Receipts automation

Problem:

• Dealing with receipts is tedious:
  • The information gets printed out or sent by email in a non-standard format, and has to be typed in again by the recipient in order for it to get used.
  • Current scanning abilities (OCR / Mechanical Turk) are error prone.
• Information on receipts can be useful for:
  • Taxes
  • Budgeting
  • Personal data mining
• There's no standard for a digital way to transfer the information from the issuer to the recipient.
• There seems to be little incentive by some sides to help automate the process.

There seems to be an easy way to solve this:

• Link from the receipt (using a URL / QR-Code) - to a standard format that contains the receipt's information - digitally on the web.
• Use this standard format by the recipient in his different systems. This way, manual error-prone data entry can be prevented. With a click on the link - the correct data will be fed to the recipient's system.
• Note: automating the process could lead to privacy concerns, that today's manual processes is obfuscating

Example 1

• I get a receipt from Office Depot with a QR-Code on it.
• The QR-Code contains a link to the web. On the target page on the web - a JSON format of the receipt appears digitally.
• I scan the QR-Code with my FreshBooks iOS app. The JSON is fed into my accounting system.

Example 2

• I get a receipt by email from Orange.
• In the email I have a link to a JSON version of the receipt.
• When I press the link - a Chrome extension recognizes the page, and feeds the information into my FreshBooks accounting system.