Like most people, probably, I amass large numbers of paper receipts over the course of a month. And what do I do with all of these receipts? For a few days I shove them into a crumbled wad in my pocket and periodically empty this wad into a receipt draw that I use to pretend I’m organized. If I showed you a photo of this drawer opened, you wouldn’t think I was organized, though. I follow this routine because I don’t like throwing potentially important things away and sometimes I really do need to locate a receipt to return or exchange something. Oh and I have always thought that it was important to save your receipts. Sort of a tax thing, right?
This routine clearly isn’t working for me though. The wad is so crumbled and folded that I can’t read some of the receipts, the drawer is so full it’s hard to open and sometimes when I need a receipt I can’t find it, even though I know it’s in that drawer somewhere. Surely there is a better way.
One of my “things” is that I get an idea in my head and it starts to become an obsession. At the very least, it occupies a good amount of my thoughts. Receipt scanning is my latest obsession.
My first idea was that there must be an iPhone application for capturing receipts. This seems so logical to me because you could theoretically take a photo of your receipts while you’re out, as you acquire them. It turns out there are several receipt scanning applications for the iPhone. Some are free, some require payment. After reading many reviews on iTunes and on various websites, I downloaded what appeared to be my best options: Expensify (free), JotNot Pro ($.99), Receipts Lite (free) and ProOnGo (free to try). These are not exactly the same so I found things I liked about each. The more I used these, the more I began to assemble a list of criteria of what would work best for me.
Requirements:
- Compression – I want something that saves the receipt image compressed/black and white. Most apps wanted to save a full resolution, full color image of every receipt, which is a massive waste of space.
- Categorization – I didn’t realize it at the time but the ability to categorize and analyze expenses was a feature I’d really like to have.
- Exportable Receipts – The ability to export to another application or file format. I don’t want to use an app that requires that I use a proprietary website to store my receipts. I could end up with years of receipts and don’t want to invest that much time in a website that might go out of business.
- Searchability – Receipts must be searchable. What good will months or years of receipts be if I can’t easily put my finger on one I need?
- Data Entry Simplicity – Data must be easily to enter. I’m not against having to enter some data myself but this must be simple to do or I’ll eventually give up.
In addition to iPhone apps, I also looked at NeatReceipts, a PC/MAC scanner/software solution that’s been around for years.
Here are my comments on each:
The Options
- Expensify (free) – This iPhone app is an extension of expensify.com and as such it feels like it’s just an entry method. You can view only up to three months of receipts in the app and there seems to be no way to categorize or store receipts in a folder. I can imagine sorting through hundreds of receipts to find one. There is no search feature and receipt images are stored in color at full resolution. There appears to be no way to export receipt images other than one by one. Lastly, unless you connect your credit card and bank accounts, it considers all transactions as “cash”, which is annoying. In short, this app seems clunky, almost like it’s still in beta or at best, version 1.0.
- JotNot Pro ($.99) – Coming highly recommended as a “scanner” app, JotNot Pro had so many document capture features, I ended up paying for it. It’s purpose in life is to allow you to quickly capture documents, receipts or anything like them. It allows for angled photos and converts the resulting images into a compressed image for storing. Images can be sent to many apps, including Google Docs, Evernote, iDisk, Dropbox and Box.net. You can even use it to fax, for a nominal fee. Very handy. But there is no way to categorize receipts as expenses and naming images is a little clunky.
- Receipts Lite (free) – Intended as an example app for a paid version ($6) I was able to test with 10 receipts. This app allows you to categorize in several ways and rewards you with charts and graphs that can easily be filtered by many fields. But images storage is at full resolution. Even though reports can be exported to Google Docs with images, it wouldn’t be pleasant to search through large Google Doc files for receipts.
- ProOnGo (free to try, $.10 per receipt after) – Easily the most innovative in this space, ProOnGo is an app for a receipt entry service. You pay ten cents per receipt and their service takes your scan and attempts to OCR it or have a human manually enter it within minutes. It was surprisingly effective (90% in my testing) and compelling. Take a few photos of your receipts and for a small fee, someone handles the dirty work. But the service only enters the merchant name, amount and date on the receipt. You can categorize it beyond that but that part is up to you. Receipt images do not appear to be exportable and I began to wonder how efficient this app would be with more than a handful of receipts. But nice try.
- NeatReceipts (PC, not iPhone, $99 refurb, $199 new) – NeatReceipts was once THE solution for receipt archiving and I’ve seen this setup mentioned and advertised all over. So it was worth a look. Although I couldn’t scan my receipts while out, my receipts all end up at home anyway. The biggest advantages to this system are the fact that it apparently very accurately OCRs receipts and the software let’s you easily categorize and later search for receipts. It will also scan and OCR business cards. I looked at reviews and learned that most users are very satisfied.
Decision
The solution I’ve chosen is to us a combination of these. Namely, NeatReceipts at home and JotNotPro on the road. Since NeatReceipts can import receipt images, I can scan things on the road with JotNotPro, copy them to DropBox (which copies to my PC) and then import them into NeatReceipts. Even though NR uses a proprietary database and output file, their longevity combined with no better solution make this a winner.