Metro Bank has invited selected business customers to join a free beta trial of its forthcoming app-based receipt management technology.

The bank has partnered with Canadian technology firm Sensibill to offer this feature, which is free, and will be available to all business customers via the Metro Bank app in early 2020.

Metro Bank says that UK businesses lose 15 days of paid work a year, spending two hours each week retrieving company expenses. Research shows that three out of four business owners don’t claim all of their expenses, and nearly 20% claim less than half of their expenses, or none at all.

Metro Bank’s solution will mean business customers no longer have to deal with manual receipt organisation. Receipts can be captured using a smartphone camera, and are automatically reconciled to the customer’s transaction history - giving back vital time to spend running and growing their businesses.

The pilot launch is the first in a list of digital solutions that the bank says it will bring to the market. In 2020, Metro Bank will take the tasks of invoicing, receipt management, bookkeeping and VAT returns, and embed them into its mobile app and online banking, and also link them up with cloud accounting providers.

"Accounting tasks, along with chasing invoices and staying on top of receipts, are major pain points for SMEs," said Paul Riseborough, chief commercial officer at Metro Bank. "By partnering with Sensibill we’re offering an innovative, digital solution that solves real problems for our customers, saving them time spent on admin and allowing them to focus on running and growing their business. And this is just the first piece in the puzzle as we set about developing a major new digital ecosystem of services to help SMEs."