Scan a Receipt
How to capture receipts in Forbidden Finance by photographing them or forwarding them by email, review what was read from them, and manage your monthly receipt allowance.
Overview
Receipt scanning keeps the receipt itself attached to your transaction — and, if you choose to let it, reads the receipt for you. With Let AI read my receipts turned on in Settings > AI, Forbidden Finance reads the merchant, the date, the total, the currency, the individual line items, and the store's printed address, then hands the result to you to check before anything is saved. With it off — the default — receipts are stored and attached exactly the same way, and you enter the details yourself.
There are two ways to get a receipt in:
- Photograph it from the transaction form, using your camera or an image already in your library.
- Email it in by forwarding the receipt to
[email protected]. It lands in Receipts awaiting filing, ready to attach to a transaction whenever you get to it.
Receipt scanning is available on Starter, Pro, and Premium. Each plan includes a monthly allowance of receipts — see Your monthly allowance below.
Photograph a Receipt
Start a transaction
Open the transaction form (Transactions > Add) and tap Scan receipt.
Take a photo or pick one
Choose Take a photo to use the camera, or Choose from library to use an image you already have.
Add more pages if you need them
Forbidden Finance asks "Anything else on this receipt?" Tap Add a page for a long receipt photographed in parts, or Add another receipt for a separate document such as a card slip. Tap That's everything when you are done.
Let it read — if AI reading is on
With Let AI read my receipts on, you will see "Reading your receipt…" while extraction runs. You do not have to wait — keep filling the form in and the details drop in when they land. With it off, the form shows "Receipt attached — AI reading is off. Enter the details yourself." and the photo stays attached while you type the details in.
Check what was read
A banner reads "Filled in from your receipt. Check it before saving." Review the merchant, amount, date, currency, and line items, correct anything that looks wrong, and save.
Email a Receipt In
Forward the receipt or order confirmation to [email protected]. It arrives in Receipts awaiting filing, tagged Emailed in, ready to file against a transaction.
If AI reading is off, the email and its attachments are stored unread — the receipt still shows Ready to file, and you enter the details when you file it. If AI reading is on, the email text is read along with the attachments (an order confirmation is often the email itself).
Because everyone shares that address, mail is filed by who sent it. Only addresses you have confirmed are accepted.
Open receipt forwarding
Go to Settings > Receipt forwarding.
Note the address
Copy the address shown under Send receipts to.
Check your sending addresses
Your account email is already confirmed and listed as Your account email. To forward from anywhere else — a work address, a second personal address — tap Add address.
Confirm the new address
For your security, adding an address asks for your password. Forbidden Finance then emails a confirmation link to the address you added. Open that link and the address is confirmed. Until it is, receipts from it will not arrive.
Forward a receipt
Send or forward the receipt email to the shared address. It shows up in Receipts awaiting filing once it has been read.
Auto-Forward Rules
If you want your mail client to forward receipts automatically, use the Automatic forwarding address under Show advanced options instead of the shared address.
Auto-forwarded mail keeps the store's own sender address, which the shared inbox cannot match to you. Your automatic forwarding address is private to your account and carries your identity instead, so rules like "forward everything from [email protected]" work.
Review Before Saving
Everything read from a receipt is presented for you to confirm. Watch for these:
- "Filled in from your receipt. Check it before saving." — the standard prompt on any prefilled form. Give the amount and date a glance.
- "The items and tax on this receipt don't add up to its total." — the line items plus tax do not reconcile against the printed total. This is the single most useful signal that something was misread; the receipt is flagged Needs a look in your receipts list. The line-item editor shows the arithmetic, including any savings or discounts the receipt printed, so you can see exactly where the difference comes from.
- "No currency was printed on this receipt." — the currency was inferred rather than read. Change it if the guess is wrong.
- "Country inferred from the address — check it." — the store's address did not print a country, so it was inferred from the rest of the address. Common on receipts from your own high street; correct it if the guess is wrong.
- "Card ending 1234 is your …" — a card slip was matched to one of your accounts. If the card is not recognized yet, pick the account once and tap Remember this card and it will be matched next time.
In Receipts awaiting filing, each receipt shows its state: Processing while it is being read, Ready to file when it is done (or, with AI reading off, as soon as it arrives), Needs a look when the sums do not reconcile, and Couldn't read when extraction failed.
Scan a Stored Receipt Later
Turning AI reading on does not go back and read receipts you added while it was off — and a receipt that was read badly can be read again. Open a receipt in Receipts awaiting filing and tap Scan with AI: the pages already stored are read fresh, and the result replaces the old details. A re-read does not use up your monthly allowance — the receipt was already counted when it came in.
Receipts already attached to a transaction are not re-read. Remove the receipt from the transaction first — it returns to the waiting list, where Scan with AI is available.
The Store's Address
Many receipts print the store's address. When AI reading is on, the address is read along with everything else and shown in the line-item editor under Address on the receipt. When you file the receipt, the address is saved on the transaction as its location, labelled From your receipt on the transaction's detail screen.
