
Receipt AI
Receipt AI turns a texted photo into a booked expense: send receipts by SMS, WhatsApp, email or drag-and-drop, and its AI extracts totals, taxes and line items before syncing them straight into QuickBooks Online or Xero.
What is Receipt AI?
Receipt AI is a receipt and expense capture service built around a deliberately low-tech idea: photograph a receipt, text it, and let the software do the rest. Published by Big Green Company, a Delaware C-Corporation whose team is based in Chicago, it is the firm's fourth product and has been live publicly since early 2023.
Receipts reach the platform through four channels — SMS, WhatsApp, email forwarding and drag-and-drop on the website — so nothing has to be installed on a phone. From the image, the AI reads the date, the vendor, the tax, the total and each individual line item, and can also pull card and bank details printed on the slip. It then renames the file, sorts it into a folder, categorises the expense and applies the matching tax code, either for the whole receipt or line by line when that option is switched on.
Where the product goes further than a plain scanner is the last mile. With One-Click Reconciliation, the document lands in QuickBooks Online or Xero already paired with a bank transaction: the user only clicks Match in QuickBooks or OK in Xero. Duplicates are detected and held back rather than posted twice. Teams without accounting software review, categorise and export to CSV instead, including files carrying more than a hundred line items.
Coverage extends past receipts to invoices, bank statements, cheques, purchase orders, building permits, booking confirmations, shipping documents and construction paperwork — nine-plus document families in all. Accepted formats are JPEG, PNG, PDF, TIFF, WEBP, HEIC and HEIF, and the vendor claims extraction in 39 languages, of which 36 are listed by name.
The company advertises 97% less time spent on receipt processing, more than 36,000 receipts uploaded, 61,662 minutes saved and $40.9M in tracked expenses across 300-plus accounting teams and business travellers. Those figures are self-reported. One functional limit is worth knowing upfront: SMS upload only accepts phone numbers from the United States, Canada and Australia — everywhere else runs on WhatsApp, email or the website.
What it does
- Send a receipt by SMS, WhatsApp, email or drag-and-drop and have it captured instantly
- Extract date, vendor, tax, total and individual line items from a photo
- Categorise the expense and apply the matching tax code automatically
- Push the document into QuickBooks Online or Xero, pre-matched to a bank transaction
- Flag duplicate receipts before they reach the accounting ledger
- Rename and file documents into folders, then export them as CSV
- Track true project spend through charts and expense insights
When to use Receipt AI / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Receipt AI is the right fit.
When to use Receipt AI
- Business travellers and field teams who collect paper receipts on the road and want them filed before they get home
- Bookkeepers and accountants who reconcile client expenses inside QuickBooks Online or Xero
- Small businesses and startups with no formal expense-report process
- Contractors and construction teams tracking job-site spend, purchase orders and permits against a project budget
- Freelancers and founders who keep their own books and need line-item detail with the right tax codes
When not to use Receipt AI
- Developers looking for an API: Receipt AI publishes no API documentation and no developer portal
- Finance teams standardised on Sage, NetSuite or any accounting suite other than QuickBooks Online and Xero
- Organisations that need a full spend-management platform with corporate cards, cash advances and documented approval workflows
- European controllers who require GDPR documentation, a DPA, a subprocessor list or a data-residency commitment before signing
- High-volume back offices: the published plans cap processing at 100, 500 or 2,500 pages per month
How to use Receipt AI
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Enter your email address on receipt-ai.com to see the plans and start the free demo
- Create an account — there is no app to download
- Add your phone number to the account to switch on SMS upload (United States, Canada, Australia)
- Connect QuickBooks Online or Xero, available on the Business plans
- Set up your chart of accounts and choose your review mode inside Receipt AI
