How AI reads a receipt, and where it still gets it wrong

When you upload a photo of a receipt, the app reads it for you: the vendor, the date, the total, the tax, the currency and the individual lines. It does this in the language of the receipt, whether that is English, German, Albanian or something else, so you do not need to translate anything first.

It does a lot of the typing for you. It does not do all the thinking, and that is deliberate.

What it handles well

Clear printing, a flat sheet and a conventional layout: a supermarket receipt, a restaurant bill, a taxi slip. Most of these come back right.

Where it hesitates

• Faded print. Thermal paper that has been in a wallet for a month can be barely legible, even to you.
• Several totals. Subtotal, tip, tax, total, amount paid, change. Choosing the right one is harder than it looks.
• Ambiguous dates. Is 03/04/26 the third of April or the fourth of March? The receipt does not say.
• Photos taken at an angle, in shadow or with the paper curling away from the camera.
• Handwriting, which is a different problem altogether.

Why you see a confidence

Every field comes with how sure the AI is. When you review a receipt you see it next to the fields that were read from it, and anything uncertain is highlighted. You do not need to proofread everything; you only need to look at the parts that ask for it.

You decide

What the AI reads is a draft. It is a fast first pass, the highlighted fields are where to look, and you fix what needs fixing and confirm it. The final number is yours.

Getting better results

A good photo helps more than anything else. Flat paper, even light, the whole slip in the frame, and a second picture if the first one is blurry.