How to actually use ReceiptIQ AI: a first-week guide

September 20, 2026 · 7 min read · ReceiptIQ AI

The most common question when someone first sees ReceiptIQ AI isn't about the camera. It's "what about my email receipts and my Amazon orders?" That's a fair question, and the honest answer has more than one part. This guide walks through what to actually do in your first week, in the order you'll need it — starting with the two minutes of setup that decide how everything else gets filed — including the parts that don't work the way you might expect.

1. First: make the categories yours

Before you scan anything, spend two minutes in Settings → Categories (under “Receipts & Money”). ReceiptIQ AI ships with a set of default categories, and every receipt and every line item you capture from then on gets filed into one of them automatically. That default set is a guess about your life. Correcting the guess is the single highest-value thing you can do in your first five minutes.

Three things to do there:

• Delete what you will never use. Tap the bin next to it. Nothing is lost: anything already filed under a deleted category moves to Others, and a deleted default stays gone rather than reappearing on the next update. If you change your mind, “Restore Default Categories” at the bottom of the same screen brings them back.
• Add the ones that match how you actually think about money. A side business, a specific hobby, a shared flat, a car you are saving to replace. Each one gets its own name, colour and icon.
• Rename anything that nearly fits. Editing a category updates every receipt already filed under it, so renaming is safe at any point.

Why first, rather than later? Because a category you create in week three does not reach back and re-file the receipts from weeks one and two — those keep the category they were given, and you would be re-filing them by hand. Getting the list right before the first scan is what makes the charts worth looking at a month from now.

One category is worth keeping whatever you do: Tax. Sales tax, GST, environmental fees and bottle deposits are filed there instead of being added to the price of your groceries, which keeps the category totals honest.

2. Your first scan: a paper receipt

Open the app, tap the camera, and point it at a receipt. The live scanner shows a coloured border while it looks for the edges of the paper; when the border turns green and holds steady, it captures on its own. You can also just tap the shutter yourself, or pick an existing photo from your library instead of using the camera.

What comes back is not just a total. ReceiptIQ AI reads every line item on the receipt — the store name, the date, each product and its price, tax, and the total — and lets you review it before saving. That distinction matters more than it sounds: an app that only stores the total can tell you that you spent $47.82 at the grocery store; one that stores the items can tell you how much of that was food versus household supplies, this month versus last month, without you typing anything in.

Review the parsed receipt, fix anything that's wrong (OCR occasionally misreads a smudged price or a curled receipt edge), and save. That's the whole loop, and for a physical receipt in your hand, it's the fastest path there is.

3. Email receipts and online orders: the screenshot route

Here's the direct answer to the question this post opened with: ReceiptIQ AI does not connect to your email inbox, and it never will — more on why below. What it does today is read an image. So for a receipt that only exists as an email, or an order confirmation on a website, the path is a screenshot:

• Take a screenshot of the receipt email or the order page — the part showing the item names, prices, and total.
• Share it into ReceiptIQ AI from the share sheet (the share icon in Mail, Safari, or the Amazon app), or save it and import it from Photos inside the app.
• It's read exactly like a photographed paper receipt: line items, prices, and total extracted automatically.

One limitation worth knowing first: a screenshot only captures what's on screen. A long order page or a receipt email with many items usually needs more than one screenshot — scroll and capture the item lines, then the total, rather than forcing it all into one shot. Import both; each becomes its own receipt.

One thing this does not support yet: sharing a PDF receipt or order confirmation straight into the app. ReceiptIQ AI can appear in the share sheet for a PDF without being able to read it, so use the screenshot route above for anything that arrives as a PDF.

4. Statements: your once-a-month catch-up

Screenshots work, but nobody wants to screenshot every online order they made in a month. That's what bank and credit-card statement import is for (currently in Beta): once a month, pick the statement PDF your bank already gives you, and the app reads every row into a list of transactions for you to tick or skip.

This is the practical answer for a month full of Amazon orders and other online spending you didn't screenshot as it happened. But be clear about what it gives you: a statement lists a charge, a date, and an amount — not what was in the box. Your Amazon spending shows up as one line, "Amazon, $63.41," not the three items you actually bought. For an itemized breakdown of a specific order, screenshot that order's confirmation instead.

Statement import also pairs refunds with the purchase they cancel, flags anything that looks like a duplicate of a receipt you already saved, and checks its totals against the number printed on your statement. No bank login is involved — you choose a file, the same one you'd hand to an accountant, and that's the entire interaction.

5. Making the numbers useful

Once you have receipts and transactions coming in, a few settings turn the raw data into something you'd actually look at:

• Categories. Every receipt is filed automatically into the list you set up in step 1, and you can override it per item or per receipt whenever the guess is wrong.
• Budgets. Set a monthly limit per category and the dashboard shows how close you are, without any extra logging.
• Currency. If you're travelling, a receipt printed in another currency is detected automatically and converted at the day's exchange rate, with the original amount kept alongside it — useful when you're reconciling a trip after the fact.

6. Getting it out

Your data isn't meant to stay locked in the app. Export to CSV for a spreadsheet, or generate an audit-ready PDF report for a date range — useful for a tax filing, an expense claim, or just handing a clean record to an accountant. Both are premium features; everything up to that point, including scanning and statement import, works on the free tier for your first 30 receipts.

7. What it deliberately does not do

This is worth stating plainly rather than leaving you to discover it: ReceiptIQ AI does not log into your bank account, and it does not connect to your email inbox. There is no account to create, no password to hand over beyond the one-time use of a PDF's own password if it has one, and no standing connection sitting in the background reading your mail or your transactions without you choosing to import something.

That's a product decision, not something still on the roadmap. A bank login or an inbox connection is a permission grant that keeps working long after you've forgotten you gave it. A screenshot you share, or a statement PDF you choose once, means nothing happens except when you decide it should. It's more manual than a "connect your bank" button — that's the deliberate trade.

Family Sharing works the same way: up to four devices sync directly, phone to phone, with no cloud server in between. ReceiptIQ AI runs on iPhone, iOS 17.6 or later.

Questions

Can ReceiptIQ AI read my email receipts?

Not by reading your inbox directly — the app never connects to email. What works today is a screenshot: take a screenshot of the receipt email, then share it into ReceiptIQ AI from the share sheet or import it from Photos. It reads the screenshot the same way it reads a photo of a paper receipt.

Does it work with Amazon orders?

Yes, two ways. Screenshot the order confirmation email or the order details page and share or import it as an image, and the app reads the line items on it. Or, once a month, import your card statement PDF and the Amazon charge comes in as a single transaction with the total — not the individual items, since a statement never lists them.

Does it connect to my bank or my email?

No, on purpose. ReceiptIQ AI never asks for your email password or inbox access, and it never asks for your bank login or links your bank account. Bank statement import works from a PDF file you choose yourself, once, with no standing connection afterward.

More on statement import specifically: Import a bank statement PDF without linking your bank account. Everything the app does is on the Features page.