Deep Dive: Receipt upload best practices on mobile (SmartScan)

Victoria O'leary

Let's talk mobile receipt uploads - AKA, SmartScan!

What is it?

Just quickly, for anyone who is not familiar with SmartScan, this is the quickest and easiest way to get your receipt from your hand into your expense report. From your mobile app just click the green plus button snap a photo of the receipt and that is it!
You can find out everything you need to know about it right here.

Best practice

Ok, now we all know what it is, how do you get the most out of it? There are a few simple things you can do to make sure you get the best results!

• Do it now! Scan your receipt as soon as you get it so it’s ready when you want to submit your report. Then you can just throw it away!
• It's all in the data. Your receipt must have a date, total amount, and merchant; if we can't find one of these on your receipt, your SmartScan won't complete.
• Clean your lens. It’s obvious, but it’s amazing how easy it is to forget.
• Enable auto-focus. This typically happens automatically, but just in case.
• Enable your flash. The best way to get good lighting is to just turn on the flash.
• Use a dark background. A white receipt on a dark background is the easiest to process.
• Include background on all sides. To help us find the edges of the receipt, capture a bit of border all around.
• No fingers on the receipt. If possible, lay the receipt out flat and don’t cover with your fingers.
• No sensitive information. Don’t take a picture of anything you wouldn’t be willing to throw into the trash! Expensify will never do anything malicious with that information, but we can't guarantee the safety of your device or all of the networks over which that information has to transfer to get to us.

And that's pretty much it. Stick to those tips and you will be receipt free in no time!
If you need help, why not see if someone in the Community can help! Otherwise, shoot us a message on concierge@expensify.com.