Receipt OCR (under Business → Expenses → Scan receipt) extracts the vendor, date, total, and line items from a photo. It's accurate around 85% of the time on printed receipts and around 40% on handwritten ones. Here's how to get the best results.
Photo requirements
- Flat, well-lit, no shadows. A receipt on a table under overhead light is ideal. Avoid taking the photo at an angle.
- Whole receipt visible. Don't crop the top header or the bottom total — those are exactly what the OCR is looking for.
- In focus. Tap the receipt on your phone screen before snapping so the camera focuses on it specifically.
- Phone or scanner. Both work. Scanner is more accurate for receipts that have been folded.
Supported types
- Most printed thermal receipts (POS, supermarket, fuel station)
- Most printed invoices (A4 or smaller)
- Hand-printed receipts in clear block letters (around 60–70% accuracy)
- Handwritten cursive receipts (around 30–40% — review every field)
What to do when the OCR gets a field wrong
The OCR result is shown to you for review and edit before saving. Every field is editable. The original photo is preserved alongside the saved expense so you can always compare what was extracted to the original.
Common corrections:
- Vendor name slightly off — pick from the autocomplete dropdown if the vendor exists in your records, otherwise type the correct name.
- Total wrong — read the receipt; sometimes the OCR picks up a subtotal or VAT-only line as the total.
- Date wrong — Nigerian receipts use DD/MM/YYYY but some POS systems print MM/DD/YYYY. Just retype.
When you should NOT use OCR
- Foreign-currency receipts. The OCR assumes NGN; foreign currency receipts surface raw numbers but the currency may need manual setting.
- Receipts older than two years. Faded thermal paper is hard to OCR. Scan if you have one.
Quotas
Free tier: 20 receipt scans per calendar month. Pro: 100. Growth: unlimited. Resets at 00:00 WAT on the first of each month.