Photos in, data out: forms, receipts, whiteboards

Use it when you have a paper receipt, a form, a label or a whiteboard and want its contents as rows in a spreadsheet.

Not when a small error would cost something and you have no time to check each field. Typing it yourself is then faster than checking a bad extraction.

You need a phone camera, a spreadsheet, an assistant that accepts images and about 19 minutes for one receipt. Cover or crop card numbers and ID numbers before you share a photo: What not to paste.

Steps

The steps and times are our suggestion.

The prompts

For step 3, attach the photo and paste this:

This photo shows <DOCUMENT_TYPE>. Transcribe it exactly, line by line, in
the same order and layout. Copy every number, date and name as printed. Do
not correct, calculate or tidy anything. If you cannot read something, write
[?] in its place and do not guess. At the end, say how many lines you read
and list every [?].

Replace the following:

• <DOCUMENT_TYPE>: a shop receipt, a paper form, a label or a whiteboard.

For step 4, in the same chat:

Use only the transcription below. Make a table with these columns:
<COLUMNS>
Copy values exactly as transcribed. Leave a cell empty when the transcription
has no value for it, and list every empty cell at the end. Do not add up,
work out or fill in any figure.
Transcription:
<TRANSCRIPTION>

Replace the following:

• <COLUMNS>: your columns from step 1, such as date, shop, item, quantity, amount.
• <TRANSCRIPTION>: the transcription from step 3, with the [?] marks left in.

For step 5, put this in a spare cell of the spreadsheet:

=ROUND(SUM(<LINE_AMOUNTS>)+<TAX_CELL>+<TIP_CELL>-<PRINTED_TOTAL_CELL>,2)

Replace the following:

• <LINE_AMOUNTS>: the range holding the line amounts, such as D2:D5.
• <TAX_CELL>, <TIP_CELL> and <PRINTED_TOTAL_CELL>: the cells holding the tax, the tip and the printed total, such as D6, D7 and D8. Use 0 if there is no tip.

A result of 0 means the lines add up to the printed total.

A worked example (illustrative)

Femi photographs a shop receipt with four lines: 12.50, 8.75, 3.20 and 4.40. Tax is 2.31 and the printed total is 31.16. The lines add up to 28.85, and with tax that is 31.16, so the check cell reads 0. If the model had read 8.75 as 6.75, the lines and tax would add up to 29.16 against a printed 31.16. The check cell would show minus 2.00, which tells Femi to look for a line that was read 2.00 too low. The numbers are invented.

How to tell it worked

• The check cell reads 0, and you matched each total, date and name to the photo.
• The table keeps the file name of the photo, so you can find the source later.
• It has failed if the sums are off and you accepted the table anyway. Go back to step 6.

Variations

• A whiteboard. Step 4 becomes owner | action | due date, with a date only where one is written, and every [?] listed. Read every item if the actions will be given to people.
• A paper form. Do step 6 for every field before you submit. For tax, medical and legal forms, a qualified person decides what the form means.

Limits

OpenAI's help page for data analysis warns that ChatGPT "may not reliably extract exact values from image-based tables, scanned files, or files with complex visual layouts" (OpenAI help, vendor documentation). That is why step 6 reads each number that matters.

Sources

1. OpenAI, Help page: Data analysis with ChatGPT. Vendor documentation. Link.

Changes

1. v1.010 Oct 2026first version