Photograph a receipt or upload a scan and the AI puts merchant, date, every line item, tax, and total into their own columns of a clean .xlsx file. No retyping, no cleanup.
Receipts are the worst-case input for classic OCR: narrow thermal paper, proportional fonts, prices right-aligned against item names, and ink that fades within weeks. OCR gives you a wall of characters and leaves you to work out which number belongs to which line. A vision model sees the receipt the way you do — it knows the column of numbers on the right are prices, that the bold line at the bottom is the total, and that the items should add up to the subtotal.
Every product, quantity, and price becomes its own row — so you can categorise spending, not just log it.
Prices, tax, and totals are typed as Excel values. SUM a column of receipts the moment the file opens.
A phone photo taken at an angle in dim restaurant light converts the same way as a flatbed scan.
Where thermal ink drops out, the model cross-checks subtotal, tax, and total to recover the right digit.
Coverage
If you can read it with your eyes, the AI can put it into a spreadsheet.
Supermarket, hardware, pharmacy. Dozens of line items, discounts, and multiple tax rates on one strip.
Itemised meals, service charge, tip line, and split totals — read even from a crumpled paper slip.
Gas station, parking, taxi, and toll receipts with litres, price per unit, and mileage-ready totals.
Multi-night stays with room rate, city tax, minibar, and breakfast broken out per date.
Amazon, Uber, SaaS invoices, and app-store receipts saved as PDF or screenshot.
Grey, patchy, half-printed digits. The AI uses the whole receipt as context instead of guessing per character.
How it works
Snap the receipt with your phone, or drag a scan, PDF, or screenshot into the web app. Up to 5 receipts per run — more via the API.
The vision model reads the rendered image and extracts merchant, date, line items, subtotal, tax, total, and payment method into structured columns.
Get a real .xlsx (or CSV / JSON) that opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, and LibreOffice with every value in place.
Output
One row per line item, with the receipt-level fields repeated so the sheet filters and pivots cleanly. Column names follow what is printed on the receipt.
| Merchant | Date | Item | Qty | Price | Subtotal | Tax | Total | Payment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trader Joe's | 2026-08-14 | Organic Bananas | 3 | 0.69 | 42.17 | 3.37 | 45.54 | Visa ···4421 |
Also extracted when printed: store address, cashier, discount lines, tip, card last-four, and VAT rate per item.
| Criteria | ScanToExcel (AI) | Expense apps | Classic OCR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full line items, not just the total | |||
| Reads faded or crumpled thermal receipts | |||
| Numbers typed as numbers (SUM works) | |||
| Works from a phone photo at an angle | |||
| Output is a plain .xlsx / CSV you own | |||
| No subscription required | |||
| Hours of manual entry per month |
A month of travel receipts into one ledger, categorised and ready to submit.
Purchase receipts as line items for VAT returns and QuickBooks or Xero imports.
Supplier invoices with quantities, unit prices, and tax split across proper columns.
Statements, price lists, and reports — the same vision AI handles multi-page PDFs.
On the go
The free ScanToExcel iOS app photographs receipts straight from the camera, batches them, and exports to Excel or CSV — so the shoebox never fills up in the first place.
Get the iOS appFAQ
The step-by-step walkthrough, with an expense template you can reuse.
From a shoebox of receipts to a submitted report in one afternoon.
Track power, water, and internet bills month over month.
Upload one and see the spreadsheet before you decide anything.
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Convert a receipt to Excel