How to convert a receipt to Excel: 4 methods compared

There are four common ways to get the information on a receipt into Excel. The table below sums up when each one fits; the sections after it walk through each method.

1. Typing it in

Create a sheet with date, vendor, document number, tax rate, tax amount and total columns, and type each receipt as a row. That is fine for a handful of receipts, but small digits on thermal paper are easy to misread and each receipt takes minutes. Enter amounts as numbers, not text, or your totals will not add up.

2. Excel's "From Picture"

In Excel for Microsoft 365, Data > From Picture turns a photo of a table into cells, and the Microsoft 365 mobile app has a similar feature. It is designed for tables: it does not split a receipt into accounting columns such as vendor, date, tax and total, so you tidy the rows yourself. It is handy for one-off, table-like documents.

3. General OCR tools

General OCR tools give you the text of the receipt to copy. Pasting that text into Excel, splitting it into columns and finding the tax and the total is up to you. Good for extracting text, extra work for building a table.

4. A receipt converter: step by step with ExpenSheet

1. Open ExpenSheet, pick the document type and upload a photo or PDF of the receipt; you can select several files at once.
2. The date, vendor and tax ID, document number, VAT rate and amount, subtotal and total each get their own column; several receipts in one photo become separate rows.
3. Review the flagged fields. A row whose subtotal, tax and total do not add up is flagged, and the check runs again after you fix a cell.
4. Download Excel (XLSX), CSV or JSON. In XLSX the amounts are real numbers; you can hide, reorder and rename the columns first.

It is free for 10 pages a day, needs no account, and files are not stored. For invoices, see invoice to Excel.

Which method should you choose?

With five or ten receipts a month, typing may be enough. If you process receipts and invoices regularly, or want the tax in its own column, a receipt-specific converter saves time. Whichever you choose, compare the amounts and the date with the original.

After the import: a checklist

• Is the date column a real date, not text?
• Is the decimal separator right for your Excel's region?
• Do the subtotal and the tax add up to the total?
• Has the same receipt been added twice? ExpenSheet flags repeated rows.
• Have you kept the original receipt image in your own archive?

For worked examples, see examples for importing receipts into Excel and how to fix common OCR errors.