Scan a receipt, get the VAT: how VatMainder reads receipts and bills

Typing in receipts is where most bookkeeping gives up. With Pro, VatMainder reads them for you: take a photo, upload a file or share a PDF from your email, check what it found, and save.

What it reads

From a receipt or an invoice, VatMainder picks out:

• the total and the VAT, with the rate;
• a VAT breakdown by rate, so a grocery receipt with food at 13.5% and cleaning products at 25.5% keeps both;
• the date, the seller and the seller’s business or VAT ID;
• the invoice number, which also catches duplicates;
• line items, when they add up to the total;
• payment details on a bill: IBAN, reference number and due date. On Finnish bills these are read exactly from the bank barcode, and you get a reminder 2 days before the bill is due.

It reads receipts in Finnish, Swedish, Estonian, German and English, and guesses what kind of cost it is (fuel, phone, equipment, insurance) to set the category.

Bills with several things on them

A phone bill can charge for several subscriptions on one page. VatMainder splits a bill like that into its parts and asks “What to save?”, so you keep only the business ones. For a cost you share between work and home, you set the business share and only that part of the VAT is deducted.

Platform payouts

A statement from Wolt, Foodora, Uber or Bolt, or a self-billing invoice, is read as income, not a cost, and filed under the right kind of work.

Photos, PDFs and the share sheet

• Camera: scan a paper receipt where you are.
• Upload: pick PDFs, JPGs, PNGs or HEIC photos from your phone, several at once.
• Share: in Mail, Files, Photos or WhatsApp, share a receipt to VatMainder and it lands in the upload queue.

A PDF made by a program (most e-mailed invoices) is read from the text inside it on iPhone, which is exact. Scanned PDFs are read page by page, up to 20 pages.

The original file is kept with the entry, so you can open it later, and it goes into your backups.

It never leaves your phone

The text is read on your phone, with Apple Vision on iPhone and Google ML Kit on Android. Both work offline. VatMainder has no server, so there’s nowhere for a receipt to go. The Android app doesn’t even have permission to use the internet.

Check, then save

Each scan opens a review screen with what VatMainder found. It flags what needs a look, such as a document in another currency or a seller abroad charging 0% VAT, and warns you if the same receipt is already saved. You fix anything it got wrong and save.

Without Pro, everything can still be entered by hand, and the VAT figures, reminders and filing guide work the same. Scanning is part of VatMainder Pro, with the first month free.