How to scan receipts before they fade
Most receipts are thermal-printed, and thermal print fades — often within months if the receipt lives in a wallet or a sunny car. If a receipt matters for an expense report, a tax deduction or a warranty claim, the reliable version is the scan you make this week, not the paper itself.
Scanning crumpled little slips
Flatten the receipt with your hand and shoot it against a contrasting background. Receipts are narrow, so fill the frame vertically. Auto-detection handles slight curls; for a badly crumpled slip, drag the corners manually — perspective correction still flattens the image even when the paper itself would not cooperate.
Make the numbers survive
Use Document mode for receipts: faded gray thermal print gets pushed toward black, and the background lightens to white, which often makes a half-faded receipt more readable in the scan than in your hand. Check that the total, date and merchant name are legible before saving — those are the fields that matter to accountants and tax offices.
A filing habit that takes ten seconds
Name files by date and merchant (2026-09-01-officeworld.jpg), or batch a month of receipts into one PDF per month. The habit that works is the one you do at the moment of purchase: scan it before the receipt enters the wallet. With a browser scanner there is no app to launch, which lowers the friction enough to actually do it.