How to scan receipts on iPhone

Receipts are easy to lose and hard to read later. A good receipt scan should preserve the merchant, date, total, and line items without forcing you into a cloud storage workflow.

Use contrast to your advantage

Place light receipts on a darker surface. Keep glossy receipts away from direct glare. If thermal paper is faded, scan it before it gets worse.

Name receipts by purpose

For tax or reimbursement work, a receipt named by merchant and month is easier to find than a generic image name. OCR helps, but readable titles still matter.

Export grouped PDFs

If you are sending receipts for one expense report, export them together. If you are saving warranty records, keep each purchase separate so replacement paperwork is easier to find.

What to capture on every receipt

• Merchant name, transaction date, and final total.
• Line items when the receipt is for reimbursement, tax, or warranty proof.
• Payment reference or order number when it appears on the paper.

FAQ

Should receipts be one PDF or separate PDFs? Group receipts by the way you will use them. One trip or expense report can be one PDF; warranty receipts are usually better as separate files.

Why use local OCR? Receipt text often contains purchase history and card fragments. Local OCR keeps that workflow on device.