Text recognition (OCR) is only as good as the photo it reads. The same receipt can come out perfect or full of yellow "needs a check" cells depending on how it was photographed. A few habits make a big difference.
1. Flat and straight on
Crumpled or curled receipts bend the lines of text, and recognition drops sharply.
- Smooth the receipt flat with your hand, or hold down the ends with something heavy.
- Hold your phone parallel to the receipt and shoot from directly above. An angled shot makes text at the top and bottom different sizes.
- Get close enough that the receipt nearly fills the width of the frame. Too far and the text is tiny; too close and it goes out of focus.
2. Use a dark background
A white receipt on a white table blends into the background. Put it on a dark desk or book cover instead. The edges stand out and your camera's exposure adjusts to the receipt.
3. Avoid shadows and glare
- Shooting directly under a ceiling light casts your phone's shadow on the receipt. Step slightly to the side so the shadow falls outside it.
- Glossy or coated paper reflects light and washes text out. Tilt a little until the glare disappears.
- Flash tends to cause glare. Bright daylight near a window without flash usually works best.
4. Fold long receipts in the middle
If you back away to fit a long grocery receipt into one photo, the text becomes too small. The tool only reads the date, store and total, so you don't need the item list.
- Fold the middle section with the items behind, so the top (store and date) and the bottom (total) fit in one frame.
- Many receipts print the date at the very bottom, so make sure the end is still visible after folding.
Splitting one receipt into two photos creates two rows in the table, so one photo per receipt keeps things tidy.
5. Faded thermal receipts
Older thermal paper receipts fade over time.
- Shoot in the brightest light you can and tap the screen to focus on the receipt.
- The tool converts photos to grayscale and boosts contrast before reading, but it can't bring back text that has almost vanished. For those, typing the values into the table is faster.
- The best fix is photographing new receipts the day you get them. See How to store thermal paper receipts for storage tips.
6. Adding photos taken on a phone
iPhone HEIC photos and JPG or HEIF photos from Android phones can be added as they are.
- On a phone, tapping the upload area lets you take a photo with the camera or pick several from your library.
- Safari reads iPhone photos directly. Browsers that can't read HEIC convert the photo to JPG inside the browser first. Your photos still never leave your device.
- High-resolution photos are fine. They're scaled down to the size needed for reading, so phones don't run short of memory.
Quick reference
| Situation | Try this |
|---|---|
| Crumpled receipt | Flatten it, hold the ends, shoot straight on |
| White table | Put it on a dark background |
| Shadows or glare | Move and tilt, skip the flash |
| Long receipt | Fold the items away, keep top and bottom |
| Faded thermal paper | Bright light and focus, or type it in |