Bulk receipt scanning vs one-at-a-time apps.
Snap-per-receipt apps optimise for the person holding the receipt. Period-batch processing optimises for the person closing the books. Both are real workflows — this page is an honest comparison of where each one fits.
Per-receipt capture assumes the client photographs every receipt, every time, all year. Some do. Most don't — and the accountant inherits the gap at quarter end as a shoebox, a 200-page scan, or a folder of phone photos. The capture model that depends on client discipline fails exactly when the deadline arrives.
Bulk processing accepts reality: the pile arrives all at once, and the tool's job is to turn it into books — not to wish the client had photographed things in April.
Period batch vs snap-per-receipt.
Honestly: if your client reliably captures expenses in real time and you want continuous feeds, a snap app serves that workflow well — and some firms run both. Pileform is built for the other reality: the period that arrives as a pile.
Scan the pile once, drop it once.
Receipts, invoices, and statements go into one PDF — scanner stack, phone photos, email attachments combined. Extraction finds each document, reads it per line, and returns per-supplier workbooks with flags where review is needed.
Built for hundreds of pages.
A typical 200-page batch processes in about 12 minutes, with pages handled in parallel and hard ones retried automatically. Bigger batches — the year-end shoebox — finish overnight.
Mixed documents, one drop.
Receipts, supplier invoices, and bank statements in the same PDF, in any order. Eleven languages, mixed currencies, thermal paper and photographed pages all flow through the same pipeline.
Review concentrated, not scattered.
Instead of approving items one by one all year, you review one period in one sitting — and only the yellow-flagged rows need eyes. The rest reconciles against printed totals.
Clients can still photograph.
Phone photos are fine — they just go into the period PDF instead of a per-receipt app. No client training, no app adoption project, no discipline dependency.
Books, not a feed.
The output is one Excel workbook per supplier with sources embedded, plus entries that post to Xero and QuickBooks. The deliverable is the period closed, not a timeline to scroll.
See a whole period processed.
The sample workbook on the features page shows what a batch becomes: supplier tabs, flags, embedded sources.
Bulk scanning questions, answered.
When expenses need capturing in real time by the person spending — field staff with mileage and meals, employee expense claims, businesses that genuinely keep the habit year-round. If that is your workflow and it works, keep it. Pileform is built for the complementary case: the period that arrives as a pile at close.
Yes — phone photos are normal input. The difference is where they go: into the period PDF alongside everything else, rather than into a per-receipt app at purchase time. Combine scans, photos, and email attachments into one PDF and drop it once.
A typical batch is 200 pages and processes in about 12 minutes. Larger batches — 500 to 1,000 pages, the classic year-end backlog — finish overnight. There is no hard upper limit; you get an email when the workbook is ready.
No — the opposite. Extraction is per line, not per receipt: each line carries its description, amounts, and VAT rate, totals reconcile to each document's printed totals, and the original page is embedded next to its rows. Bulk refers to the input, not the granularity.
Rows come back in two states: high-confidence and ready, or yellow-flagged where something was inferred or uncertain. A period's review is typically about twenty minutes on the flagged rows — concentrated in one sitting, instead of item-by-item approvals scattered across the year.
Test it on a real pile.
Sign up free, no card. Drop your messiest batch and compare the output to your current workflow before you commit to anything.