Getting receipts into Excel without typing them up

In short: Receipts get into Excel without typing when you photograph them with an app, have them read automatically and export the list as a CSV. You open that file in Excel via "Data, From Text/CSV", map the columns date, merchant, amount, category and note, and analyse them with SUMIF or a pivot table. The scan of each receipt stays alongside as a PDF.

For many people, a spreadsheet is the first step away from the shoebox: date, merchant, amount, category, done. The problem is not the spreadsheet but filling it. Anyone who enters every receipt by hand gives up after three weeks or spends a day at year end typing through a pile of 200 slips.

This article shows how to get receipts into Excel without typing, which columns your spreadsheet needs, what a simple template looks like and which import errors are typical.

Why a receipt spreadsheet in Excel makes sense

A spreadsheet turns a heap of receipts into an overview you can sort, filter and total. That is useful for your tax return (the sum of all training costs), for handing over to your accountant (a list with amounts instead of loose slips) and for yourself (how much do I spend on materials per month).

Excel is not the bookkeeping here, it is the preliminary stage. For a sole proprietorship or a club, a well-kept spreadsheet is often enough as the basis that the accountant then transfers into their software. Receipt app, spreadsheet or folder: which one fits you? compares when Excel reaches its limits and when an app or a folder is the better fit.

Which columns does a receipt spreadsheet need?

Six columns cover almost every purpose: date, merchant, amount, currency, category and note. Anything beyond that is optional and only slows down data entry.

Two optional columns have proven useful: a "File" column with the file name of the scan, so you can get from the entry to the PDF, and a "Checked" column for a tick after review. Keep categories short and fixed, otherwise by December you will have "Food", "Meals" and "Restaurant" side by side. Receipt categories that make sense shows which categories work in practice.

How do receipts get into Excel without typing?

The route without typing runs through an app that photographs the receipt, reads it and exports a CSV. A CSV is a text file with one line per receipt that Excel can open directly. The process in four steps:

1. Photograph receipts. With Belego you do this right at the till; the app crops, straightens and saves each scan as a PDF.
2. Have them read. Amount, date, merchant and category are recognised automatically. Whatever cannot be read with certainty stays empty and is added by hand in a moment.
3. Export. You pick a period (month, year or a custom range) and receive a ZIP with the PDFs and a CSV list including category and note.
4. Import into Excel. Open the file via "Data, From Text/CSV", check the delimiter and date format, and confirm.

Reading receipts automatically describes how automatic reading works technically and which fields are recognised reliably. The details of the CSV format and importing into accounting tools are in Exporting receipts as CSV.

The advantage over typing is not only time. Typing produces transposed digits, importing does not. And because every entry belongs to a PDF named by date, merchant and amount, you can find the receipt for any row in seconds.

Excel template: build the spreadsheet in ten minutes

A usable receipt template in Excel consists of one worksheet with the six columns above, formatted as a "Table" (Insert, Table) so that filtering and sorting work immediately. Then come three formulas that deliver the most value:

• Total per category: =SUMIF(E:E,"Meals",C:C) adds up all amounts whose category in column E is "Meals".
• Total per month: =SUMIFS(C:C,A:A,">=01.03.2026",A:A,"<=31.03.2026") gives the spending in March.
• Annual total: =SUM(C:C) for the grand total.

If you prefer a clearer view, create a pivot table (Insert, PivotTable) with category in the rows, month in the columns and amount as the sum. It takes a minute to set up and updates with every new import.

For the category column, a dropdown list is worth adding (Data, Data Validation, List) so that only the agreed terms appear. A second worksheet called "Categories" containing the list is enough as the source.

Typical Excel errors with receipts (and how to avoid them)

Most problems when importing receipts into Excel involve dates, decimal separators and special characters such as umlauts. All of them are harmless once you know where they come from:

• Date is recognised as text: Excel shows 14.03.2026 left-aligned and cannot sort by it. Fix: in the import dialog, mark the column as a date with the correct format, or convert it afterwards with "Text to Columns".
• Amount becomes 4790 or 47.9.2026: this happens when Excel swaps full stop and comma. Fix: check the settings under "File Origin" and "Delimiter" in the import dialog; Swiss and English Excel installations use the full stop as the decimal separator, German ones the comma.
• Umlauts appear as strange characters: the CSV is UTF-8 but Excel opened it as Windows-1252. Fix: choose "65001: Unicode (UTF-8)" as the file origin in the import dialog.
• Duplicate entries after two imports: import January twice and you have everything twice. Fix: exactly one export per period, or clean up in Excel via "Data, Remove Duplicates".
• Merchant spelled ten different ways: "Migros", "MIGROS", "Migros Zurich HB". Fix: name the merchant consistently when capturing in the app, and the export will be consistent too.

A tip for the annual handover: export the whole year in one go rather than twelve separate months. Then you have one file, one spreadsheet and no duplicates. Year-end receipts: ready to hand over in three steps covers preparing the year-end handover.

When Excel is no longer enough

Excel is enough as long as you want to collect, total and pass on receipts. It is no longer enough when you need double-entry bookkeeping, a VAT return or annual accounts. At that point the spreadsheet belongs in accounting software such as Banana or CashCtrl, both of which import CSV, or with your Treuhänder (the Swiss term for a trustee or accountant).

The separation makes sense: the app collects, reads and organises, Excel or the accounting software analyses. Belego is deliberately not accounting software; it delivers exactly the export that Excel and accounting tools need: PDFs for bexio and similar tools, CSV for Banana, CashCtrl or Excel.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a ready-made Excel template for receipts?

The best template is an empty table with the columns date, merchant, amount, currency, category and note, formatted as an Excel table and with a dropdown list for the category. It takes ten minutes to build and adapts to your own categories. Ready-made templates from the internet often contain columns you never fill and categories that do not match your situation.

Can I read receipts into Excel directly from photos?

Excel itself cannot turn photos into receipt data. The "Data from Picture" feature in newer versions reads tables from screenshots, but not till receipts with a total and a date. The reliable route is a receipt app that photographs the slip, reads it and exports a CSV. You then import that file into Excel with a few clicks.

How do I link an Excel row to the scanned receipt?

The easiest way is via the file name. If your scans are named by date, merchant and amount, enter that name in a "File" column, or use the HYPERLINK function to link to the PDF in the same folder. When exporting from Belego, the PDFs are already named this way and the CSV sits in the same ZIP, so the mapping works without any extra effort.

Does this also work with Google Sheets or Numbers?

Yes. Both open CSV files directly: Google Sheets via "File, Import", Numbers by double-clicking the file. SUMIF, SUMIFS and pivot tables exist in both, and the logic is the same. Pay attention to the date format and the decimal separator there as well, so that amounts arrive as numbers and not as text.