Scanning & storing receipts is my new raison d'etre! I use Evernote, Google Drive, an Android phone and want to store receipts. I am not the most organized person, rather I aspire to being organized, and in the main I am able to achieve some modicum of success.
I have a bit of a system ... when my wallet is bulging with paper I sift through and separate cash notes from receipts and other dendrites I have picked up. The receipts are then put on a receipt spike. I have noticed that after a few months some receipts fade and become unreadable (is this by design... perhaps my paranoia?), so having an electronic copy available would be a great idea.
Scanning
I started off using my multi-function inkjet printer for scanning, but realized that this was all too time-consuming. I decided to opt for using my android smartphone as it is more versatile.
Applications
I went on the hunt for a good app. There is a big choice out there, and I am not a fan of having lots of apps on my phone.
1. Evernote
I tried using Evernote natively, as this is my main store of information, as Evernote has an automatic background feature for automatically processing an OCR scan of the receipt photograph I take with the app and saves it to an Evernote notebook. Evernote then stores searchable text in XML tags (hidden from the interface) which allows the user to find the note in Evernote's interface. All well and good, but when taking the photo from the app, there is no way to crop the image and save it as a black and white scan, only as a full-blown photograph, which I find impractical from a storage perspective.
2. CamScanner
This App came to my rescue. I needed something cheap (free :), which could crop the images, multi-page for loooong receipts, saving in a black & white (not photo) format, and integration with Evernote so I could tag and store my receipts in my main information app. CamScanner achieves this admirably, native support for sharing with Evernote, full image control, and so far I see no need to pay for the premium version (let's see!). After taking a scan with my smartphone I crop the image easily and then share it to Evernote to my Receipts notebook as an image (the MIME types PNG, JPG and GIF are supported by Evernote) and add the Receipt tag. Evernote then works in the background and via its OCR engines updates the note with useful searchable text metadata tags. Happy Gadgeteer! :)
I have a bit of a system ... when my wallet is bulging with paper I sift through and separate cash notes from receipts and other dendrites I have picked up. The receipts are then put on a receipt spike. I have noticed that after a few months some receipts fade and become unreadable (is this by design... perhaps my paranoia?), so having an electronic copy available would be a great idea.
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| Receipt Spike :) |
I started off using my multi-function inkjet printer for scanning, but realized that this was all too time-consuming. I decided to opt for using my android smartphone as it is more versatile.
Applications
I went on the hunt for a good app. There is a big choice out there, and I am not a fan of having lots of apps on my phone.
1. Evernote
I tried using Evernote natively, as this is my main store of information, as Evernote has an automatic background feature for automatically processing an OCR scan of the receipt photograph I take with the app and saves it to an Evernote notebook. Evernote then stores searchable text in XML tags (hidden from the interface) which allows the user to find the note in Evernote's interface. All well and good, but when taking the photo from the app, there is no way to crop the image and save it as a black and white scan, only as a full-blown photograph, which I find impractical from a storage perspective.
2. CamScanner
This App came to my rescue. I needed something cheap (free :), which could crop the images, multi-page for loooong receipts, saving in a black & white (not photo) format, and integration with Evernote so I could tag and store my receipts in my main information app. CamScanner achieves this admirably, native support for sharing with Evernote, full image control, and so far I see no need to pay for the premium version (let's see!). After taking a scan with my smartphone I crop the image easily and then share it to Evernote to my Receipts notebook as an image (the MIME types PNG, JPG and GIF are supported by Evernote) and add the Receipt tag. Evernote then works in the background and via its OCR engines updates the note with useful searchable text metadata tags. Happy Gadgeteer! :)
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