- Send a receipt: text a photo, message it on WhatsApp, forward it from your account email, or drop it on the website
- Add a memo in the message body (SMS or WhatsApp) or in the subject line (email), and edit it later via Edit Receipt
- Pick the folder the receipt should be filed under
- Let the AI extract the data, categorise the expense, apply the tax code and push the document
- Reconcile: click Match in QuickBooks Online or OK in Xero, or review and export to CSV if you have no accounting software
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Capture takes seconds from a phone with no app to install — an SMS or a WhatsApp message is enough
- The workflow runs all the way to reconciliation in QuickBooks Online or Xero, not just OCR
- Line-item extraction and tax codes go further than most receipt scanners
- Duplicate detection prevents double entries in the ledger
- Wide document coverage: invoices, statements, cheques, purchase orders, permits and seven file formats
- Usable without accounting software thanks to review and CSV export
- Free trial of the first 10 receipts, one price for every customer, and cancellation any time from the dashboard
Cons
- Pricing is not published: you must hand over an email address to see the plans
- The only figures on the site (USD 29 Pro, USD 99 Business Basic) appear in a prorated-billing example, not an official rate card
- Compliance documentation is almost non-existent — no GDPR mention, no DPA, no subprocessor list, no retention period, no hosting location
- No public API and no developer documentation
- Only two accounting connectors, QuickBooks Online and Xero
- SMS upload is restricted to US, Canadian and Australian phone numbers, and the Pro plan has no accounting sync at all
- Monthly page quotas (100 / 500 / 2,500) cap high-volume use, and the interface and support are English-only
Pricing & Plans
There is no permanent free plan. Receipt AI offers a free trial covering the first 10 receipts at no cost, after which the service moves to one of three paid subscription tiers. The publisher deliberately withholds its rate card and requires an email address before showing the plans, stating that every customer pays the same price. The only figures published anywhere on the site appear in a prorated-billing example in the help centre: USD 29 per month for the entry-level Pro plan and USD 99 per month for Business Basic. The Business Advance price is not disclosed. Subscriptions can be changed or cancelled at any time from the dashboard.
- Free trial — the first 10 receipts processed at no cost
- with no installation required
- USD 29 per month
- USD 99 per month
- Business Advance — 10+ members
- 2
- 500 pages per month
- priority support
- extra members added at any time (each adding 100 pages)
- QuickBooks Online and Xero sync. Price not published
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Receipt AI handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no GDPR implementation to report. The words GDPR and General Data Protection Regulation appear nowhere on the site — not in the privacy policy, not in the terms, not in the help centre. No legal basis for processing is stated, no data subject rights (access, rectification, erasure, portability) are described, no Article 27 EU representative and no Data Protection Officer are designated, no Data Processing Agreement is published or offered, no subprocessor list exists, no retention period is given and no international transfer safeguards are mentioned. The publisher is a Delaware C-Corporation and the terms are governed by Delaware law. The only privacy contact is info@receipt-ai.com. The policy does set a minimum age of 18 and states that data is not knowingly collected from children. European buyers should treat this silence as a gap to raise with the vendor.
Who owns the data?
The published documents never state outright who owns an uploaded receipt. The terms assign ownership of the Service and its original content, features and functionality to Big Green Company, and make the user solely responsible for anything they upload, submit or transmit — a responsibility framing rather than an ownership grant. The privacy policy lists what is collected: name, phone number, email address, banking and payment information, receipts, accounting software details, plus usage data such as IP address, browser and operating system. Nothing in either document describes a right to retrieve, export or have that data deleted on request.
