How accurate is an AI receipt scanner? Test it on your own receipts

Receipt apps advertise accuracy figures, but each one measures on its own receipts with its own rules, so the numbers don't compare. What matters is how the reader does on the receipts you actually collect. A one-hour test with 30 of them tells you which fields you can stop checking and which you must always check.

Build a 30-receipt test set

Use receipts you already logged by hand, so you know the right answer for every field. Mix the types in roughly the proportions you see in a normal month. If you never get restaurant receipts, swap that row for something you do get.

Score each field, not each receipt

For every receipt, compare each field the reader filled in with the right answer and give it one of three results. Correct means it matches. Blank and flagged means the reader left it empty or marked it as unsure, which is fine: you fill it in. Wrong means a value that doesn't match the receipt and wasn't flagged. Weight the fields by what a mistake costs you: a wrong total or date changes your books, a wrong category is a quick fix.

receipt_id, type, field, right_answer, what_the_reader_said, result (correct / blank_flagged / wrong), flagged_by_reader (yes / no), notes

Fields to score per receipt: total, date, vendor, tax amount, category
Weights: total 3, date 3, vendor 2, tax amount 2, category 1

At the end, count:
1. Wrong totals and wrong dates (you want 0 or close to it)
2. Wrong values the reader did NOT flag (the dangerous ones)
3. Minutes to check all 30 receipts after the reader filled them in
4. Minutes it took you to type the same 30 by hand (from your old log, or time 5 and multiply)

To turn your own minutes into hours and money a month, use the receipt entry time calculator.

The errors that matter for your books

• Tip and total. A restaurant receipt can print a total before the tip and the card charge after it. The amount you paid is the one that goes in your books.
• Day and month swapped. 04/05 is April 5 in the US and May 4 in most other countries. Check foreign receipts and any date that lands in the future.
• Tax inside the total. Sales tax should be its own number, not added again on top of the total.
• The wrong name as vendor. Some receipts print the payment processor's name more prominently than the shop's. You want the business you bought from.
• Category guesses. Meals, travel and transportation get mixed up. The category is your call; see Schedule C expense categories for how they map to the tax form.
• Duplicates. The same purchase as a photo and as an emailed PDF gets logged twice. Search by amount and date before saving.

What the IRS expects from a receipt

The IRS says you can use any recordkeeping system that clearly shows income and expenses, and that supporting documents for an expense should show the payee, the amount paid, proof of payment, the date and a description of what you bought. Publication 463 adds rules for travel, gift and car expenses. Publication 583 says records kept in an electronic storage system can replace paper if the system meets Rev. Proc. 97-22, which asks for legible reproductions, indexing and controls against changes. This is general information, not tax advice; how long to keep receipts and business records covers retention.

Running the test in SoloWOS

1. In Expenses, click Read receipt (on the list or above a new expense). On a phone you can also choose Take photo.
2. Pick or drop the file: a photo (JPG, PNG or WebP) or a PDF of up to 10 pages and 10 MB. HEIC photos aren't accepted; iPhone Safari usually converts them to JPG when you upload.
3. The form fills in vendor, date, total, tax, payment method, a short description and a suggested category. Fields that weren't clear on the receipt are marked in yellow, with the note “Check the data before you save.”
4. Compare each field with your score sheet, correct what's wrong, and click Save. The file is attached to the expense as its receipt.

Reads with AI count toward your monthly allowance only when they work: 5 on Basic, 300 on Solo and 900 on Team. A 30-receipt test is more than Basic's monthly allowance, and the free trial has Basic's limits, so run it on Solo. Photos are resized to 1,600 pixels on the long side and re-encoded on SoloWOS's servers, which also removes location metadata, before they go to Anthropic. SoloWOS uses Claude models from Anthropic. Under Anthropic's commercial terms, the data sent for a request isn't used to train their models, and the SoloWOS privacy policy lists what each AI feature sends. The reader never converts currencies: a receipt in another currency is flagged, and amounts in a currency other than dollars or pesos have to be converted by you before saving.

The categories are SoloWOS's 14 expense categories, not Schedule C lines; the mapping stays your decision or your accountant's. To keep the receipts and see your real profit in one place, log business expenses with receipts. The SoloWOS AI assistant can also log an expense you describe in words.