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Scanning a receipt so it reads and files itself

Free to attach · Premium to read

Aim the camera at a receipt — or at a supplier invoice, a credit note, or an invoice you issued — and the app reads it while you aim: supplier, tax number, document number, date and amount, before the photo is even taken. The reading happens on the phone, and the app learns each supplier. This guide covers how, what is free, and where the files end up.

How it works

1. Tap − at the bottom of the dashboard for an expense (or open a document), and tap Scan.
2. Move the camera over the receipt and get close to each part until its line turns green: supplier, tax number, date, document number and total. When it has enough, the camera closes on its own (Use what was read leaves earlier).
3. The form is filled in: supplier, document number, date and amount. The tax number has no field of its own — it is how the app finds the supplier, and how it fills one in when it creates it.
4. Tap the pulsing Attach to photograph the paper — up to three pages for one document. Check, correct if needed, save. Without that photo, nothing is attached.

A file already on the phone — a PDF invoice received by email — goes in with Attach instead. Each movement takes up to two files.

Not only till receipts

The same reader works on the documents that make up a current account: supplier invoices, credit notes, debit notes and advances. Open a document instead of an expense and tap Scan — the fields come through the same way. The due date is not read off the paper: it is the document date plus the supplier's Payment Term, so set that term on the supplier once.

It works in the other direction too. ZeniCash does not issue invoices — that belongs to whatever certified software your country requires — but the invoices you issue still have to be tracked. Scan them and the app watches for the payment: the document sits in To Receive until it is settled, and says Overdue once the due date passes.

What the reading turns into

One setting decides that: Settings › Formats › Entity field, with three states. Disabled — a scan is just a movement, with no customer or supplier. Optional — you can name one when it matters. Required — every movement carries one, and if the reader finds a supplier you have never recorded, the app stops and asks you to create it before saving. That is deliberate: it is what turns a scan into a current account that adds up.

Two tax numbers

A supplier invoice carries two tax numbers: theirs, and yours. Without telling the app which one is yours, the reader can pick up your own number and file you as the supplier.

Settings › Premium › My business takes your business name and tax number once. From then on two things follow: your number is never mistaken for theirs, and the document is filed as professional on its own.

In Portugal, the reader also checks each Portuguese tax number (NIF) against its own check digit, so a number the camera misread is not taken. The country is your business's, from the tax number in My business, or else the phone's region.

The same goes for the customer block of any document: what is marked as the customer («Customer», «Bill to» and the like) is left out of the supplier’s fields, and so are your business’s name and the block with your tax number. With the supplier’s header out of the frame, the fields stay empty, to be filled in, rather than filled with the wrong party. A document with no such label can still mislead the reader, so check what was read before saving.

Read on the phone

The receipt does not leave the device to be read. For an app that handles customer and supplier invoices, that is not a detail.

An optional AI reading helps where the phone falls short. It is Premium (the free trial included), it is switched on in Settings › Premium › AI receipt scan, and it asks for consent first. Even with it on, the phone always reads first, and the image goes to the AI only when that reading is not enough:

• A photo, added with Attach: when the total, the date or the supplier is missing, when the total is in doubt (not on a total line, or smaller than another figure on the receipt), or when the supplier is not on your list yet.
• A PDF: read on the phone page by page; if something is missing, only the page with the most text goes to the AI, as an image.
• The camera: the live reading stays on the phone. When you photograph the paper with the pulsing Attach, the photo goes to the AI only if the camera left something out, and the AI fills only what is still empty.

Only that image is sent, and it is not stored. Without a connection, or if the AI does not answer, the phone's reading is used.

Invoices with more than one page

One document can have up to three pages, kept together as one PDF. How they are read depends on where they come from:

• A PDF already on the phone, added with Attach: read page by page, up to the third, because on a multi-page invoice the total is as likely to be on the last page as on the first.
• Paper, with the camera: the reading is the live pass before the photo. The header usually repeats on every page, so aim at the page that has the total. The pages photographed afterwards are kept; with the AI reading on, they also go to the AI if the camera left a field empty.

The second attachment is capped at two pages, and it is never read — see below for what it is for.

The second attachment, and what it is for

Each movement takes two files, and they do different jobs. The first is the document the app reads: the receipt, the invoice. The second is for whatever else belongs with that purchase — the warranty, the guarantee card, the delivery note, the manual. It is never read because it is not meant to be: it is there so that in two years, when the thing breaks, the warranty is on the movement that bought it.

Up to two pages, photo or PDF. A longer file, or one the app cannot open to count, is refused rather than filed.

The paper still matters

Having a document in ZeniCash does not replace keeping the original. In most countries the paper still has to be kept for a period the law sets, and your accountant may still need the physical copy in hand.

The app files and finds; it does not absolve. Knowing what your country requires — how documents must be kept, and for how long — is your responsibility, not the app's.

It learns each supplier

From the second document of the same supplier on, two things come back by themselves. The category, subcategory and project you chose for that supplier. And any field you corrected: the app remembers the text printed just before it on that supplier's documents, and looks there next time. Learned per supplier, on the phone.

Where the files go

• On the phone, attached to the movement (and to the document created from it — the movement's first attachment, the invoice, travels with the document; a receipt placed as the second attachment stays with the payment).
• With cloud sync on (Premium): from version 1.5.0, also in the cloud — a data centre in Europe — and downloaded on any of your devices that opens them.
• In the accountant package (Premium): one PDF per movement, with or without a strip of the movement's details on top, and the invoice documents in their own folder.

Tips for a clean reading

• Get close to each part of the receipt and keep the phone still for a moment — each line turns green when it is read, and the camera closes on its own.
• Thermal receipts fade: scan them the day you get them.
• A crumpled receipt reads better flat; the app straightens and crops, but cannot invent what a fold hides.

Checked against ZeniCash 1.5.0 on 2026-09-10. Where a feature is Premium, it says so.