In this comprehensive guide, we are going to take a look into SparkReceipt. I’m going to explore what it is and how to use it and whether it is good at what it’s supposed to do. Let’s dive into the details.
What is SparkReceipt?
SparkReceipt is a mobile application for Android, iOS, and also a web application which uses AI to automate your receipt scanning. This means you can add expenses income, manage expenses income without needing to do the entries manually.
Instead, you just take a photo of your bill or receipts from your camera or you upload to your web application and it will automatically scan all the details in the receipts and bill.
The system automatically brings all the values from that image to the system itself, from merchant name, total value items or tags. All these data will be gathered into it using OCR and AI technology. Not only are you able to add entries manually, you also are able to add entries via OCR, which is AI scans.
You can automatically forward all the bills or receipts to a specific email address, and it will automatically scan those data. You can upload bulk data in bank statements and everything, and from that it will automatically categorise and bring all the values into the system.
Core Functionality:
SparkReceipt does two things primarily. One, it helps you to scan your receipts with AI to get all the data automatically. Two, it helps you to manage your income and expenses for your personal life or even for your small business also.
How the Data is Stored and Used
I quickly wanted to show you one important information. If you scroll down on their website, there is something called Security. I highly encourage you guys to read through it because when you go into this page, it clearly shows you where your data are stored, how your data are used, how it is communicated, everything.
Because when you’re handling with your financial information, it is always recommended to check out all these things and I appreciate they are transparent with this, how they are using all this. So once you read through it, if you are satisfied with this, go ahead and start using this platform for you.
Platform Availability:
It is available in all the different countries. All the currencies are supported. All the languages of bill also supported. App is also available in five languages.
Review & Demo
You can use this on mobile app, as I mentioned, Android and iOS, and a web app as well. All of this are auto-synchronized. So when you add something on your mobile phone, it will show in your other platforms also.
That’s why I’m using web for this demonstration because it’s easy for me to record and show you how to use it. You can download the Android app. I primarily use through Android app if I start using this app because we can’t expect to come into a web app and start using the system when we have a receipt on our end. I want to take a photo and categorise it, simple as that.
Now let me show you all the different features available for you. All these features and functionalities are available on the mobile app itself. Just the interface is a bit different, but apart from that everything is same.
Dashboard Overview
As soon as you come into this, there are a lot of elements in the dashboard and you don’t know where to focus on it. The first thing you should focus on is the add new expense and add new income buttons. So depending on which you want to add, you can do that.
Add New Expense
For example, when I click on add new expenses, it will open up a new window for me, which gives me all the option to add the manual data, which I’m not interested in because that is the boring way of doing it. If you wish, you can do it. If you prefer everything manual, you can go ahead. But what we are going to do is we are going to bring some receipts into play.
Testing Accuracy
You can see I have three different sample receipts here. Let me show you the quality of all the three different receipts:
Receipt 1: This is very clear receipt. If you scan something or receive something via email or something, very clear. It should handle this no problem at all.
Receipt 2: It’s still good. Everything is legible, but you can still clearly see it’s a paper, folded edges, folded areas, and everything.
Receipt 3: Obviously, it is a bad image, but this is a receipt which we’ll be using every day. So I want to test it out. When I take a picture, I’m not going to base it on what are the things available and everything. So I’m going to take this image as it is and try to scan and see how the result is going to be.
Upload and Scanning Process
I’m coming into this screen. All you need to do is if you are on a mobile phone, you just take a photo of the receipt. If you’re on web app, click here and upload this receipt. Currently it is uploading. As soon as it’s finished uploading, it is going to scan the document for the details. I’m going to keep it in real-time so you can see how fast it is able to recognise things.
Duplicate Entries
You can see two things I want to show here because I already tested all these things when I was doing testing. It is showing me a possible duplicate. This is also good. For example, when you add some bills again and again, this system identifies whether this is a duplicate, whether you want to add this document or you go with the original one or you want to keep both the documents here. It is a good feature. I really like it. I keep both documents.
First Receipt Results
You can see it uploaded this and it’s showing me a review status. I can keep a review status here. Showing me a merchant name, it took the name here correctly, date correctly done. Expenses, I marked it as an expense. Meals and entertainment, it read through the items and categorised this as meals and entertainment. We also can edit the categories or add more categories.
Payment method, it is not shown here how I paid, so it’s blank. I can select a payment method which I have already created and I can add more payment methods as well. A reference which took a series of numbers and marked it into a reference. This is also a bit inaccurate sometimes. For example, it took this as a reference. I’m not sure how it differentiates from these two as not reference number.
Tax calculation, if it found any tax values also, it shows the total amount, it shows the tax amount and shows me the percentage and everything. This is where it done all these things, tags included, and currency detected as USD, you can see, and details.
I can also tag it, for example, friends. Whenever I do something with friends, I mark it as a friends tag. That way, when I create reports or search through all the records, I can just put friends tag and I can see all the bills with friends. So you can use the tag to quickly identify some bills as well.
Second Receipt Results
Let me go with the new one, the second one. All these are tested. I’m testing it again for you guys. Scanning document, so it’s uploaded. Let me see how long it takes. It’s done. You can see it is going on review pending because we can approve it later on.
