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Mobile Receipt review

Peter Gibbons

We review Mobile Receipt for iPhone - an app that helps keep your finances in check

Mobile Receipt

Published on May 18, 2010

It feels somewhat backwards these days that all our receipts and expenses and reports are still made of paper.

In this magical electronic world, you’d think someone would have come up with a way to take your everyday financial records digital.

Well, the shops might still be obliged to provide you with an endless stream of paper, but Mobile Receipt looks to help you, at least, keep your documents digital.

The app begins by requiring you to set up a Mobile Receipt account, which is essentially a case of telling it your email address so it know where to send your digitised records.

A selection of categories are already included - such as travel, accommodation, food, and so forth - and you’re able to edit these and add new ones depending on the kind of spending your company allows you to do.

After that, it’s really a case of business as usual. You buy your stuff and get your paper receipts.

Entering a new receipt into the app is then performed by taking a photo of the physical piece of paper (achieved much more successfully by an iPhone 3GS, of course), giving it a category, an amount, and any other wee bits of information to explain where your cash has been going.

Once completed, the Mobile Receipt app automatically emails this digital version of the same receipt to you, thereby creating a digital paper trail for your accountant.

It might sound like you’re making work, considering you already have a receipt in your hand, but for record keeping in the modern age this is a super way to keep the reams of paper to a minimum.

Additional information can be added to your personal profile (department and employee number, for example) so the receipts can even be sent to whoever deals with the accounts, and can be sent from multiple sources - giving your bean counter a constant and simple update of company finances.

Automatically calculated car allowances are also an option, after you enter the reimbursement you’re given per mile and adding a receipt in the form of a mileage count rather than a photo of a receipt. Couple this with the automatically generated expenses report, and your company spending on-the-go suddenly looks a hell of a lot less chaotic.

Unfortunately, this is another of those applications where the developer apparently isn’t content to make its money purely through the front door.

You’re already paying for a mid-range app, and if you plan on submitting more than five receipts per month (which is a low enough number that the subscription-free version is essentially useless) you’re required to pay an annual subscription.

Admittedly, this isn’t a huge amount, and the dev is only asking for it once a year and not once a month, but it’s still enough of a money grab (if you’ll excuse the pun) that points must be deducted in the value category.

Still, if your car is rapidly filling up with small slips of disorganised paper, and your expenses are regularly short a receipt or two when you finally get around to sorting them out, Mobile Receipt could be just the app you’re looking for.