We are going to discuss a topic that many find incredibly useful, yet often overlooked: receipt scanner apps. As we move further into 2024, the reliance on digital tools continues to grow, and these apps have shown their worth by helping individuals and businesses manage their finances with greater accuracy and less clutter.
We’ll dive deep into some of the best receipt scanner apps of 2024. Each has its strengths and unique features, and we’ll take a careful look at what sets them apart. Whether you’re a business owner aiming to simplify expense reports or an individual looking to track personal spending, this guide will assist you in finding the right app for your needs. Let’s get started.
Here is the list of apps were are going to go through:
- SparkReceipt
- Easy Expense
- Foreceipt
- Zoho Expense
- WellyBox
- Veryfi
- TurboDoc
SparkReceipt: a new receipt scanner with AI integration
SparkReceipt boasts a sleek style and modern look while being simple & minimalistic.
SparkReceipt combines the functionality of a receipt scanner, expense & income tracker, and business document manager to one app. It’s designed primarily for freelancers and small businesses, enabling them to organize receipts for self-accounting, or for sharing expenses and documents automatically with an accountant.
However, SparkReceipt isn’t exclusive to businesses. It can also serve as a practical tool for individuals or couples who wish to monitor their expenses and income. The app organizes receipts and documents by year and month automatically, and allows users to categorize their expenses using fully customizable categories and tags.
SparkReceipt leverages the latest ChatGPT and GPT-4 technology from OpenAI to extract key information from your receipts, like vendor, total, taxes, date and expense category. This unfortunately does mean offline access is limited, but it also means the system is quite capable at recognizing merchants worldwide, a feature that sets it apart from many competitors. There are also more benefits for users needing to scan and track international receipts:
The daily currency conversion rates are available between 150 currencies. The app automatically uses the correct conversion rate from the date of purchase.
The app has support to recognizing and labeling different tax types, including GST, VAT and HST. For Canadian users, the dual-tax system (GST+PST) used in some provinces like Quebec is also fully supported, both in English and in French.
The app supports most date formats and decimal separators around the world.
Use can calculate taxes as inclusive as exclusive of total depending on your preference. Read more about it here.
SparkReceipt is free for up to 15 document scans per calendar month for a single user, and a Pro plan is $5.99 per user per month for unlimited document scans and additional features. The free plan includes unlimited data retention and all export options (ZIP, CSV, Excel or PDF) so you don’t need to worry about losing any data.
The pros of SparkReceipt:
- Simple to use, no information is required to save a receipt. But on a more strict setting, this can be seen as a con as well.
- Automatic conversion of foreign currencies using the conversion rate from the date of purchase.
- Supports detection of international tax, like HST, PST, QST, VAT and others.
- Uses ChatGPT AI to extract information from the receipt, offering good balance between speed and accuracy.
- Has income tracking and a document manager in addition to just expense scanning.
- Can add and scan receipts from email, however this requires a Pro subscription.
- Supports both inclusive and exclusive tax calculation methods.
- Designed from the start to support international receipts, expenses and documents. Supports multiple number and date formats out of the box.
- The web app is fully features and has all the same features as the mobile app.
The cons of SparkReceipt:
- Limited offline capability.
- No support for bank account or credit card integrations.
- The only accounting software integration available for now is Quickbooks.
- Free tier is limited to 15 automated receipts & documents per calendar month.
- As a relatively new app, some features present in older apps are still on their way.
In summary, SparkReceipt offers a comprehensive solution to digital financial management, facilitating an easier way to keep track of financial documents.
Easy Expense: a great free option for an individual’s expense tracking needs
Easy Expense has a lot of great features for its free tier.
Easy Expense is a well-regarded multi-platform app for managing and reporting expenses. With full offline support and a robust auto scan feature, its free tier stands out due to its lack of restrictions on the number of receipts scanned — a unique advantage amongst its competitors. However, this free use only applies to their personal plan. The business plan has a cap of 10 free documents scans total.
Similar to other apps in this category, Easy Expense offers multi-user support through its Premium plan, priced at $7.99 per month for a single user or $24.49 per month for multiple users. The Premium plan also introduces a mileage tracking feature, which is certainly a convenient addition for quickly converting trips into expenses.
Nevertheless, Easy Expense has some room for improvement. It lacks the capability for business document management, a feature that many small business owners would find essential. Furthermore, the app lacks a feature to add or track your income. This deficiency makes tasks such as adding customer invoices as income quite cumbersome, which could be a potential dealbreaker for some users.
