Scanning receipts for paperless environment

Question

I'm using my Android device to scan receipts for warranty receipts, or for expensive stuffs. I'm uploading the receipts to Google Drive which works well, except that it's a long process to scanning each receipt.

I open the Google Drive, enter the right folder, click the button for creating a new file, choose to take a new picture, take the picture, then rename the newly created file to something more fitting i.e. name of item or store name and date, and then enter my Gallery and delete the picture from the camera roll because I don't want it there.

Well, you get the picture. Is there a better way of doing this?

Also, if possible I'd like to crop the image, or even stitch 2 pics together if the receipt is too long.

Is there a good app for this perhaps? I searched Google Play but couldn't really find anything fitting.

And a related question: does the following rule apply when uploading pictures to Google Drive, since Picasa and Drive share the same space now?

If you're signed up for Google+, photos up to 2048×2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes long won't count towards this free storage limit. And Google will automatically resize photos for you when you upload them to Google+, so they stay under the free size limit.

That means only photos uploaded directly to Picasa Web Albums over the 2048×2048 size will count towards the 1 GB of free storage, explains Google. And when that limit is reached, photos will be automatically resized.

Meanwhile, for non-Google+ users, there are slightly stricter rules: photos up to 800×800 and videos up to 15 minutes won’t count towards free storage. Again, when the 1 GB limit is reached, larger photos will be resized down.

Answer 1

There are multiple solutions available, depending on your goal. Probably none of them covers exactly what you describe, but maybe one of them comes pretty close, or a combination can be the solution for you.

• A bunch of apps like Expensify offer to keep track of your expenses. Here you can scan your receipts, record your milage, and more (the app takes care for that). All data gets uploaded to the providers server, and you get reports in return.
• Warranty Archive stores copies of your warranty receipts. It takes photos of your papers (receipts and the like), and lets you add some details. According to the app's description, syncing with Google Drive is planned -- so this comes closest to your description. A better rated variant could be My Warranties, even offering reminders and barcode scanning; but the app description does not mention any synching (neither cloud nor desktop). Full version is just half an Euro, so not that big deal.
• Search the Google Playstore for "receipt" to get a lot of alternatives, most of them comparable with above described apps, or combining features of them. Here you might even find an app that does exactly what you want. Though just using a single term for the search, the first result page containts no false positives -- so take your pick!
• Another variant would be using a PDF-Scanner like e.g. CamScanner, saving the full PDF in the correct folder locally, and use an app like FolderSync to have that directory synced with your preferred cloud service automatically in the background. This would even be independent of whether you want to keep receipts, or any other documents sorted that way.

There might be many more solutions (and I'm pretty sure there are) -- but naming them all in full detail would get a quite long task :) You've got some ideas now which should it make easier for you to find your "perfect match".

Answer 2

Try the following apps/services:

• EverNote with Receipts app (image recognition makes finding receipts a snap),
• Receipt Bank (paid service, gathers paper receipts, scans them and processes the data),
• Expentory (app and cloud-based service for capturing expense receipts on the move),
• Xpenditure (take picture of your receipt, and it can process it),
• Kagazz (integrates with FreeAgent and automatically uploads data and images from receipts and invoices into FreeAgent in real time),
• Scan Tailor (at GitHub), an interactive post-processing tool for scanned pages.

Most of them have some functionality of recognising receipts and process them.

Answer 3

Well, you are talking about an app that has a wide variety of customized capabilities. These kind of apps are not currently available in the market. But you have the option of going to a developer and asking him to build an app for you if your financial resources allow you to, or you can build an app on your own if you have the necessary skill sets.

About your method of uploading, the only feasible solution would be doing it manually.