Every year, people overpay tax for one boring reason: they can't prove what they spent. A receipt fades, an invoice gets lost in an inbox, and a perfectly legitimate deduction quietly disappears. The fix isn't a fancy accounting package — it's a simple habit of capturing each bill the moment you get it, and keeping the photo as proof. That's exactly what the Deduction Manager is built for. This guide explains how it works, how to set it up (including the optional OCR.space key for the most accurate reading), and how it helps you track bills, claim job and office expenses with evidence, and walk into tax time with everything organised.
What the Deduction Manager actually does
You scan or upload a bill, invoice or receipt. The tool reads the text on it and automatically fills in the details — the vendor, the amount, the tax, the dates, the document number, and the business's tax ID. You glance over the fields, fix anything that needs it, and save. From then on, that expense is recorded, searchable, and — if you choose — stored together with a photo of the original document as proof.
When you need to report or claim, you export everything in one click: a tidy PDF summary, an Excel spreadsheet, a calendar of due dates, or — the one accountants love — an Excel file bundled with the photo of every single bill, each named so it matches its row in the spreadsheet.
Private by design: your bill list and any saved photos live only in your browser, never on our servers. To read a document, its image is sent to your chosen reading service and deleted after processing. There's no account and no tracking.
Why tracking bills this way matters
You keep proof for your tax return
Tax offices don't accept "I'm sure I spent it." They want evidence: a dated document showing who you paid, how much, and what the tax component was. If you're ever asked to substantiate a deduction, a clear photo of the receipt alongside the recorded amount is exactly what's needed. The Deduction Manager keeps the number and the proof together, so the evidence is there when — not if — you need it.
You can separate job and personal expenses
If you claim work-related costs — tools, a home-office internet bill, professional subscriptions, travel, a uniform — you need to tell them apart from everyday spending. Each bill gets a category and a paid/unpaid status, and you can search and filter the list, so pulling out just your deductible work expenses at year-end is trivial.
Office expenses become an audit-ready Excel file
For a business or anyone managing office spending, the standout feature is the Excel + photos export. You get a spreadsheet with every expense — vendor, document type, document number, dates, amount, tax, tax type, business ID, country and status — plus a folder containing the photo of each bill. The filename of every photo matches the "Evidence file" column in the spreadsheet, so any row can be traced straight back to its original document. That's the kind of organised, defensible record an accountant or auditor actually wants to see.
You stop missing due dates
Unpaid bills show how many days until they're due, overdue ones are flagged, and you can export upcoming due dates to your calendar. Tracking spending and never missing a payment come from the same simple habit.
Getting started: first-run settings
The first time you open the tool, a short setup appears so your bills look right from the start. It takes about ten seconds.
- Currency. Pick the currency you mostly deal in. The tool tries to detect a sensible default from your device, but you can change it.
- Date format. Choose day/month/year, month/day/year, or year-month-day so dates read the way you expect.
- Save photo evidence. Leave this on (recommended) so a photo of each bill is stored on your device for proof and for the Excel + photos export. Turn it off if you only want the figures.
- OCR.space API key (optional). Paste a free key here for the most accurate photo reading — explained in detail below.
You can reopen all of these any time by tapping ⚙️ Settings. Changing a setting never alters bills you've already saved.
The OCR.space key: what it is and how to add it
"OCR" means optical character recognition — the technology that turns a photo of text into actual, readable text. When you scan a bill, the tool needs OCR to read the words and numbers off the image. It works out of the box on a shared demo service, but that demo is rate-limited and lower quality. For fast, reliable, accurate reading — especially on photos — you add your own free OCR.space key. It's free, it takes two minutes, and it stays private to your browser.
Why bother adding a key?
- Better accuracy on real-world photos, so fewer fields come out wrong.
- Your own generous free allowance instead of a shared, throttled demo that everyone is competing for.
- It's stored only in your browser — we never see it.
How to get your free OCR.space key
- Go to ocr.space/ocrapi and choose the free "Register for free API key" option.
- Enter your email address. The free tier is genuinely free and includes a large monthly allowance — ample for personal and small-business use.
- Check your inbox. OCR.space emails you a key, which is a short string of letters and numbers.
- Copy that key.
How to add the key in the tool
- Open the Deduction Manager and tap ⚙️ Settings.
- Find the field labelled OCR.space API key (for best photo reading).
- Paste your key into the box.
- Tap Save & continue. That's it — the key is now used for every scan and upload on this device.
Good to know: if the key ever errors or hits its monthly limit, the tool automatically falls back to a built-in reader so you're never stuck. Your key lives only in this browser; clearing your browser data removes it, and you'd simply paste it again.
Privacy note: to read a bill, its image is sent to OCR.space, which processes and then deletes it. Don't scan documents you aren't comfortable sending to a third-party reader. The recorded figures and the saved photo stay on your device; only the image-reading step uses the external service.
Capturing a bill, step by step
- Scan or upload. On a phone, "Scan a bill" opens your camera so you can photograph the document. On a laptop or tablet it opens the camera too, or you can choose "Upload a bill" to pick a photo, a screenshot, or a PDF.
- Crop to the bill. For photos, you're shown a quick crop step — tighten it to just the document. A clean, well-lit, tightly-cropped image reads far more accurately.
- Let it read. The tool extracts the text and intelligently fills in the fields.
- Check and correct. Every field is shown for you to confirm — vendor, document type, document number, dates, amount, currency, country, business ID, tax amount and tax type, and paid/unpaid status. Fix anything that looks off.
- Save. The bill is added to your list, with its photo kept as evidence if you enabled that.
Uploaded PDFs and documents are kept as evidence too, not just camera photos — so an emailed invoice you upload is preserved exactly like one you snap.
Start tracking your bills and deductions
Scan a bill, keep the proof, and export an audit-ready record — free, private, no signup.
Open the Deduction Manager →A smarter read of tax and business details
Reading numbers off a photo is one thing; understanding them is another. Rather than blindly trusting whatever the OCR text says, the tool uses AI to interpret the document — and crucially, it works out the tax type from the document's country, not just from a possibly-misread label. So a bill from Australia is correctly tagged GST, one from the UK as VAT, one from the United States as Sales Tax, Canada as GST/HST, Japan as Consumption Tax, and so on. It also identifies the right kind of business registration number for that country — ABN, VAT number, EIN, GSTIN — and decides whether the document looks paid or unpaid, defaulting to unpaid when there's no clear evidence of payment.
Exporting for tax time
When it's time to report, you have four one-click exports:
- PDF report — a clean, landscape summary of every bill, ideal for printing or sending to an accountant.
- Excel spreadsheet — all the data in columns, ready to sort, filter or paste into your bookkeeping.
- Calendar (.ics) — due dates for unpaid bills, dropped straight into your calendar.
- Excel + photos (ZIP) — the spreadsheet plus a folder of every bill's photo, each filename matching its spreadsheet row. This is your complete, traceable, audit-ready evidence pack.
Tip for businesses: the totals at the top of the list update with whichever filter you've selected — all, unpaid, overdue or paid — so you can read off, say, your total outstanding or your total paid office expenses without doing any maths.
Frequently asked questions
In short
Good deduction tracking is really just a good habit made easy: capture each bill when you get it, confirm the details, and keep the photo as proof. The Deduction Manager turns that habit into a few taps — reading the document for you, organising it by category and status, working out the right tax type for the country, and giving you an audit-ready Excel-plus-photos pack at export time. Add the free OCR.space key for the sharpest reading, leave photo evidence switched on, and you'll arrive at tax time with every expense recorded and every receipt accounted for.