Under Making Tax Digital, you're required to keep digital records of every expense. That means a folder full of paper receipts is no longer compliant. RentalBux's OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanning lets you photograph a receipt on your phone or through the web application and instantly create a digital expense record — without typing anything in manually.
How OCR scanning works
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. When you photograph a receipt, RentalBux's OCR engine analyses the image and automatically extracts:
The merchant or supplier name
The transaction date
The total amount (including VAT if applicable)
Any VAT breakdown
It then creates a draft bill record with these fields pre-filled. You review the extracted details, assign the expense to a property and category, and save. The receipt image is stored alongside the record as your digital proof.
Using OCR on the mobile app — step by step
Using OCR on desktop
If you have a PDF or image scan of a receipt on your computer, you can use OCR from the desktop version too:
1. Go to Accounting >Invoices and Bills.
2. Click on the OCR button on the top right corner of your screen.
3. Click Upload and select the PDF, JPG, or PNG file.
4. The OCR engine processes the file and presents the extracted details.
5. Review, assign, and save as above.
Tips for getting the best OCR results
Photograph receipts on a flat, dark surface — white receipts on white tables are hard to read
Good natural or room lighting is better than flash, which can cause glare
Make sure the full receipt is in frame — especially the total amount at the bottom
For thermal printer receipts (the shiny kind), photograph quickly — they fade quickly and can become unreadable
If a receipt is very long, fold it in half and photograph each half separately
What happens to the original receipt?
Once you've scanned a receipt and saved it in RentalBux, the digital record satisfies HMRC's digital record-keeping requirements. You don't legally need to keep the paper original as well — though many landlords choose to for the first year until they're confident in the process.
Where are scanned receipts stored?
Every scanned receipt image is stored permanently in your RentalBux account, linked to its bill record. You can view, download, or share it at any time. Go to Accounting > Invoices and Bills > Bills and click any bill record to see the attached receipt image. Alternatively, you can view all your bills along with property specific documents in the Documents tab in your sidebar. This is your audit trail — everything HMRC would need to verify an expense is right there.
Note
Scan receipts on the spot — the minute after you buy something. Don't let them pile up. One scan a day takes 30 seconds. A backlog of 200 receipts from the past year takes a very unpleasant afternoon.