Merchant, correctly done. Date, correctly done. Expenses, I created. Food and grocery, you can see now it is not related to restaurant or meals. It is like grocery item. It identified from this text and set it to food and groceries, which is good. Payment method, since it’s not defined here, I can include it if I want tax calculation.
Here you can see, obviously it is not 100% accurate. I would prefer this should be recognised in my view because you can see it is clearly shown here, but it’s not detecting here. Tax amount is showing me here, it’s not detected here. So on the second invoice, it was able to detect around 60 to 70%, 50% to 60%.
Third Receipt Results
Let me go with the next one for you as well. Add new expenses. What I’m showing you, for every single receipt or invoice, it is going to be different. For some, even bad quality, it can detect, some even good quality maybe not. As the AI progresses, they are using OpenAI, I wish to see the accuracy in detecting much more faster, much more accurate, and get all the values for me, especially the totals for me.
Date is also a bit inaccurate. I’m not seeing where it took the date from here. This is clearly done, received on the 12th, but it is not showing correctly. So you can see date is inaccurate here as well, and the total also here is inaccurate. We can get an idea that basically as the photo quality goes bad, the accuracy goes bad also.
What I recommend is either you get the receipt much more clearly or maybe in future as it grows, the AI also gets better on this as well to get much better reading scores. So it gets most of the things correctly, but still some obvious things are also going to be different.
Again, as you upload your own images or your own receipts, you will see the data differs for you. And also as AI grows, maybe it keeps on changing. So there is no set result or percentage score here because it’s going to be changing for every single values as well.
That is how you add new expense or income through OCR. Income also follows the same procedure, you just upload it, and it goes into an income tab.
Search and Filters
You can also see the data, all this data from monthly view, and if you click on all months, you can see how many entries are added on different months. You can easily see those results. Recent will show all the recent stuff you have added into the system. Search, you can obviously search with all the different filters, names, methods, and you can search for that as well.
Reports & Exports
Reports, you can create a report for expenses or create various filters, and you can export this report either through CSV, Excel, or PDF document. Here also, if you come here, you can export all the data anytime you wish. For October 24, I want to export all the data, you can do it. Options include Zip, Excel, CSV, and PDF formats. Another option available is sharing a live link as well.
Mass Upload Entries
You have the mass uploader. If you have a bank statement, you wish to import all the bank statement files, you just upload it here and click on View Result. It will show you all the statements. You can either make it automatic, so it automatically knows which is an income, which is an expense, or you can specifically mention and say that I uploaded everything as expenses.
Additional Features
Document Browser: For all the documents you create and include within this, it is going to be showing you. I haven’t explored this feature, so I can’t comment on it. Maybe when I start using this app, if I decide to, then I will try to go through and see what I can do with it. I primarily now I’m using Zoho Expenses. It’s currently around 200 Indian Rupees per month. I’m going to compare with that to see whether it is good for me or not.
Deleted Documents: Trash bin for any deleted documents or entries, it will be showing here.
Account Settings: Simple account settings showing me all the account details and subscription information.
Integrations (QuickBooks & Webhook)
Integration is something which I want to show. For example, it has integration with QuickBooks, and also it has integration with Webhooks as well. So if you have a form, you have a third-party software application, you want to bring the data automatically into the app, you can create a Webhook and connect it. If you’re not sure how to use Webhook, do let me know in the comment, I will show you a relevant video for you to get a better understanding on how to use it.
Using Webhook, we can create good automation with this. So whenever a customer purchases something, whenever I purchase something, automatically everything will be added here.
Automations
Automation features include basic automation setup with options to create recurring expense and income. You can see all the things available here. Another one is called auto assign detail. So when something matches, you can set what it should do. Something like an if statement, automation is available here.
Manage Categories
Income and expenses categories are shown here. Obviously, you can edit and remove these categories. You can create your own category for income, expenses, and documents also. Document tags, any tag which you start using it, it will show you, it will give you some control over the tag also from here.
Payment Methods & Tax Rates
Payment methods, as I showed you, you can create your own payment method, so you can tag the expenses or income much better here. Tax rate, we already know. You can create a tax template for generic tax or if you’re using this for business purposes, you can use business tax here as well.
Add Receipts Via Email
Add receipts via email as well. This email I got for my personal account. Any email I just forward to this email address will be received and automatically use AI to categorise those expense and income here as well. If you click here, I have specific addresses for specific purposes also, like expense documents, I can send it directly here. Income, I can send it here. Or if we just use the main address, it will use AI to automatically determine for you.
Link the account available, applicant profile, all those are basic features.
Conclusion
That is what SparkReceipt right now is. It is an AI receipt app which supports mobile app. My personal view is that hopefully the accuracy gets improved over time. I found very clear receipts done really well.
But sometimes when the receipt clarity or the image quality decreases, the accuracy of the scanning on my testing got a bit reduced as well. So hopefully it will keep on improving to get better results in future.
If you wish to check it out, there’s a good lifetime deal available right now for this app. It’s a special deal. I will leave the link in the description. You can check it out. And if it interests you, maybe you can check it out and see whether that’s something that suits your need for business or personal use.
Once again, thank you so much for watching. Have a great day.