When the business pays for something by card or from its bank account, the payment shows up in your bank feed in Mighty. Matching means attaching the receipt from your Post Box to that payment. The receipt then stays with the payment for good, which is what HMRC (the UK tax authority) expects if it ever asks you to prove a cost.

Use Match to bank when the business paid. If you paid with your own money, or it's a bill you haven't paid yet, see creating an expense from a receipt instead.

What you see when the screen opens

The receipt is on the left, so you can read it while you look for the payment. Use the plus and minus buttons above it to zoom in.

On the right is a search of your bank transactions. You don't start from an empty search. Mighty has already read the receipt, and it fills in 3 boxes for you: the supplier's name goes in Search, the date on the receipt goes in Date, and the total goes in Amount.

This first search is strict. It only shows payments made on that exact day, where the name and the amount both fit. When it finds the payment, it usually finds only that one.

If nothing is found

An empty list is common, and it rarely means the payment is missing. Try these in order.

• Turn on Fuzzy match. This is the fix most of the time. It searches 3 days either side of the receipt date, and accepts a payment if any word of the supplier's name appears in it, or if the amount is the same. How Mighty reads your receipts explains exactly what it does.
• Select Look up. Mighty reads the receipt again, refills the boxes, and searches with fuzzy match on. Use this if the boxes were empty or wrong.
• Clear the Amount box if the receipt is in another currency. A receipt for $50 won't match a bank payment of £39.20, but the supplier's name still will.
• Turn on Date range and choose your own dates, if the payment was taken much later than the receipt date. Subscriptions and hotel bookings often are.
• Type your own search. Banks shorten names, so try one clear word, such as the town or part of the shop's name. You need at least 3 letters.
• Check your bank feed is up to date. If the payment was in the last day or two, it may not have reached Mighty yet. Leave the receipt in your Post Box and come back to it.

Match or Categorise?

Each payment in the list has one or two buttons.

• Match attaches the receipt to the payment and does nothing else. It's always there.
• Categorise only shows on payments that haven't been categorised yet. Categorising means telling Mighty what a payment was for, such as travel or office costs, so it lands in the right place in your accounts. Select it and Mighty opens the usual categorise screen, then attaches the receipt for you when you save.

A green Reconciled badge means the payment has already been categorised. You can still attach a receipt to it with Match.

The filters

Above the list you can narrow things down by category, by bank account if you have more than one, and by what has happened to the payment so far. That last filter starts on All. The other choices are Unreconciled (not categorised yet) and Reconciled (already categorised), each with or without a document already attached. Unreconciled without document is a good way to see the payments that still need a receipt.

Why some payments never appear

This screen only shows payments that could be a purchase. A payment that has already been categorised as something else, such as a dividend, wages or a transfer between your own accounts, is left out, because a shop receipt can't belong to it.

Recharging a cost to a client

Each payment has a Recharge tick box. Tick it before you select Match if you plan to bill this cost on to a client. Recharging expenses explains how that works.

Common questions

I have a pile of receipts. Do I have to open each one?

No. Use Previous and Next at the bottom of the screen to move through your receipts without closing it. Mighty fills in a fresh search for each one.

Can one payment have more than one receipt?

Yes. Match each receipt to the same payment. This is useful when one card payment covers several receipts, or when you have both an order confirmation and an invoice.

I matched the wrong payment. How do I fix it?

Choose Complete in the Post Box Status filter, and select View transaction on the receipt. That opens the payment, where you can remove the document. Then upload or forward the receipt again and match it to the right payment.

Do I need to match every receipt?

You need to keep proof for your business costs, and matching is the easiest way to do that. But a receipt that you turn into an expense is already stored with that expense, so it doesn't need matching as well.