Receipts

Receipt scanning: how a paper receipt becomes a spending record

July 2026

Receipt scanning turns the paper in your hand into structured data: the merchant, the date, the total, and every line item, sorted into spending categories. You point your camera at the receipt, the app reads it in seconds, and you confirm what it read. This guide explains each step and what to expect from it.

What gets read from a receipt

A receipt carries more information than any bank statement line. When Reign reads one, it extracts:

The merchant, so purchases group by store over time.
The date and total, so the ledger stays accurate.
The line items, each one sorted into a category: food, household, transport, and so on.
The currency. Any receipt, any currency, no templates to set up.

That last point matters more than it sounds. The difference between “84 euros at a supermarket” and the fourteen items on the receipt is the difference between knowing where you paid and knowing where the money went.

You review before anything counts

Reading is automatic; trusting is not. Every snapped receipt lands in an inbox showing exactly what was read. You glance over it, fix a category if you disagree, and save. Nothing enters your ledger without that confirmation.

This review step is deliberate. A spending record you cannot vouch for is a spending record you will eventually ignore. Thirty seconds of glancing keeps the whole ledger yours.

From one receipt to the whole picture

Confirmed receipts flow into insights: your spending by category, month over month. Every number taps through to the receipts behind it, so a category that looks high is never a mystery. You can set a spending target for any category, and your receipts fill it in as the month goes on. When you miss a target, you see exactly which purchases did it.

What about crumpled, faded, or odd receipts

Real receipts are not lab specimens. Most read cleanly; some come out imperfect. That is another reason the review step exists: whatever the reading got wrong, you correct in one tap before it counts. You are the final word on every entry, not the camera.

What it costs

In Reign, your first 30 scans are free, as a lifetime starter quota rather than a monthly allowance. When you have used them, Plus raises the ceiling to 400 scans a month for EUR 13.99 a month or EUR 99.99 a year. Everything you record stays yours either way, and manual entry stays free forever.

Try it on the receipt in your pocket

The fastest way to judge receipt scanning is to feed it a real receipt. Snap your first one and check what it reads against the paper.