- The location is yours: edit it or clear it like any other field before or after saving.
- Privacy mode hides the street line and the From your receipt tag, leaving only the city, region, and country.
- If you share your data with a partner, anyone who can see the transaction sees its location too.
Line Items
Line items break a transaction into what you actually bought. A scanned itemized receipt fills them in; you can also add them by hand from the transaction detail under Line items.
Forbidden Finance shows whether "Items plus tax match the transaction amount" or reports the difference, and line items are searchable alongside the rest of your transaction data.
Your Monthly Allowance
| Plan | Receipts per renewal month |
|---|---|
| Free | Not included |
| Starter | 75 |
| Pro | 200 |
| Premium | 400 |
Two things worth knowing about how this is counted:
- It counts receipts, not pages. A five-page receipt is one receipt. An email containing several attachments counts as one receipt as well.
- The cycle follows your renewal date, not the calendar. If your subscription renews on the 12th, your allowance resets on the 12th. The meter under Settings > Receipt forwarding shows how many you have used — "12 of 75 receipts this month" — and the date it resets.
When the allowance is used up, the scan button is replaced by Monthly receipt limit reached with the reset date. Everything else about the app carries on as normal, and receipts already captured are unaffected.
Confirmation Emails
When a receipt you emailed in is imported, Forbidden Finance sends you a short confirmation. Receipts you photograph in the app never trigger one.
To change this, go to Settings > Notifications > Receipt import confirmations and choose:
- Always — a short note each time an emailed receipt is ready to file, and always when one fails.
- Only failures — nothing when an import succeeds; you only hear from us when a receipt could not be read.
Privacy and Security
- AI reading is opt-in and recorded. It is off until you turn it on in Settings > AI, and each time you turn it on or off, that choice is recorded like any other consent. While it is off, nothing you add is read by AI.
- What is sent when it is on: receipt photos and forwarded receipt emails — including the email text — are sent to an AI model that reads the document. What comes back is stored encrypted with your account's own keys, like the images themselves.
- Receipt images are encrypted with your account's own keys before they are stored, the same way the rest of your financial data is. They are not stored in a form our storage provider can read.
- Location metadata is stripped from photos. Images are re-encoded on upload, which removes GPS tags and other metadata your camera may embed. The only address involved is the one printed on the receipt.
- Mail from unconfirmed senders is never stored. It is dropped on arrival, before any processing.
- An address you add hears from us only about receipts: one confirmation email, then notices about receipts sent in from it. Never marketing.
- An email address can be confirmed on only one Forbidden Finance account at a time. If an address is already confirmed elsewhere, remove it there first.
- Deleting your account destroys the keys that receipt images are encrypted with, exactly as it does for the rest of your data. See Delete or Recover Your Account.
Limits
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Pages per receipt | 5 |
| Receipts per transaction | 5 |
| File size per page | 10 MB |
| Confirmed sending addresses | 5 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Which plans include receipt scanning?
Starter, Pro, and Premium. It is not available on Free — extraction costs real money per receipt, and there is no subscription behind the Free tier to pay for it.
Does a five-page receipt use five of my allowance?
No. The allowance counts receipts, not pages or photos. A five-page receipt is one receipt, and an email with several pages attached is one receipt too.
When does my allowance reset?
On your subscription renewal date, not the first of the month. The meter shows the exact reset date.
What happens if the receipt cannot be read?
The image is still saved and still attaches to the transaction — you fill in the amount yourself. If it arrived by email, it is marked Couldn't read in your receipts list and you get a notice regardless of your confirmation-email setting.
Can I forward from my work email?
Yes, once you have added and confirmed it under Settings > Receipt forwarding. You can confirm up to five sending addresses.
What happens to receipts I forward from an address I have not added?
They are dropped without being stored, and they are not bounced back to you. Add the address first.
Can I attach a receipt to a transaction that already exists?
Yes. Receipts in Receipts awaiting filing are filed against a transaction when you are ready, and you can remove a receipt from a transaction later — it goes back to the waiting list rather than being deleted.
Why didn't my receipt fill in the form?
AI reading is off by default. Turn on Let AI read my receipts in Settings > AI and new receipts will be read as they arrive; receipts you added before that can be read with Scan with AI from the waiting list.
My receipt shows "was £4.59 NOW £2.29" — what gets recorded?
The price you actually paid. A sale line like that is recorded as £2.29, with £4.59 kept as the unit price, and a "SAVING" line printed under it is understood as part of the same reduction — not a separate charge or a second discount.
Does Forbidden Finance know where I shopped?
Only what the receipt itself says. If AI reading is on and the store's address is printed on the receipt, it is read and offered as the transaction's location, which you can keep, edit, or clear. Your device's location is never collected, and location tags your camera embeds in photos are stripped on upload.
Does scanning a receipt categorize the transaction for me?
Scanning fills in what was printed on the receipt — merchant, total, currency, date, line items, and the store's address — and suggests a category. You review and confirm everything, including the category, before it is saved.