Using Wealtie: How to scan receipts in Wealtie and split a shop line by line

How do you scan receipts in Wealtie?

Take a photo of the receipt when you log an expense, and the scanner reads it for you: the shop, the date, the total and each line. Check what it found, then save it.

It saves typing on long receipts, but the real value is the lines. A supermarket receipt is rarely just groceries. It's groceries, a bottle of cleaning spray, a birthday card and a pair of socks, and if the whole shop goes into one category, your grocery spending looks bigger than it is. The scanner lets you see and split what you actually bought.

Receipt scanning is part of Wealtie Pro. Logging expenses by hand works the same way on every plan, and takes a few taps.

What does the receipt scanner read?

The shop name, the date, the total, and each line with its amount. Where a receipt shows them, it also picks up discounts and tax lines, so the lines add up to what you paid.

If it can't read something clearly, it asks you to check before saving. If the photo can't be read at all, it tells you, and you can try a clearer photo or enter the expense by hand.

The scanner works with receipts printed in the Latin alphabet. Receipts in other scripts need entering by hand for now.

One expense or one per line?

Save a receipt as one expense when it's all the same kind of spending, and as one expense per line when it isn't.

Here's a worked example in round numbers, the same in any currency. A supermarket shop comes to 86.40:

Saved as one expense, the whole 86.40 is groceries, and your grocery budget looks 25.20 worse than it is. Saved per line, each part goes where it belongs. Over a month of shops, that difference is often the gap between a grocery budget that seems impossible and one that works. How much to spend on groceries has the averages to compare your real grocery number with.

For a coffee or a single item, one expense is quicker. For a big weekly shop, splitting is worth the extra moment.

What happens to the receipt photo?

It isn't stored. Wealtie keeps the details it read from the receipt, like the shop, date, amounts and lines, not the picture.

If you need the paper receipt for a return or a warranty, keep it. If you need a copy for an expense claim at work, take your own photo too.

How do you get a clean scan?

A flat, well-lit receipt scans best.

• Flatten it on a table. Creases and curls hide numbers.
• Use good light and avoid shadows across the paper.
• Fit the whole receipt in the photo, from the shop name to the total.
• Scan it soon. Thermal receipts fade, sometimes within weeks.
• Long receipts: fold them flat in sections and make sure the total is in the frame.

How do line-by-line receipts help your budget?

They show you where the money in a shop actually went, and that's where savings come from.

After a month of per-line receipts, patterns appear that a single total hides: how much of the weekly shop is snacks, how often household items creep in, which shop is dearer for the same basket. Those are the things you can change. A category total of 600 for groceries tells you a number; a month of lines tells you that 90 of it was ready meals you could cook instead. How to save money on groceries goes through the changes that make the biggest difference once you can see them.

It also keeps your categories honest, which matters if you're trying to stay inside a budget. Household items and clothes counted as groceries make the wrong category look like the problem.

When is it worth scanning instead of typing?

On receipts with several lines, mixed categories, or discounts that make the total hard to split by hand. Weekly shops, hardware stores and pharmacies are the usual candidates.

For everything else, typing the amount and picking a category is often faster. Many people scan the big shops and type the small ones, and that works well. Either way, everything lands in the same expense tracker, in the same categories, and counts towards the same monthly budget. More on the scanner is on the receipt scanner page.