Pantry Assistant

Scan grocery receipts into your pantry

By the Pantry Assistant team

Last checked

A receipt scan reads a photo of your grocery receipt, turns each food line into an item, and adds it to your pantry once you confirm. It leaves off fees and tax, and asks you about any line it is not sure of.

You do not need an app to benefit from the habit. Going through the receipt is the quickest inventory you will do, because it lists exactly what came home. This guide covers the by-hand version first, then what Pantry Assistant does with the same receipt.

Why the receipt is worth reading

A receipt is a complete list of what you bought, in the order you bought it, with the date and the store. Nothing else in your week is that tidy.

It also catches the things you forgot. You meant to buy lemons, you did not, and the receipt shows it. You bought two cans of beans you did not need, and the receipt shows that too.

The trouble is that a receipt is written for the store, not for you. The lines are short codes, "ORG BNLS CHK BRST" for chicken breast, and the foods are mixed in with bags, deposits and discounts. Reading it takes a minute of translation.

The by-hand method

Do this on the day you shop, with the receipt and your pantry list side by side.

  1. Circle the foods. Ignore everything else on the receipt for now.
  2. Cross off what is not food. Bag fees, tax, bottle deposits, coupons, loyalty savings and everyday non-food items like paper towels do not belong in a food list.
  3. Match the rest to your list. For each food, find its row in your inventory and mark it as have. Add a row if it is new.
  4. Check what you meant to buy. Anything on your shopping list that is not on the receipt is either still needed or was bought somewhere else.
  5. Handle returns separately. A line with a minus sign is food you took back. It should not go into the pantry.

Then put the food away and keep the receipt until the check is done. It takes about five minutes, and the hard part is step 2: deciding, line by line, what counts.

What a receipt scan reads

In Pantry Assistant, you take a photo of the receipt and the app reads it. Fit the whole receipt in the frame, lay it flat and find some light. It takes a few seconds.

For each food line it works out:

  • The food, matched to the foods the app knows, so "ORG BNLS CHK BRST" becomes chicken breast.
  • The amount, when the receipt prints one.
  • The date and the store, so dates for your food count from the day you shopped.

If you start from your shopping list, the scan also matches each line to what you checked off, and it catches food you bought but never listed. Those show up with an Extra badge.

What it leaves off

Lines that are not food go into a Left off group, each with a reason, so nothing disappears silently. The app recognises bag fees, tax, bottle deposits, coupons, savings and discounts, everyday non-food items like paper towels, and fees.

A return is handled on its own. A food line with a negative price is never added to your pantry. It shows as a return, and the only choice is Skip.

If the app got one wrong, say a line it called a fee that is really food, tap It's food on that line.

How to check the uncertain lines

After the scan, your Put Away says what it found, for example "4 ready, 2 to check, 1 left off, 1 couldn't be read". Only the lines the app is unsure about need you.

  • Quick check lists them one at a time, with one tap each: Yes if its guess is right, Something else to pick the right food, or Not food. When it has no guess, the buttons are Pick a food and Not food.
  • Did you get...? asks about things on your list that are not on the receipt.
  • A line too smudged to read asks you to Add what it was, or to Skip it.

Nothing reaches your pantry until you tap Put away. Lines you did not check are skipped, and the app tells you which. If you would rather not use the scan for a trip, Use my list puts things away without it.

Where to start a scan

Start from any of these:

  • Scan the receipt, after you tap Done shopping · Put it away on your shopping list.
  • Scan receipt at the top of Put Away, or the photo button beside it to use a photo you already took.
  • Add on the Pantry, then Scan a receipt.

If there is no signal, the photo stays on your phone until you tap Read receipt now. If the app says it cannot read a receipt, a quick retake usually fixes it.

What it uses, and what it costs

Receipt Scan uses AI. The first time you scan, the app asks Use AI for this? It sends the photo and food lists, never your account name or email. A photo goes as taken, so anything printed in it, like a name on a receipt, a label or a letter, goes too. Keep those out of the shot or cover them. If you tap Not now, scanning stays off for you until you switch it on again in Settings.

Receipt Scan is part of Plus. Free kitchens get 3 free scans a month. The scan is optional: Put Away works the same way by hand.

When a scan is not worth it

A scan saves the most when you shop for a week and the receipt is long. For a quick top-up of three items, it is faster to check them off by hand.

It also depends on the photo. A crumpled receipt, a faded thermal print or a receipt folded in half will have lines the app cannot read, and you will fix those by hand. That is the point of the check step: the app asks instead of guessing.

The short version

Read the receipt, cross off what is not food, match the rest, and put it away. By hand it takes five minutes. With a scan the reading is done for you, and you spend those minutes on the few lines it is not sure about.

For the step by step, with every button, see the Help article below.