Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#1

Post by Anonanonym » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 10:18 AM UTC

How do you get your personal financial documents from paper form into your spreadsheets or accounting programs? There always seems to be backlog of receipts and bills on my desk. I'm thinking that there has to be a better way than typing all these in. Please recommend what works for you?

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#2

Post by kahtaf » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

I've been using https://foreceipt.com/ (iOS and web app, Android coming soon). It keeps all your data on your Google Drive account.

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#3

Post by exabrial » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:05 PM UTC

kahtaf wrote: post #2

I've been using https://foreceipt.com/ (iOS and web app, Android coming soon). It keeps all your data on your Google Drive account.

Do they do anything with your data? Some of these things analyze your spending and sell it to third parties.

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#4

Post by _ah » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

A full-duplex scanner is worth the investment. I've configured mine so that it automatically drops the file on a network share for storage.

Receipts I ignore (the credit card transaction is caught by my online budgeting service). Random bills / statements get uploaded to Google Drive. There's a "silent OCR" that runs on the PDFs... you can't access the text directly or by API, but if you search for anything it will appear with high accuracy.

I've quit trying to organize anything since everything is easily findable.

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#5

Post by akulbe » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:08 PM UTC

Hardware: Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500, and a run-of-the-mill paper shredder

Software:

  on macOS: DEVONthink Pro Office, or MS OneNote, or Google Drive

  on Windows: MS OneNote or Google Drive

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#6

Post by Mister_Snuggles » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

For the hardware side, I use a Fujitsu ScanSnap - I believe my model is an S1300i - to scan paper documents. I use the bundled OCR software (ABBYY FineReader) which seems to work fairly well, though it's highly dependent on the resolution you scan at.

As for software, I haven't found anything I'm truly happy with. I've put some effort into using Mayan EDMS[0] to store the documents. It works well, but isn't perfect. Version 3.0 added a bunch of UI changes that should significantly improve matters, but I haven't gotten around to upgrading it yet.

I've also tried Alfresco Community Edition[1], but I think this tool is overkill for the job.

[0] https://www.mayan-edms.com/

[1] https://www.alfresco.com/alfresco-community-editions

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#7

Post by nohorse » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

Office lens and certify app

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#8

Post by j_h_o » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

Fujitsu N7100 Network Scanner, which I picked up openbox.

Scans to PDF with built in OCR, sent to email or drops it on my NAS.

This is a great scanner - double sided, has dualfeed detection, fast, and carries all the processing onboard.

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#9

Post by pbc » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

Scanbot (ios and Android app) https://scanbot.io/en/index.html . I like the backup to Google Drive, OCR is there and seems fine but didn't used it much.

Re: Ask HN: How do you OCR your receipts and bills in 2018?

#10

Post by Karunamon » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

+1 for this question, especially if the folks here know anything about a decent document management system that's both cross-platform and made for home users. The scanner is the eaisest part of the discussion.