Reviewing an unclear receipt

Some receipts are easy. Others are faded, cropped, in another language, or missing the one thing you need. This article explains what to do in the review screen when the document is unclear. The examples use the sample workspace, Example Company. No tax or legal advice.

Start with the source, not a number.

When a receipt is unclear, the temptation is to fix the numbers until they look plausible. Do the opposite: keep the original attached and let it be the reference.

1. Open the receipt in Review receipt. The original appears on the left and the extracted fields on the right.
2. Check the fields you can verify: supplier, reference, date, currency and gross amount. In the sample, that is North Studio, DEMO-101, 28 October 2026, GBP and £120.00.
3. If the image is too poor to read a value, do not type a guess. Leave the field unconfirmed.
4. If the document is a duplicate of one you already have, use the duplicate check and keep a single record.

The extraction is a suggestion. A label such as "Human review needed" means exactly that: a person decides, not a confidence score.

Make missing information actionable.

Unclear usually means something specific is missing. Name it, then ask for it.

Send the question from the record itself so the reply is linked to the same expense. In the sample, EXP-103 (Office Co, £235.00) is marked as needing information because the purpose is missing. The question goes to the person responsible, and the answer stays on EXP-103.

Do not create a second expense to replace an unclear one. Fix or complete the original so there is one trail.

Keep decisions separate from payments.

An unclear receipt can make people hesitate to approve, or approve and pay in the same step to get it off the list. Keep the states apart.

• A request can be approved while still unpaid.
• A payment can settle several invoices.
• A reimbursement can settle an employee claim without adding another purchase.

If a receipt is unclear and payment is not confirmed, you can leave the payment state as unconfirmed and still progress the review. If the approver needs the missing answer first, the request waits for it, and everyone can see why.

When an AI assistant helps, it can prepare a summary or a draft question, but it works within your permissions, shows you what it would change and does not approve or pay on its own. If AI is unavailable, the same steps work with the manual tools.

Review the reporting basis.

Before you finish, check how the record will be reported. For an unclear receipt this matters more, because a wrong date or currency quietly moves a cost into the wrong period.

• Confirm the date shown on the original, not the date you uploaded it.
• Confirm the currency. If it is not GBP, keep the original currency and let the conversion be shown, rather than overwriting the amount.
• Confirm the category and project, such as Software subscriptions for the sample.
• Check which status includes the item in a report.

If you cannot establish a value, report the item with its unknown clearly marked, or leave it out of the report until the question is answered. Either way, say which you did.

A short routine for unclear receipts

Keep the original, confirm only what you can verify, mark the rest as unknown, ask one specific question of one named person, and keep the answer on the same record. Then move on to the next document. Returning to an unclear receipt once, with the answer in hand, is faster than reworking it several times.

When to ask for help

If a receipt still cannot be resolved, for example the supplier cannot be identified or the document looks altered, pass it to the person responsible for the workspace or to your accountant. If you are stuck in the product itself, contact us and tell us which screen you were on.