How to quickly scan and send receipts with your iPhone

Lots of people have to keep track of expense receipts during the workweek, myself included. Luckily, what used to be a huge pain is now dead simple thanks to my iPhone and apps like Scanner Pro by Readdle.

I’ve never had to submit very many expense reports. However, I recently became a member of the eTech Parts family and found myself traveling a lot more for work. Since I use the company card, that means I have to save receipts and submit them each week to accounting. After one of my first trips, I unpacked my stuff and found myself staring at a crumpled pile of receipts in front of me.

I’ve used many scanning apps and actually rely on Instapdf regularly to scan things quickly on my iPhone and access them instantly on my Mac. However, after trying several scanning apps, I’ve found Scanner Pro to be the best for receipt scanning, for two reasons:

• Scanner Pro has an automatic capture mode that allows it to detect a receipt and capture, meaning you can go through an entire stack of receipts in mere minutes
• The Scan Radar feature in Scanner Pro automatically detects documents and potential receipts right in your Camera Roll

I’ve now realized over the course of a few trips that I’m clumsy with receipts. I lose them or shove them in a back pocket. This results in separate piles all over the place. So I don’t have to worry about this, I’ve started taking advantage of the Scan Radar feature in Scanner Pro. I take a picture of the receipt almost immediately and then it doesn’t matter if I lose it. I’ve already got what I need to complete my expense report.

How to scan and send receipts in a snap with Scanner Pro by Readdle

1. Lay your first receipt out and launch Scanner Pro on your iPhone.
2. Tap the plus sign if you aren’t already in capture mode.
3. Just center the receipt in the viewfinder and hold steady. Scanner Pro will automatically capture it, no need to tap the shutter button unless it doesn’t recognize it.
4. Grab your next receipt and repeat until you’re done.
5. When all your receipts are scanned in, tap on the document button in the bottom right.
6. Scanner Pro will show you a nice overview of everything you’ve scanned in. You can also tap on the title of the document and change it to whatever you want.
7. You can now do whatever you’d like with your receipts — including email them, save them to Dropbox (uploads tab), or share them to another app.

To use the Scan Radar feature in Scanner Pro, just tap on the icon that looks like a radar map at the top of the main screen. Scanner Pro will automatically suggest documents to import. You can also choose to import any document you’d like while scanning by tapping on the photo album icon.

Other great iPhone scanning apps

While Scanner Pro for Readdle is my favorite for receipt scanning, there are lots of iPhone scanning apps in the App Store. I’ve found myself using multiple apps for different purposes. Here are some of my other favorites and what they’re best for:

• Scanbot – Free – Download – Great for standard scans and QR codes
• InstaPDF – Free – Download – My favorite for quickly scanning and accessing immediately on the Mac version
• PDF Pen Scan+ – $6.99 – Download – Has the best OCR support in my experience

If you have a favorite iPhone scanning app, let me know in the comments what it is and why!