Manual method
- Gather receipt PDFs/emails from your own retailer accounts and mailbox, retaining order identifiers.
- Scan paper receipts before thermal printing fades; on iPhone use Files > More > Scan Documents and save the result.
- Name by purchase date and merchant, keeping ambiguous dates explicitly marked.
- Compare totals and page counts with the originals; keep original files alongside optional OCR text.
Coverage and limitations: There is no universal receipts export. OCR can misread currency, dates and totals. A bank transaction is supporting evidence, not a replacement for a retailer’s detailed receipt.
Size and time to allow
Illustrative planning size: 1 GB; scenario range 0.01–20 GB. This is a storage-planning example, not a measured average. Your archive may be smaller or larger. About 1,000 scanned or downloaded receipts averaging 1 MB, including images.
Preparation and hands-on time: Plan roughly 30–120 minutes per 100 paper receipts, depending on preparation and scanning setup; this is a workload assumption.
For the 1 GB example, network transfer alone is approximately:
| Connection download speed | Transfer estimate |
|---|---|
| 10 Mbit/s | 20 min |
| 50 Mbit/s | 4 min |
| 100 Mbit/s | 2 min |
These calculations use decimal GB and 70% of the advertised speed. Tiny transfers can take longer because of startup overhead. Local exports do not need an internet download; use these numbers only for a network transfer. Preparation, retries, extraction, checking and a cloud upload are additional; use upload speed for the latter.
Where and how to keep it
An encrypted USB key can hold this example, but keep another independent copy on an external drive or in private encrypted cloud storage. A USB key alone is easily lost and is not a complete preservation plan.
Create a dated receipts/YYYY-MM-DD/ folder. Keep received originals unchanged, use a separate working copy, and note the account/profile, selected dates, formats and known gaps in a private README. Compare file sizes, check any supplied checksums, and open sample files from the backup before considering the task finished. Repeat after meaningful additions. Follow the storage, archive-checking and large-file guide.
Sources and review
Public documentation was reviewed on 27 October 2026. No signed-in export or restoration was performed. Account options and availability can change; follow the current provider instructions.