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Scanning your first receipt with AI

Drag a photo onto the scanner, watch the AI extract vendor, date, amount and category — review and save.

The AI scanner is the fastest way to get an expense into your books. Open Scanner in the top nav.

How it works

  1. Drop a photo (or PDF) onto the page, or use your phone's camera by tapping the upload area.
  2. The scanner sends the image to our AI and shows the extracted fields within a few seconds:
    • Vendor (e.g. "Tesco" or "BP")
    • Date of the transaction
    • Total amount including VAT
    • VAT amount (if shown on the receipt)
    • Suggested category (fuel, office supplies, travel, etc.)
  3. Each field has a confidence indicator. Anything below 80% gets highlighted — give it a quick look and fix any typos.
  4. Click Save expense. The receipt is stored alongside the row in our 6-year HMRC vault.

After saving

The expense lands in Expenses with the receipt image attached. It's immediately counted in your dashboard P&L and (if VAT-registered) flows into your next VAT return.

Tips for better extraction

  • Take the photo in good light, with the receipt flat and the whole thing in frame.
  • For long supermarket receipts, fold them so the total is visible — you can always view the full image later.
  • PDF receipts (Amazon, online invoices) tend to extract more accurately than phone photos.
  • If a vendor name comes back wrong on first scan, the system learns: after one correction, future receipts from that vendor map to your preferred name automatically.

Last updated 5/30/2026.

Scanning your first receipt with AI · AccountantUK help