Reuse rights
Receipt AI states that it uses collected information to deliver and improve the service, answer enquiries and personalise the experience. Email addresses may also carry service announcements, updates and promotional material, with an unsubscribe link; phone numbers are restricted to essential messages about receipt handling, security alerts and access to the service. Personal information may be shared with unnamed third-party service providers, described as bound by confidentiality agreements and barred from any other use, and may be disclosed where the law, a court order or a public authority requires it. On the customer's side, nothing in the documents restricts what users do with their own extracted data, which they can export as CSV or push into QuickBooks Online and Xero without asking permission. Whether customer data feeds AI model training is never addressed, in either direction.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Receipt AI discloses nothing about where customer data is stored. The terms of service mention cloud technologies without naming a provider, and the security article describes receipts and account information as encrypted and securely stored without stating a region, a datacentre or a jurisdiction. No data-residency option is offered and no commitment to EU storage exists. What can be established is jurisdictional rather than technical: the publisher, Big Green Company, is incorporated in Delaware as a C-Corporation, and the terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, with exclusive jurisdiction given to Delaware courts. Any dispute over stored data would therefore be settled under US law. The website itself is served from behind Cloudflare on an anycast address, which says something about content delivery and nothing about where receipts are actually processed or retained; it should not be read as a hosting location. Buyers with a data-residency requirement will need to ask the vendor directly, because the published documents do not answer the question.
Where Receipt AI works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Receipt AI.
- Pricing stays invisible until you hand over an email address, and the only figures on the site come from a billing example rather than a published rate card
- The service processes banking and payment information, yet no retention period, deletion procedure or hosting location is disclosed
- No GDPR mention, no Data Processing Agreement and no EU representative — a blocking point for a European data controller
- Security is asserted (encryption, self-audits, an A+ SSL rating) but not certified by any independent audit such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001
- Subprocessors are referred to in the privacy policy but never named, so the chain of custody for your receipts cannot be verified
- The terms let the publisher suspend or terminate access at any time without notice, and say nothing about the fate of stored receipts
- Trusting automatic categorisation without reviewing it can quietly push wrong tax codes into the ledger, and the headline claims (97% time saved, 36,272 receipts, a 5-star G2 rating) are self-reported
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low. There is nothing to install and no developer work involved: you create an account with an email address, add your phone number to enable SMS upload and, on the Business plans, connect QuickBooks Online or Xero. The only real configuration is mapping your chart of accounts and picking a review mode inside Receipt AI. One published testimonial describes a QuickBooks setup completed and receipts flowing within a few minutes, and around ninety help articles cover the steps. No API integration is available, so there is nothing to build.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Receipt AI
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
How do I send a receipt to Receipt AI?
Do I need to install an app?
Which countries support SMS upload?
Which accounting software does it connect to?
Can I use it without accounting software?
What happens if I upload the same receipt twice?
Is there a free trial, and what does it cost afterwards?
Is Receipt AI GDPR compliant?
What file formats and document types are supported?
Is there a minimum age to use the service?
Should you pick Receipt AI?
Receipt AI does one job and does it with unusual focus: getting a paper receipt off a phone and into the books without anyone opening an app. The SMS and WhatsApp channels are the real differentiator — nothing to install, nothing to sync by hand, and a receipt photographed at a job site or a restaurant table is filed before the traveller reaches the hotel. Because the chain continues into QuickBooks Online and Xero with pre-matched transactions, line-item detail and tax codes, the tool serves the bookkeeper as directly as it serves the person holding the receipt.
The publisher is small — Big Green Company, a Delaware C-Corporation run from Chicago, with Receipt AI as its fourth product — but the product is visibly active, with a public changelog and around ninety help articles.
Two reservations deserve attention before adoption. The first is commercial: the rate card is deliberately withheld, and the only prices anywhere on the site (USD 29 and USD 99 per month) sit inside a billing example rather than a plan page, which makes comparison awkward. The second is regulatory: the site never mentions the GDPR, publishes no Data Processing Agreement, names no subprocessor, states no retention period and discloses no hosting location — while processing banking and payment information. For a US small business that gap may be acceptable; for a European data controller it is a conversation to have with the vendor first.
The free trial of ten receipts is the sensible way to settle the question. It costs nothing, requires no installation, and shows within minutes whether the extraction quality and the QuickBooks or Xero handoff hold up on your own paperwork.
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