files are processed in batches. You can upload multiple files at once; each file can contain more than one document (for example, a multi-page PDF or a number of receipts in one PDF file). While a batch is processing, the interface shows progress until extraction is complete and transactions are ready for review.

There are several ways to get documents into generate.TAX, so you can match the workflow to how your clients or team already work.

Direct upload  -  On the Capture Documents tab, drag and drop files or browse to select them. This is the most straightforward option for ad hoc batches.

Capture from a folder  -  Connect a Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or SharePoint folder. Any supported document placed in that folder is picked up and scanned automatically, which works well when clients already save paperwork to a shared cloud folder.

Capture from email  -  Generate a dedicated capture email address for the entity. Documents sent to that address are ingested and scanned without anyone needing to log in and upload manually. You can copy, regenerate or manage the address from the Capture Documents tab.

Whichever method you use, extracted data appears in the Transactions tab, grouped by upload batch so you can work through files systematically.

AI extraction is powerful, but human review is essential. After scanning, every transaction lands in a Pending Review state until someone checks it. Open the Transactions tab, select a file batch and work through the extracted lines in the table or edit drawer. You can correct amounts, dates, tax codes, accounts, contacts, descriptions and other fields before approving a line.

When a transaction is correct, mark it as reviewed. You can review lines individually, save changes from the edit drawer or use mass-update tools to apply the same correction across multiple selected rows. Unreviewed lines remain visually distinct so nothing is posted by accident.

Once reviewed, transactions move to Ready to Post - they are approved for sending to your accounting software but not yet created there. A separate Posted view shows documents that have already been pushed to Xero, QuickBooks or Zoho Books.

As you review documents, you will often make the same corrections repeatedly - for example, always coding a particular supplier to the same expense account or tax rate. Capture rules let you automate that learning.

Rules follow a simple when / then pattern: when certain conditions are met (such as contact name contains a keyword or document type matches a value), then update specific fields (account, tax name, contact, item, tracking category and more). You can build a rule step by step in the rule editor or describe what you want in plain language and let generate.TAX draft the rule for you to confirm. Rules can be enabled or disabled individually, copied to other entities and suggested automatically when the system detects a pattern in your edits.

Used well, capture rules reduce manual coding on future scans and keep posting consistent across the team.

When one or more file batches are reviewed and ready, select them and use Post to Xero, Post to QuickBooks or Post to Zoho Books (depending on the connected entity). generate.TAX creates the corresponding transactions in your accounting software. You can choose to post as draft where supported, so entries land in the provider as drafts for a final check before they are published.

After a successful post, those documents appear under the Posted tab and are removed from the Ready to Post queue. If something needs to change before posting, you can still edit reviewed lines or rescan a document to replace extracted transactions with a fresh extraction (with a warning that manual edits may be lost).

Together, capture, review, rules and posting form a complete document-to-ledger pipeline inside generate.TAX - without requiring a tax return to be created.

UK entities with a mapped UK VAT return can now connect to HMRC for Making Tax Digital (MTD). From the entity’s tax return mapping, authorised users can Connect with HMRC to link the return to the client’s HMRC VAT account. Once connected, the mapping shows a Connected to HMRC status, confirming the return is ready for digital submission.

The submission itself follows your existing approval workflow inside generate.TAX: prepare the return, complete review and approval steps as required, then use Submit to HMRC from the return actions menu when the return is in the correct status. generate.TAX sends the return data to HMRC using the values from the UK VAT boxes on the return. This removes the need to re-key figures on the HMRC portal for approved returns filed through the platform.

HMRC connection and submission apply to standard UK VAT returns for individual connected companies (Xero, QuickBooks, Zoho Books and other supported entity types), subject to the user’s permissions and plan.

VAT Number Checker for UK entities is also live and available for UK VRNs.

VAT groups - where multiple legal entities file a single consolidated UK VAT return - are supported in the same HMRC workflow. When you create a VAT group and add member entities, each member must have a compatible return mapping: the same return type, matching period and due date and consistent settings such as cash accounting. The group overview explains when a consolidated return can be generated; submission is only available when all members are aligned.

For UK VAT group returns, the group entity shows HMRC connection at group level, alongside the consolidated return summary. Authorised users can connect the group to HMRC and, once the consolidated return has been prepared and approved through the normal process, submit it to HMRC in the same way as a single-company return. The group submission uses the group’s mapping and consolidated figures rather than filing separately for each member.

This gives practices a single place to manage group compliance: member mappings stay in sync, the consolidated return is built in generate.TAX and the approved return can be filed digitally with HMRC without leaving the platform.