ReceiptVis Documentation
ReceiptVis scans receipt photos or PDFs and proposes a reviewable expense or Split payment draft — you always confirm before saving.
Audience: Members who add household expenses or Split payments when ReceiptVis is enabled for their account. · 5-page PDF · v6.26.1
How to read this document
Sections move from purpose → concepts → calculation process → worked examples → edge cases. Formula boxes use plain mathematical notation for clarity; they are conceptual summaries, not API contracts.
- Point lists call out operator-visible behaviour.
- Callouts mark warnings, limitations, or important qualifications.
- Worked examples use round numbers so you can reproduce the arithmetic by hand.
Purpose
ReceiptVis reduces typing when you have a paper or digital slip. It reads the receipt, proposes fields such as merchant, amount, date, category hints, and tip/tax notes, attaches the images, and waits for your review.
- Scan from household expense create (web and Android)
- Scan when creating a Split group payment where supported
- Handle long receipts with multiple photos or PDF pages
- Verify every field before the ledger write
Who can use ReceiptVis
ReceiptVis is entitlement-gated on the user/account. If Scan with ReceiptVis is missing from Expenses, Quick Add, or Split payment create, it is not enabled for you — members cannot turn it on themselves.
- Ask a household or system admin, or check plan features.
- Enablement can differ between members of the same household.
- Standard receipt file attachments still work without ReceiptVis; only assisted OCR drafting requires the flag.
- ReceiptVis is also the gate for ForeSense price estimates: a household needs ReceiptVis enabled and a separate administrator grant before any price range appears on its shopping list.
Scan workflow
- Choose camera, gallery, or PDF upload.
- Add one or more images for long receipts; crop each image when the UI offers it.
- Keep the screen open while analysis runs — a full scan typically takes around 90 seconds, and multi-page scans can take longer.
- Review the draft: amount, currency, merchant/description, date, category, payment method, tip/tax notes.
- Apply the draft into the form, then save the expense or payment as usual.
The live scanner gives you an early answer while the thorough pass runs: a fast single-frame provisional read highlights what it found on screen, and the full multi-page analysis then refines or corrects that provisional draft. Treat the highlights as a preview — the completed pass is what fills the form.
Add a grocery expense from a long slip
- Open Add Expense (or Quick Add) with ReceiptVis enabled.
- Capture or upload overlapping photos of the full receipt.
- Crop each frame so text is readable.
- Wait for analysis, then correct any misread total or category.
- Confirm the member and payment instrument, then save.
The saved expense is your confirmed form — not an unchecked OCR dump.
Always verify amounts
Blur, folds, faded ink, mixed languages, and unusual layouts can confuse OCR. Never save a draft you have not checked against the slip.
What it tries to fill
ReceiptVis maps readable text into AccountHouse fields using your household context (for example existing categories and members). Availability depends on what the receipt actually shows.
- Merchant or place for the description
- Total amount and currency when detectable
- Transaction date when printed clearly
- Category suggestion from household taxonomy
- Payment method hint when the slip shows card or cash cues
- Card match when the slip shows a last-4 that belongs to a card in My Cards
- Notes for taxes, tips, or other line items worth keeping
- Who spent — taken from the matched card's holder, so a receipt paid on another member's card is attributed to that member rather than to whoever scanned it
Line items, only when the household has consented
For a household that has turned on ForeSense sharing, the same scan also reads the receipt's individual product lines. They never become part of your expense: they are stripped of identifying content and stored separately as de-identified price facts. The draft you review is unchanged.
Give each card a holder
Payer detection reads the holder set on the card in My Cards. Cards left as shared (no holder) still identify the payment method, but cannot name who paid. Only household admins can file an expense against another member — everyone else sees the detected payer as a note and saves under their own name.
Practical limits
- Page and file-size limits apply; split extremely long receipts if the UI warns you.
- Handwriting and damaged receipts are less reliable than clear printed slips.
- ReceiptVis proposes a draft; it does not mark a bill paid in Payables by itself.
- Split payments may require a receipt — still review OCR before submit.
- Analysis needs a working connection; offline capture alone does not complete structuring.
Privacy and retention mindset
- Only upload receipts the household is allowed to store.
- Avoid scanning slips that contain unnecessary identity data beyond what you need for the expense.
- Applied images become expense or payment attachments under normal product rules.
- ReceiptVis is separate from DocuVault encryption — do not use it as a vault for identity documents.
- If the household has turned on ForeSense sharing, pharmacy receipts and medical lines are rejected whole rather than shared; the standing scanner notice that says sharing is on ships with the ForeSense shopper screens in a later release.
Privacy, advice limits, and what we do not publish
AccountHouse is a household tracking and organisation tool. It is not a bank, payment processor, tax advisor, or investment advisor. Forecasts, health scores, balances, and alerts are informational.
- Household data is scoped to your household; other families cannot see your ledger.
- Public documentation explains product behaviour and calculation concepts, not proprietary internals.
- Exact scoring weights, anomaly thresholds, cryptography parameters beyond high-level algorithms, and operational detection rules are reserved.
- OCR and structuring can be wrong; the confirmed ledger row is authoritative.
- ReceiptVis is a productivity aid, not a tax-ready digitization service or accountant substitute.
Intellectual property boundary
This document describes what AccountHouse calculates and which inputs matter. It does not disclose source algorithms, secret constants, or implementation details sufficient to reconstruct proprietary systems.