Text from a receipt photo — for expense reports.

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When receipts have to go into an expense report or spreadsheet, retyping them takes ages, and it’s easy to get an amount wrong. It’s simpler to scan the receipt text from a photo: snap the receipt, and the store, items, quantities, amounts and date become text you can copy. Delivery notes and work completion certificates are read the same way.

Most receipts are printed on thermal paper: it fades and creases, and the digits on it are small. So receipt OCR depends a lot on the photo: a fresh, flat receipt usually gives just a handful of mistakes, a faded or crumpled one far more. A wrong digit in an amount is easy to miss, so always check the amounts and the date against the paper receipt.

How to photograph a receipt so the amounts read correctly

  1. Shoot the receipt on the day of purchase, while the print is still dark: the longer it sits in your wallet, the paler the digits get.
  2. Smooth out a crumpled receipt and hold the edges down: every crease casts a shadow, and a shadow on the digits means mistakes in the amounts.
  3. Turn off the flash: on thermal paper it causes glare that washes out the lines. Shoot in daylight, straight from above.
  4. Move closer so the receipt fills almost the whole frame, rather than using digital zoom: it blurs the digits.

Which receipts read well and which don’t

Reads well

  • A fresh receipt with crisp print and no creases
  • A delivery note or completion certificate printed on plain paper with a regular printer
  • A scan of a receipt or delivery note at 300 dpi

Reads poorly

  • Faded thermal paper with barely visible print
  • A shadow from your phone or hand over the amounts
  • A stamp or signature over the lines of a delivery note
  • Pen marks and delivery notes filled in by hand

From receipt photo to spreadsheet

  1. Tap “Choose photos” and shoot the receipt with your phone camera, or drag photos you already have onto the page.
  2. If the table or your fingers got into the shot, press “Crop” and drag the corners of the frame to the edges of the receipt: the text updates by itself.
  3. Look over the lines on the sheet, fix any mistakes and press “Copy text” to paste it into a spreadsheet or report.

Where text from a receipt photo comes in handy

  • Expense reimbursement for employees An employee turns receipts from a business trip into text on their phone and taps “Share” to send it to the accountant on Telegram. The accountant enters the lines into the report before the paper receipts even arrive.
  • Delivery notes for a sole proprietor’s records A sole proprietor photographs paper delivery notes from suppliers and copies item names, quantities and amounts into a purchases spreadsheet instead of retyping every line by hand.
  • A receipt for the warranty An electronics receipt is needed for the entire warranty period, but thermal paper can fade before then. Turn the receipt into text and keep the .txt file next to the photo: the date, store and model won’t get lost.

Questions

The receipt has faded. Can it still be read?

If you can still make out the digits, give it a try, but be ready to fix lines on the sheet. Check look-alike characters first: O and 0, I and 1. When the print has almost disappeared, there will be so many mistakes that typing the amounts by hand is faster.

A long receipt doesn’t fit in the frame. What should I do?

Shoot it in parts rather than all at once from a distance, or the digits will come out too small. A few lines where the shots meet should appear in both. Add the shots in order, from the top of the receipt to the bottom, and delete the repeated lines on the sheet.

How do I get receipt lines into Excel?

You won’t get columns: the item name and amount sit on the same line. Copy the text in “As in the photo” mode and paste it into column A, so each line lands in its own cell. Then type the amount of the first item in column B and press Ctrl+E: Excel will try to fill in the rest based on that example.

Does the tool check whether a receipt is genuine and fiscal?

No. The tool only turns what is printed on the paper into text and can’t tell a fiscal receipt from a non-fiscal or forged one. To the tool, the fiscal number is just another line, so its digits can contain mistakes too.

Can I read several receipts at once?

Yes. Choose several photos or drag them onto the page: the text of all the receipts is combined into one on the sheet, in the order you added them. You can add a forgotten receipt later. The “Unclear” label on a photo card shows which receipt to check more carefully.

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