Imagine the IRS is auditing you, and the entire process now hinges on a $60 receipt that your employee spent on an expensive cup of coffee during a client meeting. Where do you look for this tiny bit of paper now? Months have passed since your last audit, and since then, you’ve stuffed all your business records into one little cabinet.
Chances are, you might not find this receipt and end up in the IRS's bad books. This is a good indication that it's time to invest in a receipt scanner app.
Key Highlights
The receipt scanner apps and methods we’ll cover in this article are:
- Fyle: So you don’t have to spend a second collecting receipts.
- Expensify: For travelers looking for a simple receipt solution.
- SAP Concur: For large enterprises seeking a robust expense management system.
- Receipts by Wave: For small businesses and freelancers starting out with expense tracking.
- Zoho Expense: For organizations already using the Zoho suite.
- QuickBooks Online: For businesses already using QuickBooks for accounting.
- Office Lens: For a simple, free document and receipt scanning app.
- Evernote: For users who already use Evernote.
- Shoeboxed: For businesses needing a physical receipt mailing service and cloud storage.
- Your smartphone camera: For those who prefer a basic, no-frills approach to scanning receipts.
The Best Receipt Scanner Apps
Note: The order of this list in no way shows our preferences or their quality. The list just showcases a range of different softwares, some of which suit businesses at a particular stage or type. So read through the descriptions thoroughly and choose the software whose offerings seem best suited for you.
Fyle - Never Spend Another Second Collecting Receipts
Fyle is a receipt scanner app that integrates with credit card networks like Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to bring you real-time notifications via text message on all credit card spending. They can reply with a picture of the receipt for instant reconciliation.
Or you can use Fyle’s conversational AI to text your receipts to Fyle. It will automatically scan the receipt and extract all the necessary information to create an expense without any manual effort.
Pricing: Standard plan starts from $11.99 per active user/month, billed annually
Expensify - For Travelers Looking For A Simple Receipt Solution
Tracking and organizing receipts while traveling or working remotely can be a hassle and often leads to losing the receipts. This problem is solved with Expensify's mobile receipt app. You can scan receipts without any limits, track your mileage, send them for approval, and more. Coupled with the SmartScan feature, this receipt scanning app ensures your information is scanned and extracted automatically, saving you time and effort.
That said, users have complained about its poor customer support, lock-in contracts, and confusing pricing models.
Pricing: $5.00/month/user with the Expensify Card
SAP Concur - For Enterprises Seeking An Expense Management System
The Concur mobile app comes with a receipt scanning feature called Expense It. This feature allows your employees to track paper receipts on the go right from their smartphones, efficiently extracting the data. The app automatically creates an expense entry and sends it to Concur Expense, where you can track and verify your employees' purchases.
Other features include an activity dashboard, spending statistics, integration with accounting software, and more.
However, SAP Concur is not just considered a receipt app but is widely accepted as an expense management software for large enterprises, so it might be pricier than its competition. Users have also noted that the mobile app is clunky and the admin side is too complex.
Pricing: Contact for pricing
Receipts by Wave - For SMBs and Freelancers Starting Out With Expense Tracking
If you're a small business owner or a self-employed individual searching for a free receipt app, Receipts by Wave is a great choice. It provides a free plan with unlimited income and expense tracking. If your expense management needs are simple, Wave gets the job done. You can use it to scan receipts and also use it for basic accounting and invoicing.
But if you have more advanced needs, like payroll, inventory management, or audit history, you must integrate it with other platforms or get one of Wave's paid plans.
Pricing: Free plan with limited features
Zoho Expense - For Organizations Already Using The Zoho Suite
Zoho Expense, an expense management product in the Zoho product suite, offers unlimited receipt scanning and storage features. It is a great option if your organization already uses other Zoho products.
Once your employee takes a receipt photo, the receipt scanner app extracts data using OCR and automatically generates an expense report that can be sent for approval. It also comes with duplicate and fraud detection, which alerts the user if they are uploading a duplicate receipt.
Pricing: The premium plan for Zoho Expense starts at $5 per active user /month, billed annually. They also offer a free plan with basic expense tracking features.
Quickbooks Online - For Businesses Already Using Quickbooks For Accounting
QuickBooks Online is primarily an accounting platform with receipt scanning capabilities. It lets you capture and track receipts, add them to an accounting report, and send them for approval. However, it is pretty flexible regarding how you want to use it, as it also integrates directly with other expense management platforms. So you can use QBO strictly for accounting purposes while leveraging a specialized receipt scanner app for your receipt scanning needs.
The only drawbacks are that it is comparatively more expensive and requires some technical and accounting knowledge to operate.
Pricing: The standard plan starts at $15 per organization/month and is billed annually. They also offer a free plan for businesses with revenue <50K USD per annum.
Office Lens - For A Simple, Free Document And Receipt Scanning App
Office Lens is a free Microsoft app developed as a document scanner with receipt scanning features. It auto-enhances and trims the receipt accurately, making it ready to be shared as JPEG, PNG, or PDF. It's a solid option if you want nothing but a simple document-scanning app.