Pros of Easy Expense:
- Free plan does not have usage limits on the amount of expenses you can scan for personal use.
- Full offline support.
- Premium plan includes a mileage tracker feature.
- Multiple report export options, like Excel, PDF or a summary page.
Cons of Easy Expense:
- No income tracking.
- No business document management.
- Currency conversion support is limited at best.
- The web app is in early stages and does not support all features.
- The mobile app is starting to feel dated, e.g. it does not support 120hz screens properly.
Foreceipt: a basic but functional scanner
Foreceipt is an affordable option, but is very US-centric for international businesses.
Foreceipt presents itself as an affordable solution for receipt management, with a basic paid plan starting at a mere $3.99 per month. This tier allows a maximum of 200 receipts per month, suitable for up to 2 users — an offering that would cater to the needs of individuals and most small businesses. However, businesses with a need for additional users would have to opt for the pricier plan, at $9.99 per user per month.
The application boasts all the standard features you would expect from a receipt management tool, such as automatic receipt scanning, generating reports, and categorising expenses. These features are implemented in a straightforward and effective manner, offering a user-friendly experience.
However, in my personal experience, the auto-scan feature shows some deficiencies when dealing with EU- and UK-based receipts. While the scanner works reasonably well for US receipts, the performance with the former could use some improvement.
It’s worth noting that Foreceipt does not provide the functionality to add other types of business documents to the app. This limitation could be a potential drawback for business owners who require a more comprehensive document management solution.
Pros of Foreceipt receipt scanner:
- Works offline.
- Can add receipts directly from email.
- Autoscan functionality is fast.
- Can split receipts into multiple categories.
- Supports income tracking.
Cons of Foreceipt receipt scanner:
- Free plan is essentially just a trial version, with a lifetime hard cap of 500 receipts and scanned receipts are only stored for up to 12 months.
- Does not support adding documents from device files, at least on iOS.
- Cannot add business documents that are not expenses or income.
- Supports multiple currencies but does not convert the values.
- Auto-detection is not very good with EU receipts, since it cannot recognise totals with comma as a decimal separator.
- A subscription with more than 2 users can get pretty expensive.
Zoho Expense: an expensive feature powerhouse
Zoho Expense goes beyond simple expense tracking and boasts a full reimbursement system for teams.
Zoho Expense is a popular application in the Zoho suite, and it focuses on expense tracking and travel management for your organization. Like other apps in this list, it has an Autoscan feature that reduces the amount of manual input required.
Zoho Expense is not limited to large corporations, as it also is a good choice for small businesses and freelancers. Zoho Expense’s free tier is limited to up to 20 free scans per calendar month using the Autoscan feature.
Alongside receipt scanning, Zoho Expense also offers a built-in GPS tracker for accurate mileage tracking. This feature helps you keep tabs on your travel expenses, and it pairs well with the app’s ability to manage and apply cash advances to your expense reports, automatically adjusting the total expense amount.
A great feature of Zoho Expense is its credit card integration. Users can link both their personal and corporate credit cards, enabling them to monitor daily spends and quickly convert them into expenses.
For those who find expense reporting tasks daunting, Zoho Expense introduces Zia, a built-in assistant designed to help you stay on top of your tasks. Zia, combined with the app’s instant report approval feature, can significantly accelerate your reimbursement processes.
Additionally, the app provides insights into business expenditures through its analytics feature, helping users understand their spending patterns and make informed financial decisions.
Zoho Expense is free for up to 20 document scans per month, and a beefier plan will start at $24 per month.
Pros of Zoho Expense:
- An established and popular option.
- Powerful collaboration features like expense approval and reimbursement processes.
- Autoscan seems pretty accurate even on foreign receipts on merchant and grand total detection.
- Supports both inclusive and exclusive tax calculation methods, which is important for different regions.
Cons of Zoho Expense:
- Only supports a total of 9 different currencies, but the conversion rates are accurate and based on the date of the receipt.
- Free tier is limited to 20 autoscans.
- No income tracking support.
- Autoscan is quite bad at recognising tax rates, but the app allows you to easily select from predefined rates.
- Can get quite pricey for individuals and small businesses, since the Premium plan starts at $24 per month for up to 3 users (minimum) without an option to subscribe to only 1 or 2 users.
WellyBox: an app-less email and WhatsApp scanner
WellyBox decides to throw away the mobile receipt scanner and instead uses WhatsApp and email to submit expenses.
