It’s the prime season for New Years Resolutions. Most people have a list with items scribbled down such as: exercise more, eat better, read books, stop binging on Netflix, save money etc. One of the most common is probably to “stay on the budget”.
Staying on the budget is hard enough, but what I find really challenging is buying groceries at multiple stores (because some have better produce, other better selection, yet another have really great seafood). Now comes the time when you take the receipts and try to tally up, compare prices and generally have an idea where did the money go!
“Before presenting a problem, make sure you have a solution.” OK, challenge accepted!
There are several websites and apps specializing in transcribing receipts. Task which is generally time consuming, therefore expensive.
Someone once said to me: “Before presenting a problem, make sure you have a solution.” OK, challenge accepted!
In last few days, I have been trying to figure out best ways to extract text from these pesky receipts; OCR is inaccurate, transcribing takes too much time, etc. This is when I noticed a barcode on the bottom of the receipt. I know that barcode can’t really hold enough information, so my thoughts shifted to QR Code (abbreviated from Quick Response Code)
QR Code can store up to 7,089 numeric characters or 4,296 alphanumeric characters. I haven’t done my research to be sure, but something tells me that most receipts’ item list combined with price and quantity would be less than 4,296 characters. This entire article has 2,088 characters in it.
Next challenge: convince grocery stores or POS (Point of Sale) equipment manufacturers to embed a QR code on every receipt. Most POS out there don’t have this capability right now, but I am sure that some smart people out there could write code to encode shopping list into a QR code. This way, everyone who wants to have the information from the receipt in electronic version wouldn’t have to bother with transcribing it.
Let’s simplify our lives, one receipt at a time! Happy New Year!
