Scanning receipts with the iOS app
Capture is meant to happen where the receipt does — at the counter, in the van, at the loading door. Everything after the photo happens on our side.
One shutter, then put the phone away. The iOS app opens on the camera. Frame the receipt, tap the shutter, and you're done — reading the receipt happens on the server, not on your phone, so you don't wait for it. Scans from the phone file themselves once they're read; anything the AI can't settle on its own waits for you in Review.
Getting a clean capture
- Flatten the receipt if you can, and fill the frame with it — the crop you take is the crop we read.
- Move out of direct glare. Faded thermal paper reads better in shade than under a bright light.
- A long receipt is fine in one shot as long as the total is legible — that is the number the arithmetic check is run against.
- A blurry photo is better re-shot than corrected — take the second picture before you leave the counter.
Uploading on the web
On the web, Spending → Receipts → Upload takes an image from your computer — useful for the pile that accumulated on the desk, or for a photo somebody texted you. Web uploads go through the same extraction as a phone scan and land in the same queue, but unlike phone scans they always wait for you to approve them.
What happens to the image
The original photo is kept as evidence and tied to the journal entry it produced. It is never replaced by the extracted text, and corrections you make later don't overwrite it. That's what makes an entry defensible years from now — and it's what goes in the accountant package at the end of the year.
Duplicates
If you upload a receipt you also scanned, or photograph the same slip twice, WispBooks flags the pair as a possible duplicate and holds it rather than booking both. In Review you decide: Keep both releases them as two real expenses. (Merging a suspected pair into one is not built yet — until it is, delete the copy you don't want.)
Staff can be given a capture-only login: they can add receipts, but can't approve, post, or change anything in the ledger. See Roles and who can see what.