# Scan Receipts Into a Private Expense Ledger

> Point your camera at a receipt or drop a photo. On-device OCR reads the merchant, date, tax, and total, you confirm the fields, and the receipt lands in a running ledger grouped by month. Everything is stored in your browser — export CSV for your spreadsheet, JSON or a full ZIP backup with the original images, or send a backup straight to your cloud drive from the share sheet. No account, no scan limit.


Live tool: https://lofttools.com/tools/finance-tools/receipt-expense-tracker

Category: Finance Tools

## How it works

1. **Capture a receipt** — Start the camera and snap the receipt, or drop a photo or screenshot of one. Flat, well-lit shots read best.
2. **Confirm the fields** — OCR fills in merchant, date, tax, total, and line items. Fix anything it misread, pick a category, then save to the ledger.
3. **Track and export** — The ledger groups spending by month with category totals. Export CSV for spreadsheets, or a full JSON or ZIP backup including images.

## FAQ

### Is there a scan limit or account?

No. Scans are unlimited and there is nothing to sign up for. OCR runs in your browser, so there is no per-scan cost to pass on.

### Where is my ledger stored?

In your browser's local database on this device. Browsers can clear local data under storage pressure, so use the export options — CSV, JSON, or ZIP backup — to keep a copy you control. Backups can be re-imported on any device.

### How accurate is the extraction?

Merchant, date, and total are reliable on typical printed receipts. Line items are best-effort — crumpled paper, faint thermal print, or handwriting will need a quick manual fix in the confirm step, which is why every field stays editable.

### Which languages does the OCR read?

English works out of the box, with more than a dozen other languages available from the language picker. The matching model downloads once on first use and is cached for offline scanning after that.

## Tips

- **Shoot straight down** — Hold the phone flat over the receipt in good light. A square, shadow-free shot is the single biggest accuracy win.
- **Every field is editable** — OCR gets merchant, date, and total right most of the time — when it misses, fix the field in the confirm step before saving.
- **Make backups a habit** — The ledger lives in this browser. A one-tap ZIP backup keeps the data plus original images, and re-imports anywhere.

## Privacy — what we do not do

This tool runs entirely in the browser via WebAssembly. Your file never reaches a Loft Tools server. Specifically:

- **No upload.** The file bytes load into the browser tab's memory and process on your own CPU. Open DevTools → Network and observe zero outbound requests carrying file data while Scan Receipts Into a Private Expense Ledger runs.
- **No AI training on your file.** Loft does not train models. We could not train on a file we cannot see.
- **No content scanning.** No virus, copyright, or content-moderation pass against your file. The bytes are not accessible to us.
- **No server-side log of file contents, filenames, or EXIF metadata.** Cloudflare edge captures URL and truncated IP for abuse defense (standard CDN behaviour). Cloudflare Web Analytics records anonymous page hits, no cookies, no PII. Nothing about your file content reaches any log.
- **No retention.** Close the tab and the file leaves browser memory. No backups exist on our side because no copy ever existed on our side.
- **No account.** No email, no signup, no auth, no telemetry tied to you.
- **Offline-capable after first visit** (PWA). Once you've loaded a tool, it caches; later sessions work without internet. For high-sensitivity files, run the tool once online to warm the cache, then disconnect before processing.

Compare with upload-based services: each transmits your file to a processing server. Even over HTTPS, each has logs, retention windows, and subpoena exposure. Loft has none of these because the server architecture does not include your file.

## More

- All tools: https://lofttools.com/tools
- Category: https://lofttools.com/tools/finance-tools
- LLM index: https://lofttools.com/llms.txt