How can a Receipt Scanner App change the way you manage expenses?

Nothing like a shoebox full of receipts for instilling a feeling of impending dread. As the receipts build-up, you begin to dread the inevitable Sunday afternoon spent tediously inputting numbers into an excel sheet.

You’ve probably used a document scanner at some point in your life; simply place a piece of paper on the scanner’s surface, press a button, and the scanner saves an image of the document to a hard drive.

A receipt scanner differs from a conventional document scanner in two fundamental aspects: it doesn’t simply save an image of the receipt; rather, it uses OCR (optical character recognition) software to process the image, actually reading the data that is displayed on the receipt, intelligently recognizing the letters and numbers.

At Rydoo, we know just how troublesome it can be to sort through receipts and put together an expense report, which is why we’ve made it our job to make the process of expenses as easy and painless as possible. Our tool allows you to manage all your receipts in real-time.

The Rydoo app functions as an automatic receipt scanner. It essentially processes an image of a receipt (using OCR algorithms) to produce a digital receipt that contains all of the necessary financial information, as well as a wealth of useful metadata.
Once your receipts are stored in a fully digital format, the Rydoo app provides you with a ton of extremely useful functions.

You can submit expense claims or approve them in just a few clicks, have all data automatically exported to the accounting software of your choice, and match expenses with bank and credit card statements.

Automatic receipt scanning technology brings with it a number of benefits, all of which serve to make your life significantly easier.

1. Save Time

First and foremost, the most obvious benefit of a receipt scanner is the potential to save time; lots and lots of time.

Think of how long it takes to enter one receipt’s worth of information into an excel spreadsheet. Compare that to how long it takes to take a photo of the receipt.

Where once it would have taken hours and hours to go through a box of receipts, now it only takes minutes; all you need to do is take a photo of the receipt with your smartphone, and Rydoo Expense’s OCR software will do the rest.

 

2. Save Space and Reduce Clutter

A huge benefit to storing your financial information digitally is the reduced need for paper storage.

You can make your workspace cleaner and less cluttered, greatly improving your work environment, as well as allowing you to have less need for filing cabinets and storage units.

 

3. Financial Data can be Processed Immediately

Normally, you would take your receipts and store them all in one place, setting aside a certain day on which to go through them.

With automatic receipt scanning, you can take a photo of each receipt as soon as you get it, meaning you don’t need to worry about receipts and invoices piling up.

This way, you won’t ever have to deal with an unmanageably large mountain of receipts.

 

4. Increased Security

Generally speaking, storing important documents on a digital cloud platform is significantly safer than keeping a hard copy of those documents.

Most cloud servers are extremely secure, involving complex encryption methods and protocols, as well as reliable backup systems protecting you from data loss.

Additionally, digital storage means increased privacy. With documents kept on tables or in cabinets, anyone can just pick them up and read them.

Digital storage means that documents can only be accessed by people who are specifically given access.

 

5. Long-Term Storage

At Rydoo, we hold on to your receipts for 10 years. When your receipt is digitally stored, it will still be perfectly intact when it is 10 years old.

Physical receipts, on the other hand, are prone to aging and fading, which can significantly reduce clarity and legibility, potentially causing some problems down the road.

 

6. Never Lose Receipts

Unless you have a meticulous filing system, chances are you have lost receipts from time to time. When the information is stored digitally, the chances of data loss are significantly reduced (particularly when using cloud storage).

 

7. Digital Receipts are Court-Recognised Legal Documents

Digital receipts are perfectly valid as legal documents.

The IRS and the HMRC both recognise digitised receipts, meaning that the process of filing tax refunds and write-offs for business expenses becomes significantly easier.

 

8. Accuracy

Hours of data entry can certainly take a toll on your accuracy.

Needless to say, this isn’t a problem when using the Rydoo receipt scanner; every single receipt is processed with 100% accuracy.

 

9. Automatic Currency Conversion

When traveling around the world, you don’t only pile up a lot of receipts but they are all different currencies. Add a conversion step to your expense reporting. The Rydoo expense report app has the capability to automatically convert all currencies using real-time conversion rates.

 

10. Export Expenses to Accounting Software

Once your receipts and expenses are stored digitally, they can be exported to your favourite accounting software; Rydoo supports integration with most of the major tools that are used for accounting and expense tracking – SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, and many more.

 

11. Match Receipts with Transactions

Say goodbye to painstakingly matching each receipt with a transaction on your bank statement.

You can directly connect your Rydoo account with your bank account to match transactions to receipts (alternatively, simply take a photo of your statement, and the app will do the rest).

 

12. Access (and Input) Data Anywhere at Any Time

It doesn’t matter where you are or what time it is – all of your financial data can be accessed, from any device, as long as you have an internet connection.

This means that, if you’re doing a lot of traveling, you don’t have to hold on to all your receipts and make room for them in your travel bags; simply scan them as you acquire them.

 

13. Easily (and Safely) Share Data

Say goodbye to sending receipts through the mail.

With your receipt information digitised, it is an extremely simple matter to safely share data with clients, employees, and business partners.

 

14. Automated Expense Reporting

With all of the receipt information stored digitally, generating an accurate, comprehensive expense report is only a few clicks away.

 

15. Find Receipts Easily by Searching

Imagine trawling through multiple boxes of receipts looking for a particular expense from several years ago – not only would it take forever, but there is a good chance that you wouldn’t find what you were looking for!

Digital storage means ease of access.

Search tools allow you to search for receipts by category, year, price, or any number of metadata that you have attached to the receipt.

 

16. Add Metadata to Receipts

Adding metadata to receipts (projects, expense category, location information, business vs or personal, etc…) is a great way to organise the receipts, as well as making them easier to find when they are needed.

If you need to go over every expense incurred during that two-week business trip to Ibiza, simply look up the relevant category; all of the information is right where you need it.

Our receipt scanning app was designed to be incredibly user-friendly. To digitise a receipt, simply do the following:

1. Take a picture of the receipt.
2. Upload the picture to Rydoo, where the OCR software will scan the image and automatically extract the amount, date, currency, and merchant.
3. Add any details or meta-data that you need.
4. Send the digital receipt for approval via your smartphone.
5. The expenses are automatically sent to your accounting software for processing.

Whether you need to scan multiple pages or you’d rather scan a pile of receipts at once and submit them later, we’ve got you covered. Watch our extra functionalities below.