Required Information
Our team processes invoices by hand (real humans, not bots), so we can only accept invoices in English or French (French requires prior setup as a French-speaking client). Every invoice must have all three of the following: Vendor Name — The name of the vendor, seller, or supplier. Line Items — Itemized details for every item purchased or credited, including the name, packaging, quantity, and price. Invoice Total — The sum of everything on the invoice (line items + taxes + shipping if applicable). No $0 invoices.What happens if something is missing or unreadable?To control who receives these notifications, adjust your Notification Settings.
- If we can see that these elements are present but can’t read them — blurry image, cropped page, missing page — we’ll reach out twice to request a new image. No response means we delete the invoice.
- If any of these elements are missing entirely, we’ll delete the document and notify you by email.
Optional, But Highly Recommended
Invoice Number — A unique number generated by the vendor. Without one, there’s a higher chance of accidental duplicates. Customer Number — Your unique identifier with the vendor (sometimes called Account Number, Client ID, Customer Code, or Site Number). Invoice Date — The date the goods or services were invoiced. If it’s missing, we’ll use the ship date, delivery date, or — as a last resort — the upload date.Good to Have
Payment Account — Which account was used to pay this invoice? If none is specified, we’ll default to A/P or whatever payment account is set for that vendor.Important Notes
- Our team will make every effort to process documents that meet the minimum requirements. We trust that someone on your team intentionally uploaded it, so we’ll process it even if it’s not a final invoice or has a different company name at the top.
- Uploading multiple records of the same transaction (e.g., a purchase order and a final invoice) creates a risk of duplicates, since the documents may be different enough to not trigger Garde’s duplicate detection.
- Date range matters. If an invoice falls outside your approved date range, we will delete it. Unless you’ve paid for back-processing, Garde only processes invoices dated within 7 days before your subscription payment date.
What We Can Process
- Food invoices — All your food purchases.
- Liquor invoices — Beer, wine, and spirits.
- Credit memos/notes — Issued by vendors for returned goods.
- Utility bills — Electricity, water, gas, internet, telephone. We use the current charges as the invoice total (not the full bill balance).
- Insurance bills — We default to the minimum due or current premium for the total.
- Taxes, fees, and permits — Government taxes, fines, license fees, and other regulatory charges.
- Paid outs / petty cash — Miscellaneous expenses or staff reimbursements paid from the register.
What We Cannot Process
The following types of documents typically lack the required data outlined above. When submitted without meeting minimum requirements, our team will delete them and send you an email notification.- Invoices outside your approved date range. Unless you’ve paid for back-processing, we only handle invoices dated within the past 7 days from your subscription start.
- Links and ZIP files. We can’t process invoices sent as links (e.g., Dropbox) or compressed into ZIP files.
- Statements — Vendor statements, credit card statements, tax statements. These generally lack line item detail.
- Packing slips and delivery tickets/slips/notes — Usually no pricing information.
- Pickup requests or pickup slips — Same issue: no pricing.
- Purchase orders, order confirmations, shipping orders, bills of lading, consignment receipts, courier receipts — No pricing and/or risk of duplicates if the actual invoice also gets uploaded.
- Zero-total invoices — If the printed total is $0, we can’t process it.
- Exact duplicate invoices — If we’ve already processed an identical invoice, the second copy gets deleted.
- Checks written to vendors — No line items, no way to prevent duplicates. (If a check is uploaded alongside an invoice, we can use it to adjust payment details.)
- Work tickets or service tickets — No line items or pricing.
- Labor/payroll reports — No line items or pricing.
- Transaction receipts — Documents showing only credit/debit card transaction totals without line items.
- Transit receipts — For goods in transit that haven’t been physically received yet.
- Paper copies of internal transfers — Use our built-in [Transfers feature] instead.
- Non-English, non-French invoices — If we can’t read the line item names, we can’t process them.
Invoice File Formats
If you’re not using the mobile app, you can send invoices as JPEG, PNG, CSV, or PDF.- Send one document per invoice.
- Do not send links to stored documents or ZIP files.