Receipts captured by camera, read by AI
Point the camera at a receipt. What normally takes six fields of typing becomes one tap and a glance.
- 24 expense categories
- No app to install
- You confirm every reading
- Supplier
- Invoice number
- Date
- Amount
- Tax rate
- Category
- 6Fields read from each receipt, ready to confirm
- 24Expense categories, each with a suggested rate
- 0Apps to install. The scanner runs in the browser
- 1Own email address per company for forwarding
- ZIPBulk import of old invoices as PDF
What happens when you photograph a receipt
Volk Accountant reads six fields from a photographed or uploaded receipt (supplier, invoice number, date, amount, tax rate and expense category) and puts them in front of you to confirm. The phone scanner runs in the browser: it detects the edges of the paper, straightens the image and produces a clean PDF, with nothing to install. Expenses fall into 24 categories, each carrying a suggested tax rate and a company-or-private flag, and imported receipts queue in a full-screen review stack you confirm one at a time. Every company also gets its own email address for forwarding incoming invoices, which are read the same way. Neither route needs the file to be stored on your device first: the scanner files the document inside the application, and a forwarded invoice never has to be downloaded. Uploading a file you already have still works. The AI proposes; nothing is booked without your confirmation.
How the scanner turns a photo into a PDF
The camera is the input device most businesses already carry. The work is in what happens to the picture afterwards.
- 1
Point and shoot
The browser opens the camera. No install, no app store, no separate login on the phone.
- 2
Edges detected
The paper is found in the frame, the perspective corrected, the background cropped away.
- 3
A clean PDF
What lands in your records is a straightened document, not a photo of a table with a receipt on it.
You never have to park the file somewhere first
What sets this apart from most tools is not the reading. It is what happens before: the receipt never has to land on your device at all.
The route through your device
- Photograph the receipt. The image stays in your camera roll
- Download the invoice out of the email
- Upload that file into the tool again
- Eventually clear out the gallery and the downloads folder
The receipt goes straight in
- Open the scanner inside the application. The document is then filed there
- Forward the invoice to the company's own address
- Upload it when you already have the file anyway
- Nothing left sitting on your phone or your computer
The expensive part of receipt capture is not any single receipt. It is that the job is never finished. New ones arrive every month, and each intermediate step costs almost nothing on its own. Which is exactly why it eventually gets skipped, and then a quarter is behind.
Which six fields the AI reads
What appears on screen after the reading is a confirmation, not a form. The fields are filled in, you read them and accept, or correct the one that is wrong.
The category carries a suggested rate, so the VAT treatment follows from the classification instead of being typed a second time.
In the interface this is always called AI, never the name of the provider behind it. The reason is simple: the provider can change, and a label that names one would be wrong the day it does.
- Suppliermatched against suppliers you have
- Invoice numberread from the document
- Datedecides the period
- Amountdecides the deduction
- Tax ratefollows the category
- Categoryone of 24
The tax rate confirmed here is the same one that ends up in the quarterly filing. How the return is built from it is covered under VAT 4 and VIES.
The 24 expense categories
Each expense category carries a suggested tax rate and a company-or-private flag, so the classification does two jobs at once.
The private flag matters more than it looks. An expense booked as private does not reduce the profit and does not produce input VAT. Getting that wrong in either direction is one of the more expensive habits in small-company bookkeeping, and it is the kind of thing an accountant finds months later.
Which expenses deduct and under what conditions is a question for your accountant, not for software. What the categories do is make the answer consistent once it has been given.
Three ways in, one place to check
Receipts arrive by camera, by email and as old files. All three end up in the same review stack.
One at a time
Forwarded in
The old pile
The review stack is full-screen and deliberately one document at a time. Confirming forty receipts in a list invites the kind of skimming that puts the wrong rate on three of them.
The receipt was paid from an account, and matching that payment runs through banking. A whole archive at once belongs instead in data import.
What this feature does not do
We put this in writing because it affects the decision. Finding out after you have paid means you bought the wrong tool.
- No separate phone app. The scanner runs in the mobile browser. Which is why there is nothing to install, but also nothing in an app store.
- The AI import handles one file per run. For a few hundred documents at once it is not the right tool.
- Importing from Google Drive is marked beta.
- Nothing is posted automatically. Every reading is a proposal you confirm. That is deliberate, and it means receipt capture saves typing, not judgement.
Questions that come up before you start
Which fields does the AI read from a receipt?
Six: supplier, invoice number, date, amount, tax rate and category. The values appear filled in on the form and only need confirming. For the category there are 24 expense categories, each with a suggested tax rate behind it.
Do I need to install an app to scan receipts?
No. The scanner runs in the mobile browser: take the photo, the edges of the paper are detected, the image is straightened and filed as a clean PDF. There is no separate phone app to download, and the scanner does not need one.
Can I submit receipts by email?
Yes. Every company gets its own email address to forward incoming invoices to. They are read automatically and land in the review stack. Nobody has to download a PDF invoice first only to upload it again afterwards.
Does Volk Accountant post a captured receipt automatically?
No. Every reading is a proposal you confirm in the review stack, one receipt at a time in a full-screen view. That is deliberate: receipt capture saves typing, not the judgement of whether an expense is a business one.
Do my receipt photos end up in the phone gallery?
No. The scanner takes the image inside the app and turns it straight into the PDF. No photo is left in the gallery for somebody to tidy up later, and there is no intermediate store for receipts to get lost in.
What goes with this
Further reading
InvoicingWhat has to be on a Cyprus invoice
The mandatory fields are not in the VAT Law. They are in a regulation from 2001. Read it closely and two things that every guide claims turn out not to be required at all.
VATVAT return in Cyprus: periods, the 10th, and what late costs
Your quarter ends are assigned when you register, the return and the payment share one deadline, and a late return costs a fixed charge before any interest. Here is the whole mechanism.
ComparisonWhich accounting software is best for Cyprus?
There is no single best one. There is one that fits your case, and the question that decides it is not the price.
Photograph one receipt and see what comes back
Start free for 14 daysChecked 1 October 2026