I believe a long time ago (pre iPhone and smart phones) I have seen an article or a story on people working on some OCR/scanning software for grocery bills. I just can't find anything on Google about it.
The idea was that the software can be customized to recognize different formats of grocery bills. Basically it would only need one person to create a template for say a Walmart bill, and tell the software where the header starts, where the date is, the total price paid, the list of items, etc. All other users of this software could then use the template all around the country to scan their Walmart bills. The software would tell them what they bought, when, how much they paid, export to accounting software, compare items with other stores and other users, etc... makes budgeting and accounting a lot easier. If there are many users it could in a best case scenario even tell you if you'd have shopped at chain X instead of chain Y, you could have saved a couple of dollars.
Does something like this exist nowadays in the iPhone era? If not, that would probably be a good idea with so many people out there with iPhones and cameras (instead of scanners) in their pocket. I've just spend a few hours typing grocery bills into PocketMoney on my iPhone, so the memory about that scanning software came back.
The idea was that the software can be customized to recognize different formats of grocery bills. Basically it would only need one person to create a template for say a Walmart bill, and tell the software where the header starts, where the date is, the total price paid, the list of items, etc. All other users of this software could then use the template all around the country to scan their Walmart bills. The software would tell them what they bought, when, how much they paid, export to accounting software, compare items with other stores and other users, etc... makes budgeting and accounting a lot easier. If there are many users it could in a best case scenario even tell you if you'd have shopped at chain X instead of chain Y, you could have saved a couple of dollars.
Does something like this exist nowadays in the iPhone era? If not, that would probably be a good idea with so many people out there with iPhones and cameras (instead of scanners) in their pocket. I've just spend a few hours typing grocery bills into PocketMoney on my iPhone, so the memory about that scanning software came back.
