Bulk Scan

Upload up to 20 receipts at once — as images or PDFs. The AI reads them one after another, you review each proposal and book it with a single keystroke.

First things first: Book posts to the ledger

The scan itself writes nothing to your figures. It only produces proposals.

Only when you book a receipt do both of these happen at once:

1. The expense is created, with the original attached as a receipt.
2. The expense is posted to the journal — debit the suggested expense account, credit bank account 1020.

There is no intermediate step where a booked receipt sits around unposted. Discard a receipt and nothing is created and nothing is posted — that is a genuine no-op.

Requirements

Employees without the posting permission see a note instead of the page and can still capture receipts one at a time via New expense.

Step 1: Upload the batch

1. Go to Expenses and click Scan batch — or open /expenses/scan directly.
2. Drag the files into the drop zone or pick them. On mobile, Take photo is offered as well and opens the camera directly.
3. Above the list you always see 12 / 20 selected and how many scans your quota still allows this month.
4. Click Start scan.

If you select more than 20 files, the surplus is not added and the page tells you how many were dropped. If a batch is already running, no second one is created — the page reports the running batch. Open Scan batch again and that batch opens automatically.

Step 2: Scanning

Receipts are read one after another, not all at once. You do not have to wait for the batch to finish:

• Progress is shown at the top — 7 of 20 scanned.
• Finished receipts appear as reviewable cards immediately, while the remaining ones sit below them as placeholders.
• You can book receipt 1 while receipt 12 is still being scanned.

If you close the tab, the batch keeps scanning in the background. Reopen it later from Recent imports on the scan page.

Step 3: Review and book

Every scanned receipt becomes a card:

• Left the original — image, or page 1 of the PDF. Open original shows the full file.
• Right the proposal, fully editable, with a confidence badge (Confident · Please check · Uncertain).

Correct whatever is wrong — what gets saved is what stands in the fields, not what the AI proposed. If the AI suggests an account your chart of accounts does not contain, the suggestion stays visible so you replace it deliberately instead of losing it silently.

Actions

Discard can be taken back with Undo for 5 seconds; only then is it actually sent. Book cannot be undone — the expense exists and is posted. Correct it like any other booking via Accounting.

Keyboard shortcuts

They are what makes twenty receipts a minute's work rather than ten:

After a decision, focus moves to the receipt that takes its place — so you can hold A and walk the batch from top to bottom. Inside an input field the keys do nothing; there you simply type.

Rescan with your own instruction

When the AI picks the wrong amount, tell it where the right one is. Rescan opens a text box:

The total including VAT is at the bottom right.

The hint applies to this one receipt; the proposal is discarded and rebuilt. A rescan is one additional AI call.

What booking actually does

1. The expense is created from the fields on the card.
2. The uploaded file is attached to the expense as a receipt.
3. The status is set: verbucht (posted) in solo mode, erfasst (recorded) in team mode.
4. A journal entry with document number EXP-XXXXXXXX is created: debit the suggested expense account, credit bank account 1020, in CHF.
5. The action is recorded in the audit trail.

If a prerequisite for the journal entry is missing — no matching expense account in the chart of accounts, no account 1020, or no retrievable rate for a foreign-currency receipt — the expense is still created, but without a journal entry. You then post it by hand in Accounting.

For foreign-currency receipts, the CHF equivalent is fetched automatically at the receipt date's rate when you book (see Conversion).

AI quota

Every scanned receipt costs one AI call, and every rescan another. A batch of 20 files therefore consumes 20 calls of your monthly quota.

The quota is checked for the whole batch up front: if it does not cover every file, the batch is refused outright. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is started — a half-scanned batch would be worse than none.

• The upload screen states what is left: 384 of 500 scans left this month.
• If it is not enough for the current selection, the page says so before you start: Only 5 scans left — please select fewer files.
• Quotas, top-ups and the monthly reset are described under Billing Plans.

PDF receipts

PDF receipts are now read both in a batch and in the single-receipt scan:

• Digital PDFs (with extractable text) — the text is evaluated directly. That is fast and accurate.
• Scanned PDFs (an image in a PDF wrapper) — page 1 is converted to an image and recognized like a photo.

Multi-page PDFs are judged from their first page, so send one invoice per file where possible.

CLI and MCP

The same workflows are available through the CLI and the MCP tools:

slonge expense scan invoices/*.pdf
slonge expense scan invoices/*.pdf --prompt "the total including VAT is bottom right"
slonge expense scan invoices/*.pdf --approve-all

slonge expense scans                              # recent batches
slonge expense scan-status <batch-id>             # progress and proposals
slonge expense scan-approve <batch-id> <item-id>
slonge expense scan-reject  <batch-id> <item-id>
slonge expense scan-rescan  <batch-id> <item-id> --prompt "the amount is the second total"

The same rules apply as in the dashboard: plan, quota, 20 files, one batch at a time — and scan-approve posts to the ledger and therefore requires the accountant role. See API & MCP.

FAQ

Can I undo a Book?

No. The expense exists and is posted. Correct it like any other booking — or reverse the journal entry in Accounting.

A receipt failed — now what?

Try Rescan, ideally with a hint about where the amount is. If that does not help, capture the receipt by hand via New expense; the file is already uploaded and can be downloaded with Open original.

Why is my batch refused?

Either a batch is already running, or the monthly AI quota does not cover every file, or a file is larger than 10 MB or in an unsupported format.

Why don't I see Scan batch?

The page is reserved for accounting, because booking posts to the ledger. Without that permission you capture expenses one at a time.

What happens if I close the browser?

The batch finishes scanning in the background. Reopen it later from Recent imports and review at your leisure.

Who can see my batches?

In team mode, employees only see the batches they uploaded themselves — the staged files included. Accountants and admins see all of them. That is the same rule the expenses follow.

Related features

• Expenses — individual receipts and rebillable expenses
• Smart Inbox — send receipts in by email
• Accounting — journal and chart of accounts
• AI Features — the rest of the AI suite
• Billing Plans — quotas and plans