The main promise of WellyBox is to not only automate your receipt data extraction, but receipt finding as well. In fact, there is no mobile app to submit your receipts with. If you need to add a paper receipt, you send a picture of it with WhatsApp. If you need to add receipts via email, the service will access your inbox and find them automatically.
You can pull and extract receipt data from past years using multiple options, like email scanning, Google Drive scanning and more. You can also add expenses manually with their web application.
WellyBox does not have a real free plan, and only has a free trial of 15 scanned documents total. The first paid plan starts at $108 per user per year with no monthly billing option. And it only contains 50 document scans per month. The unlimited plan is $468 per user per year.
Pros of WellyBox:
- In most receipt scanner apps, you need to add and scan your items individually into the app. WellyBox allows you to pull years worth of receipts in a single go.
- Has good receipt scanning accuracy, apart from expense category which was often wrong in our testing.
- Integrates to popular accounting software like Freshbooks.
Cons of WellyBox:
- There is basically no free plan, only a free trial.
- No mobile app to manage your expenses on the go.
- Autoscan is really slow.
- The web app UI is confusing and quite hard to use.
- The app gets expensive fast if you need more than 50 document scans per month.
Veryfi: an attempt to fully automate everything
Veryfi sells a promise of a fastest OCR & data extraction available.
Veryfi is an old and established receipt app that has recently started doubling down on its OCR and AI features. It sells a promise of fastest OCR & data extraction available, but that is not strictly true. It is slower than on-device solutions like EasyExpense, and on par with other network AI based solutions like SparkReceipt. It is significantly faster than e.g. Expensify however.
The service costs $165 per user per year, with no monthly billing option mentioned at least on their website. There are also add-on products like timesheets and mileage tracking that cost extra per user.
Pros of Veryfi:
- An established and popular option.
- Supports pretty much everything a receipt can be categorized on, like payment methods, categories, tags, tips and even transaction reference ids.
- Supports 89 currencies and date-accurate conversions.
- The app is well translated with 39 different languages available.
- You can add additional security features like 2FA and biometric authentication.
- The receipt OCR is pretty fast, but requires a strong internet connection.
- Long receipt scanning is a rare but undoubtedly useful feature for some.
Cons of Veryfi:
- The mobile app is glitchy and (in my opinion) quite confusing. It is usable though and you might find it sufficient.
- The free plan does not have access to the web app, and only supports 10 submitted documents per month. Your free plan’s data is also only stored for 6 months, by which time you must export it or it is deleted.
- Autoscan detects tax well, even international taxes like HST, PST and VAT. But it does not categorize the tax based on type.
- The subscription cost is on the pricier side of preaccounting and receipt scanning apps.
TurboDoc: Automating Your Invoice Processing with AI-Powered OCR
TurboDoc is an advanced optical character recognition (OCR) tool that provides automated invoice and receipt processing powered by artificial intelligence. Designed for businesses of all sizes, TurboDoc enables users to effortlessly process large volumes of financial documents with a high level of accuracy. By leveraging cutting-edge AI, TurboDoc helps eliminate the risks of manual data entry errors, while saving significant time and resources. With seamless integration options, including Gmail for importing invoices, it’s a powerful tool for businesses looking to streamline their financial workflows and improve overall efficiency.
Pros of TurboDoc:
- Accurate Data Extraction: TurboDoc uses AI to extract data from invoices, providing up to 95% accuracy in various document formats, which minimizes manual intervention and reduces errors.
- Gmail Integration: The platform offers smooth Gmail integration, automatically pulling invoices directly from your inbox and entering them into the processing workflow.
- Data Security and Compliance: TurboDoc prioritizes the security of your financial data, with comprehensive compliance with industry regulations, ensuring that your sensitive information remains protected.
Cons of TurboDoc:
- Limited to Invoices and Receipts: Currently, TurboDoc’s focus is on invoice and receipt processing. Support for other financial documents is under development.
- Advanced Integrations Still in Progress: While TurboDoc offers Gmail integration, other popular accounting software and ERP systems are yet to be fully integrated.
- Self-Hosting Requires Technical Setup: Businesses opting for self-hosting may require additional technical expertise and custom pricing.
Pricing:
- Simple Plan: $6 per month, ideal for small businesses or individuals with basic invoice processing needs.
- Pro Plan: $30 per month, offering more advanced features and higher volume processing for growing businesses.
- Self-Hosting: Custom pricing available based on your business’s specific requirements and volume.
