Restaurant receipts to Excel

Meal receipts add up fast

Team lunches, client dinners and coffee meetings can produce dozens of receipts a month. Add the photos here all at once and the date, restaurant and total go into a table, downloaded as meal-expenses_date_time.xlsx with a sheet called Meals.

Cost per person and meal limits

If your company sets a meal limit per person, add a headcount column and the per-person cost is one formula away.

Change the 25 in the example to your own policy's limit. Conditional formatting that colors rows marked Over makes them easy to spot before you submit. If some rows have no headcount yet, =IF(E2="", "", D2/E2) avoids divide-by-zero errors.

Tips and service charges

A tip line on a receipt isn't treated as the total. On card slips where you write in the tip by hand, the reader only sees the printed amounts, so if the charge on your card includes the tip, update the total in the table. An automatic service charge is normally included in the printed total already.

Client and team meals

For client meals, many expense policies ask who attended and what the meeting was about. Add a Notes column and write it down while you remember. It takes seconds at the time and saves a long email thread later.

Frequently asked questions

How do I split a group dinner among attendees?

Dividing the total by the number of people is the simplest approach. If some people should pay more than others, for example when only some ordered drinks, see the guide to splitting shared expenses in a spreadsheet.

The receipt amount doesn't match my card charge.

The reader only sees what's printed. If you added to the order or a tip after the receipt printed, the charge will differ, so update the amount in the table.

Can I use it for corporate card meals?

Yes. Any receipt photo works the same way regardless of how it was paid. Add a Paid with column if you need to separate corporate card and personal card meals.