Receipt OCR
Receipt OCR for totals, tax, tips, and line items
Recover expense data from narrow, faded, folded, and photographed receipts.
Receipts are small documents with outsized OCR problems. Thermal print fades, paper curls, store abbreviations are dense, and phone photos introduce shadows or perspective. A useful result separates merchant and payment fields from the repeating item list.
Expense workflows should keep the source image beside the extracted record. That makes it possible to check tax, tips, currency, and ambiguous digits before reimbursement or bookkeeping.
Where receipt ocr fits
- Employee expense capture
- Bookkeeping from paper receipts
- Item-level purchase analysis
How receipt ocr works
- Normalize the photo: Correct perspective, orientation, contrast, and background clutter without cropping the edges.
- Read merchant and transaction data: Capture store name, location, date, time, receipt number, and payment details.
- Separate item rows: Group abbreviations, quantities, discounts, and prices into one row per purchase.
- Check the final charge: Resolve subtotal, tax, service charge, tip, and total, including handwritten additions.
What the structured result can contain
| Field or structure | Example |
|---|
| Merchant | Harbor Street Market |
| Date and time | 2026-08-28 18:42 |
| Items | Item, quantity, unit price, amount |
| Tax and tip | 3.86 / 8.00 |
| Total | 60.06 USD |
| Payment method | Visa ending 1042 |
Receipt values that deserve a second look
A single faded decimal or handwritten tip can change the booked expense.
- Check handwritten tips and totals against the card charge.
- Confirm the date, currency, and merchant before categorization.
- Watch for returns, coupons, discounts, and negative line items.
- Keep personal card details masked in stored output.
- Use the full-resolution image instead of a compressed chat screenshot.
OCR API response design
Accept image and PDF inputs, and return both transaction-level fields and an optional items array.
Record image-quality warnings so low-confidence photos can route to manual review instead of silently entering an expense system.
Read the document extraction API guide.
Common uses
Expense reports
Pre-fill merchant, date, category inputs, tax, tip, and total from a phone photo.
Bookkeeping
Turn a folder of scanned receipts into rows that can be matched with card transactions.
Purchase detail
Capture item rows when the expense category depends on what was bought.
Free tools for this document
- Receipt OCR: Read totals, tax, and line items from receipt photos and scans.
Receipt OCR questions
Can receipt OCR read faded thermal paper?
Sometimes. Even lighting, a dark background, and the original high-resolution photo help. Very faint digits may still need manual correction.
Can it read handwritten tips?
Clear handwriting may be recognized, but the tip and final total should always be compared with the source and payment record.
Does receipt OCR identify expense categories?
OCR extracts evidence such as merchant and items. Categorization is a separate decision and should follow your chart of accounts and policy.