Sorting scanned receipts and then naming them

[Joe7248301234567 0]

I am a newbie.  If (today) I scan in a lot of varied receipts from 2 or 3 years, is there any way to search on the actual transaction dates printed on the receipts?  Said another way, could I scan in a few hundred receipts from many months and then search for July 2017 so that I could name those receipt notes with a 201707 name?

[DTLow 5,744]

5 hours ago, Joe7248301234567 said:

I am a newbie.  If (today) I scan in a lot of varied receipts from 2 or 3 years, is there any way to search on the actual transaction dates printed on the receipts?  Said another way, could I scan in a few hundred receipts from many months and then search for July 2017 so that I could name those receipt notes with a 201707 name?

Evernote OCRs the scanned receipts.  If the date is legible and consistent, you should be able to search for July 2017

My experience is that receipts rarely have a consistent method of showing the date.

[CalS 5,307]

5 hours ago, Joe7248301234567 said:

I am a newbie.  If (today) I scan in a lot of varied receipts from 2 or 3 years, is there any way to search on the actual transaction dates printed on the receipts?  Said another way, could I scan in a few hundred receipts from many months and then search for July 2017 so that I could name those receipt notes with a 201707 name?

To @DTLow's point you can find them but you may have to use multiple searches with Jul July 7 07 and 18 2018, and sometimes 7 is July and sometimes it is day..  I do most of my receipt searching by company and/or product, eg home hammer for home depot hammer.  Also, I don't change the title of receipts, I leave what ScanSnap creates since searching is on the PDF not the title.  2017_09_23_19_31_32.pdf for example.  FWIW.

[DTLow 5,744]

2 hours ago, CalS said:

Also, I don't change the title of receipts, I leave what ScanSnap creates since searching is on the PDF not the title.  2017_09_23_19_31_32.pdf for example. 

The Scanable app (IOS) sets a title of "Receipt" and date.  The date is also stored in the note's created/updated date.

My standard is to include the date in the title along with all important info and $ amount.
I assign tags !Type-Receipt, Vendor, Budget-Category
It's a manual edit assisted with scripts on my Mac.

[Joe7248301234567 0]

Thanks you both.  I am trying to make sense of several boxes of random business receipts.  I am wondering if a ScanSnap scanner and ocr would help or if I should just go through each box and hand sort.

[DTLow 5,744]

49 minutes ago, Joe7248301234567 said:

Thanks you both.  I am trying to make sense of several boxes of random business receipts.  I am wondering if a ScanSnap scanner and ocr would help or if I should just go through each box and hand sort.

Hand sorting isn't necessary but could help in post processing.

Scan the receipts and address your requirements in post-processing.
Do some planning to identify your requirements; title, tags etc.

btw  What device/platform are you using?  
- The Windows/Mac platforms allow for mass changes and changes to created date.
- The Mac platform allows for scripting.

[CalS 5,307]

2 hours ago, Joe7248301234567 said:

Thanks you both.  I am trying to make sense of several boxes of random business receipts.  I am wondering if a ScanSnap scanner and ocr would help or if I should just go through each box and hand sort.

If your prime interest is one off searches, I would get a scansnap, create a profile to output a file per sheet, scan 10 or so at a time into EN, and tag with Receipt. Let ScanSnap do the OCRing.  You can search at that point.  If you want more organization it may be as easy to scan them in and use searches to identify the groupings and mass tag at that point as opposed to hand sorting. I never saw the value in changing titles and extensive tagging.  

I have 6860 receipt notes and have no issues finding things using text search. This includes mailed in receipts from Amazon and the like.  Example, this past week my wife was at Home Depot and wanted to get some air filters but didn’t know the size so she called me.  Being too lazy to go to the furnace and look, a home filter search returned 6 notes, one of which was the last purchase.  Problem solved in 15 seconds.  But use cases are different, try a few whichever way and see how it goes.  Typically easy to change course after a test period. 

[Joe7248301234567 0]

I am using windows desktop and have not bought a scanner.  I have a brother scanner/printer, but that would be slow. 

I am in the middle of an IRS audit and am seeing that I am missing business deductions because of lack of documentation.  My primary goal for EN is tax related, but I can see that an easy lookup for a purchase (air filter)... EN could make life easier.

Should I be looking at other scanners?  Some claim integration with EN.  Will they work as well as scansnap?

[gazumped 12,049]

1 hour ago, Joe7248301234567 said:

Should I be looking at other scanners?  Some claim integration with EN.  Will they work as well as scansnap?

Hi.  I have a ScanSnap and it's the best device I ever bought.  That said,  you mainly need a sheet-fed scanner to zip through all the paper - a flatbed scanner will see you old,  aching and very crabby by the time you have a lot of paper scanned.  Lots of manual operations!

Sheet feeds can zip through at 30+ per minute and all you have to do is stack the hopper.  And tag/ title the scans.

I tend to cheat on batch jobs like adding dates.  I'd set up a note containing all the options of titles I intend to apply and just copy/ paste across.  For tags I'd create a 'special' range - R-2018/01, R-2018/02 etc,  so I can just type 'R' in the tags field to see the range,  and choose from the drop-down.  For receipts it's enough to group them into months rather than having the exact date,  though you can add this as necessary later if required.

[CalS 5,307]

2 hours ago, Joe7248301234567 said:

I am using windows desktop and have not bought a scanner.  I have a brother scanner/printer, but that would be slow. 

I am in the middle of an IRS audit and am seeing that I am missing business deductions because of lack of documentation.  My primary goal for EN is tax related, but I can see that an easy lookup for a purchase (air filter)... EN could make life easier.

Should I be looking at other scanners?  Some claim integration with EN.  Will they work as well as scansnap?

You can look at other scanners, it is a personal choice, but I dont think you will go wrong with a ScanSnap  

I have been using a ScanSnap as long as I’ve been using EN, part of my get paperless effort. Currently using a S1300i. I use it in conjunction with the EN import folder function, scans appear in my Scans notebook.  I bulk tag them with Receipt and _yyyy and bulk move them to a synced notebook.  Not sure I’ve used the _yyyy tag enough but it has become a habit.  ?

[CalS 5,307]

On 3/19/2023 at 10:35 PM, dcatx said:

ScanSnap does sound useful but I don't want to have to do dozens of search-and-tag operations just to get the data into Evernote. It sounds very error prone. Are we talking 200+ search-and-tag contortions per year to cover the days when I have receipts? Wow... you are patient guy, CalS.

@dcatx I don't use EN anymore but still scan receipts.  I don't modify the file names for any of the scans other than mass appending [FY2023 Rcpt] to the batch.  The ScanSnap format I use is 2023_03_19_09_58_58_001.  The receipts are OCR'd so that is how I find what I need.  The file name is just for order in the folder.  I used the same thinking for EN.  YMMV

 

[PinkElephant 8,750]

Hi Cal, I think the latest post on this old thread should be disregarded. It contains a link to a commercial service, offering OCR on a web based platform.

It has the neat price tag of 8ct per uploaded document, with a minimum (!) charge of 500$ per month. This is rather a scam than anything to be taken serious.

[gazumped 12,049]

9 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

It contains a link to a commercial service

So it does.  I nuked that entry on general principles.