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TaxHomeBase uses AWS Textract (OCR) to extract data from receipt photos and auto-fill expense fields. This saves time and helps build an IRS-compliant paper trail.

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How It Works

1

Open the expense form in create mode

The “Scan Receipt” button is only available when creating a new expense (not when editing).
2

Upload a receipt photo

  • Supported formats: JPEG, PNG
  • Maximum file size: 10MB
  • The image is uploaded to S3 via a presigned URL
3

Textract analyzes the receipt

AWS Textract’s AnalyzeExpense API extracts:
4

Review auto-filled fields

Only empty fields are populated — if you’ve already entered an amount or date, those values are preserved. Review the auto-filled data and adjust as needed.
Expense form with fields auto-filled from a scanned receipt showing amount, date, and vendor

After scanning, Textract auto-fills the amount, date, vendor, and suggests a category.

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Category Suggestions

Textract doesn’t directly categorize expenses. TaxHomeBase uses keyword matching on the vendor name to suggest a category: If no keywords match, the category field is left empty for you to select manually.

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Viewing Receipts

After saving an expense with a receipt:
  • A camera icon appears on the expense card
  • Click it to open the receipt in an in-app modal
  • The modal loads the image via a presigned S3 download URL
  • Both the Expenses and Expense Reports pages use the same receipt viewer

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Receipt Substantiation

The IRS requires receipts for:
  • All expenses over $75
  • All lodging expenses (regardless of amount)
TaxHomeBase’s Expense Reports Insights tab shows your receipt coverage and flags items that are IRS-substantiation requirements without receipts.

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Error Handling

The scan process has step-specific error handling:
  • Presign failure — Problem generating the upload URL
  • Upload failure — Problem uploading to S3
  • Textract failure — Problem analyzing the receipt
Each step shows a distinct error message with an inline retry button.