Check badges and field sources: how ReceiptBook shows what it read

Text recognition is good, not perfect. A crumpled thermal receipt, a stamp across the total or a handwritten tip can all fool it. ReceiptBook doesn't pretend otherwise. Its promise is that nothing is guessed silently: anything uncertain is marked Check, and every change is logged. This post explains the marks you see on the review screen and what to do about them.

The Check badge

Each value ReceiptBook reads comes with a confidence score. Below the level it trusts, the field gets an amber Check badge. One such field is enough to keep the whole document out of Looks right and in Needs a look, so it can't be filed by Confirm all without you seeing it.

When the uncertain field is one of the three that matter most (vendor, date or total), the document also gets the issue Hard to read, with the advice that some key fields were hard to read and you should check them against the original.

Field sources: where each value came from

Next to each field, ReceiptBook names its source:

The order of trust follows the same list: e-invoice data first, then a PDF's text, then the scan. A field marked Edited is your own value, and the change is logged. For how the Apple Intelligence label works, see Apple Intelligence receipt reading.

Where it was read

When a value came from the page itself, tap the field to edit it and ReceiptBook shows Where it was read: a strip of the original with the spot outlined. Checking a total becomes a glance instead of a hunt through a long receipt. This works for scans, photos and PDFs. XML e-invoices have no image, so there is nothing to outline; their values come straight from the data.

Looks like a duplicate

The same purchase often reaches you twice: the paper receipt and the emailed PDF, or two photos of one bill. ReceiptBook compares each new document with the ones you have, using the total, the date (within a day), the vendor and the invoice number. The same vendor tax ID with the same invoice number also counts as a match.

A likely match shows Looks like a duplicate, explaining that another document has the same vendor, date and total, with a link to Open the earlier copy. You compare the two and move the extra one to Recently Deleted, or confirm both if they really are two purchases (two coffees on the same day at the same price are not unusual). Exact byte-for-byte copies of a file never get this far; they are skipped on import as Already in ReceiptBook, as the import post explains.

History: every change, with its source

Each document has a History in the review screen's menu, described as every change to this document, with its source. It starts with how the document came in (Camera scan, Photos, Files, Shared from another app or Typed in), then lists each value read, each change you made (shown as By you), each confirmation, Reopened, Moved to Recently Deleted and Restored.

That record goes with your exports: the accountant package includes an audit.csv with the change history of the exported documents. Every original also gets a SHA-256 fingerprint when it comes in, and the history is chained so that a later change outside the app shows up in the weekly Integrity check.

FAQ

Download ReceiptBook and see exactly where every number came from.