Enhance efficiency with the best receipt OCR apps

What is Receipt OCR?

For many consumers, receipts are an afterthought. Subsequent to paying for a purchase at a physical retail store, the receipt will either get crumbled into a wallet or purse for an undetermined period of time, or simply disposed of as trash.

Some consumers, however, inspect their receipt immediately to ensure that proper discounts or promotions (e.g., buy one, get one free) were applied, or to see if they qualified for any additional savings at checkout. These savvy shoppers understand the value of a receipt and how much information — and potential rewards — can be gleaned from it.  

Finding the Right Receipt OCR App For Your Organization

Receipts provide customers with proof-of-purchase, but they provide brands, retailers and market research firms with much more. 

However, not all OCR solutions are created equal.

Receipts, whether physical or digital, are complex, diverse documents that vary in format and image quality. There is no global receipt standard across retailers or geographies that states what information must be included on a receipt, in what order, and in what format (i.e., product codes or abbreviations). 

When you think about the number of retailers around the globe, as well as the sheer number of products that stores contain, the ability to automatically and accurately know which exact items were purchased — and where — begins to feel overwhelming. Roughly half of the receipts in the US have product numbers on them, which are generally derivations of a UPC or “Universal Product Code.” (For more on product codes, check out this blog.)