OCR of receipts

Add feature to photograph receipts and allow more precise categorisation of big spends.

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On iPhone you can touch the transaction entry which then gives you the option of adding a receipt photograph , you can also add detailed notes to the transaction

I think this is also available on Android phones but not being a user wouldnā€™t know for sure -

  • I searched ā€œtagging receipts on Androidā€ in the search ā€œfrying panā€ - from this I found these posts

and

Both notes and receipt images are available on Android as attachments to a transaction.

There are no OCR capabilities today, maybe in the future or by a 3rd party service using the API. :slight_smile:

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didnā€™t understand what OCR was - Optical Character Recognition ? :slight_smile: or ā€¦

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Normally, yes. OCR = Optical Character Recognition. :+1:

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Hey guys, this is something Monzo might explore:

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I use scanbot on Android, which does a reasonable job of doing OCR on receipts. If we could upload PDFs that Monzo could index this could be a helpful short term solution if doing OCR on receipts is a planned feature for the future.

And thereā€™s been some more discussion about OCR here too -

And the challenges of pulling data from receipts here -

This would be a really useful feature. Currently I log multiple items from a single transaction in the notes so I can search for them, however an OCR feature would save me having to do this.

Ability to scan receipt and place receipt items into a check list format in which you can check off individual items and charge individuals for their purchases on the receipt ā€¦ example when out for a meal one person pays then this is divided equally per person per item rather than split.

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I think this is on the roadmap as a long term goal. I guess this falls under OCR. It would be very useful though.

Edit: itā€™s on the extraordinary ideas board instead as mentioned below :disappointed:

This is a nice idea in theory but thereā€™s some challenges with the technology that makes it hard to implement in practise :confused:

Perhaps Flux can save us :sweat_smile:

Iā€™ve moved your post here to keep all of the discussion about this idea in one place, I hope thatā€™s ok!

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Iā€™m afraid this isnā€™t on the product roadmap right now.

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Itā€™s on the extraordinary ideas board instead https://trello.com/c/9gi4ZOht/48-ocr-receipts-and-add-the-text-to-the-metadata-so-it-can-be-searched-or-extracted-for-expense-reporting

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Thereā€™s some good stuff on that board!
Some of them Iā€™d say could even be ticked off maybe :face_with_monocle::thinking:

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I would prefer a Microsoft Office Lens type way of submitting receipts. It allows you to take an image and then render it flat - de-squewing it so it looks as if it is scanned. Adding that to transactions, logging them as ā€˜expensesā€™, and then exporting a report would be great for my payroll department.

Am I right in thinking Apple Pay has the capability to pass an itemised bill with the transaction? Iā€™m sure I read that somewhere. If places did that, no more receipts and no more wasted paper!!!

Wow! That would be amazing if merchants started using that. Monzo could integrate that straight into receipts.

Thinking of being ā€˜backwards compatibleā€™ it would be great if after capturing a picture of the paper receipt Monzo using could generate a digital receipt (that would be searchable).

However, my (almost sole) use of receipts is the warranty. (Iā€™ll create a new thread about it and link it here after it is done)

Best,

Aleksander

If I could simply forward a receipt from Monzo to Expensify/email address for my expenses when travelling in the US for work that would be a great plus for me.

As an alternative, you can use Curve. You can connect curve to your :monzo: card. Expensify isnā€™t yet supported but xero is. Maybe that helps?