Receipt ScannerGuides

Scan Receipts to Excel & CSV Spreadsheets

·2 min read

If you track business reimbursements, freelance deductions, or household budgets in a spreadsheet, typing receipt totals by hand is the slowest part of the month. Receipt Scanner turns paper photos and PDF invoices into structured rows you can open directly in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or Apple Numbers—without creating an account or uploading financial records to a cloud service.

What fields are exported to CSV

When you open My expenses and export a CSV, every saved expense in your current filter or book is written with structured columns:

  • Core transaction fields: date, time, merchant, category, currency, total
  • Tax & tip breakdown: subtotal, tax, tip, paymentMethod
  • Audit & tax metadata: invoiceNumber, taxId (such as GSTIN or VAT ID), notes, itemCount
  • Quality & split tracking: ocrConfidence, edited, paidBy, splitMethod, splitShares

Because OCR text comes from untrusted physical documents, exported cells are RFC 4180 quoted and sanitised against spreadsheet formula injection (values starting with =, +, -, or @ are safely escaped so Excel or Sheets never executes a merchant string as a formula).

Workflow: from paper pile to clean spreadsheet

  1. Create a dedicated Book (optional): Use the Book Switcher to create a book such as Q4 Client Travel or 2026 Tax Receipts with your default currency.
  2. Batch scan photos or PDFs: Photograph receipts (see photography habits for better OCR) or drop up to 20 PDF/image files at once on Scan receipt.
  3. Verify flagged fields: Check any field marked check this—especially dates and tax amounts—before clicking Save.
  4. Filter and export CSV: In My expenses, filter by book, category, or date range, then export to CSV and open the file in Excel or Google Sheets.

Importing existing CSV or Excel (.xlsx) sheets

Moving into Receipt Scanner from an existing spreadsheet works locally too:

  • Open My expenses → Import and choose a .csv or .xlsx workbook (up to 1,000 rows per import).
  • Common column names—such as Transaction Date, Vendor / Payee, Amount, Tax, Currency, Category, and Invoice Number—are mapped automatically before writing to your browser’s database.

CSV spreadsheet vs JSON full backup

Keep the difference between the two export formats in mind:

  • CSV export is built for spreadsheets, accountants, and reporting. It flattens the visible expense list into rows and columns.
  • Full JSON backup is built for restoring your app state. It preserves multiple books, budgets, category caps, split participants, and recorded settlements so you can move to a new phone or recover after clearing browser storage. See how to keep local browser expense records safe.

Put it into practice

Scan receipt