Forty receipts from a business trip, each a PDF, all in different formats. You need them as one Excel row each for the expense report — date, vendor, amount, currency, category.
Do it once cleanly and it takes ten minutes.
Convert each receipt individually
Drop each receipt into Flint's PDF to Excel one at a time. Each conversion gives you the receipt's line items as a small table. For most expense workflows, you only care about the total, vendor and date — the line items are noise.
If you have many receipts, a batch flow (via API or paid tier) saves clicks. For a typical trip's worth, the manual approach is fine.
Build the master sheet
Create one Excel workbook with columns: Date, Vendor, Description, Amount, Currency, Category. Copy the relevant fields from each converted receipt into a row. Total at the bottom with SUM (or SUMIF by currency).
If you receive receipts in different currencies, add an exchange-rate column and a converted-amount column. Most companies want the report in your home currency for reimbursement.
OCR for photo receipts
Many "receipt PDFs" are actually photos saved as PDF. OCR handles them, with accuracy depending on photo quality. Receipts on thermal paper degrade quickly — the older the receipt, the lower the OCR accuracy.
For critical receipts, photograph in good light and as flat as possible. If you have the choice, ask vendors for email receipts (always cleaner than photos).
Skip Excel for very short trips
If you have five receipts, don't bother with conversion. Open each PDF, copy the total, paste into Excel. Faster than running through a converter for each one. PDF-to-Excel earns its place when there's a lot of structure to extract — or many receipts in the same format that you can batch.
FAQ
Can I batch convert receipts?
Via the API, yes. The browser flow handles one at a time, which is fine for a trip's worth but slow for a year's worth.
Will VAT/sales tax be separated?
Receipts that itemise tax break it out as its own column. Ones that don't show only the gross total — you'd need to calculate manually.
What about expense management tools?
Most (Expensify, SAP Concur) accept PDF directly and do their own extraction. Converting to Excel is for people who want to control their own categorisation.
Photo or PDF — which converts better?
PDF-of-a-photo and direct-photo OCR perform similarly. A genuine email receipt (text PDF) converts much better than either.
Forty receipts, one sheet. Convert your receipt PDFs to Excel and get reimbursed faster.