Pricing: Free
Capterra: 4.5
Evernote - For Users Who Already Use Evernote
Evernote is synonymous with note-making and document creation, but it also has a capable document and receipt scanning module. Users can scan paper receipts and tag them, ready to be saved or shared. This makes it easier for them to manage and organize the receipts.
Pricing: Free
Shoeboxed - For Businesses Needing a Document Management System
Shoeboxed is an expense-tracking and receipt scanning app with unlimited cloud storage. Your employees have two ways of tracking and scanning receipts - their mobile app or 'Magic EnvelopeTM' to send the physical receipts to Shoeboxed via mail for free to scan on your behalf. In addition, you can find all the receipts in a document management system where you can organize them according to your wish.
Pricing: Pricing plans start from $18/month, billed annually.
The Camera On Your Phone - If You Need a Basic, No-Frills Approach To Scanning Receipts
While this is a no-brainer, all smartphones these days come with a capable camera that you can use to take pictures of the receipts and share them with your finance team easily. So while you might not get the fancy OCR technology or fraud detection features, it is still a great workaround for folks who do not want to use more apps, and it has no learning curve.
What Is a Receipt Scanner App?
A receipt scanner app lets you take pictures and create digital copies of your physical receipts, which can be easily retrieved from a common cloud storage.
It enables you to file your expenses quickly, whether you're managing your organization’s finances or filing your taxes—you know exactly where your money has been spent. While physical receipts are prone to getting lost in a sea of similar ones, digital receipts, with the help of a receipt scanner app, are harder to lose as they can be accessed from virtually anywhere.
How Does a Receipt Tracker App Help Businesses?
Keeping an active track of employee spending can be a daunting task. It becomes a particularly challenging task when there are multiple spends to keep a tab on. These spends could be on vendor invoices, utilities, office events, and more. Digitizing receipts can remove many inconveniences involved in your bookkeeping process.
Here’s how a receipt tracker app can help your employees:
- Enables tracking of receipts on-the-go
- Digitally stores all your receipts for easy retrieval
- Paperless recording and documenting of expenses, eliminating manual entry
- Eliminates the chance of losing receipts and, thereby, money
- Helps employees gain an overview of where they’ve been spending
Here’s how digital receipts can help your organization:
- Eliminates the worry of handling paper receipts
- Improves team productivity and efficiency
- Eases the reimbursement process
- Saves time by automating the process of receipt management
- Helps you gain insight into your business spends
Features To Look For In A Receipt Tracker App
Every organization has different needs when it comes to managing business receipts. When picking a receipt scanner app, ensure that the app complements your business needs. With the multitude of options present in the market today, it can get confusing to make your pick.
Here’s a quick list of the most important features to look for in a receipt scanner app. Keep in mind that you might not need all of them, but this list should be helpful in guiding you to find the perfect one to suit your needs:
- Perfect OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
- Real-time detection of duplicate expenses
- Automatic extraction of data such as category and merchant
- Accurate detection of receipt data utilizing minimal time
- Unlimited cloud storage for digital receipts
- Insights into spending trends, categories, patterns, and more
- Seamless integrations with other accounting softwares
- Effortless approval workflow automation to suit your organization’s needs
- Agnostic access irrespective of device, be it a mobile OS or web application
- 24/7 customer service
How Do I Scan A Receipt?
You can use a receipt scanner app to scan and organize your receipts. Here’s how:
- Grab a receipt scanner app: Find one on the App Store or Google Play Store, or use a web-based option.
- Set up your app (optional): Some apps may ask you to create an account. You might also be able to link it to your budgeting tools.
- Scan away! Open the app and hold your receipt up to the camera. The app will automatically capture the image.
- Double-check: Make sure the scan is clear and readable.
- Organize: Many apps let you categorize your receipts for easy searching later.
How To Keep Track Of Receipts For A Small Business?
Accurate receipt tracking for small businesses is crucial for better bookkeeping and tax filing. Here are two different ways you can do this:
Paper and File
- Gather and categorize: Throughout the day, collect all the receipts your employees or organization generates. Sort them into various expense categories like office supplies, travel, or marketing.
- Label and store: Use folders and binders with clear labels for each category (monthly or quarterly works well). If the expense purpose is not already clear, annotate the receipt.
This method, however, can become inconvenient as your business grows and the numbers of receipts accumulate. Papers can get lost or damaged, and sorting through them later can be a headache.
Digital From the Start
- Embrace a business receipt scanner app: Download a receipt scanner app. These apps allow you to snap a picture of the receipt directly after purchase.
- Categorize on the go: While the receipt is fresh in your mind, use the app’s capabilities to categorize the expense.
Skip the app! Text Fyle your receipts, and our AI will create and categorize the expense for you.
Remember: Regardless of the method you choose, the IRS requires you to keep your physical receipts for at least three years for tax purposes. The digital copies from the scanner app can act as a convenient backup and make expense tracking much easier.
Parting Thoughts
While tracking and storing heaps of paper receipts is very time-consuming and cumbersome, a receipt tracker app can help by taking over the grunt work for your employees and finance team.
When choosing a receipt scanner app, consider what features are most important to your business needs, whether it fits your budget, and if it can benefit the entire organization as a whole.
Once that's clear, you can come back to this list and make an informed decision.
