Receipt scanner

Photograph a receipt and have the amount, date, vendor and line items read off it, instead of typing them.

Using it

1. Open the receipt scanner in Bookkeeping.
2. Photograph the receipt, or upload an image.
3. Reskale reads it and fills in what it found.
4. Check the result and correct anything wrong.
5. Save it as an expense.

Check the result

Step 4 is not optional. Receipt reading is very good and not perfect, and the failure mode is a plausible wrong number rather than an obvious error — which is the kind that survives into your books.

The things most worth a glance:

• Total — especially where a receipt shows subtotal, tax and total close together.
• Date — the date of purchase, not today's date and not the date printed in a footer.
• Vendor.
• Which line items were captured, on a multi-item receipt.

Faded thermal paper, crumpled receipts and handwritten ones are where it struggles most.

What it is good at

• Printed retail receipts.
• Clear photographs in reasonable light.
• Standard layouts.

Photograph the receipt flat, in good light, with the whole thing in frame. Thirty seconds of care here beats correcting the fields afterwards.

Sourcing receipts

Thrift stores, estate sales and auctions produce the receipts most worth capturing, because they are the ones that establish cost of goods — and the ones most likely to be a faded slip that is illegible in a month.

Photograph them in the car. The receipt does not survive the week in a jacket pocket, and the cost basis it recorded is what makes your profit numbers real.

Where a receipt covers a lot of items, split the cost across them on the inventory items.

Keep the originals

Reskale stores the image with the expense, so the photograph is a record in its own right. Where your jurisdiction requires original paper, keep it — check what applies to you.

Mobile

The scanner works from the mobile app, which is where it belongs. Capture at the point of purchase is the only version of this habit that survives contact with a real week.

Related

• Income and expenses
• Year-end and exports