How to organize receipts on your phone

A simple way to stop losing receipts: what to keep, what to throw away, how to name and sort them on your phone, and a five-minute monthly routine.

By Memento · Updated 1 November 2026 · 2 min read

Most receipts are useless a week after you get them. A few are worth real money: the ones you need for a return, a warranty, an expense claim or your taxes. The trouble is that they all look the same in a wallet, and the important one is always the one that's missing.

Your phone can fix this, but only if the photos don't disappear into a camera roll of thousands of pictures. Here's how to set it up.

Decide what's worth keeping

You don't need to save every coffee. Keep receipts for:

Anything with a warranty: electronics, appliances, furniture, tools.
Things you might return, until the return window has passed.
Work expenses you'll claim back from an employer or client.
Tax-related spending, if your country lets you deduct it: medical bills, donations, business costs. How long to keep these depends on local tax rules, so check with your tax office.
Big purchases you'd need to prove for insurance after a theft or a fire.

Everything else, groceries, meals, small shopping, can go once you've checked it against your bank statement.

Why the camera roll doesn't work

Taking a photo is the easy part. Finding it again is the problem. In a gallery, a receipt is just one picture among holiday photos and screenshots, with no name, no category and no way to search for "fridge" or "2,450". A year later you scroll for ten minutes and give up.

A receipt only becomes useful when it's saved with the details you'll search for later: the shop, what you bought, the amount and the date.

A simple way to sort them

Keep the categories few and obvious. Five is plenty:

Warranties
Bills
Work expenses
Medical
Everything else worth keeping

If you use folders or file names, a pattern like 2026-10-12 ABC Electronics fridge 849.99 sorts by date and can be searched by shop, item or amount.

Memento: receipts, warranties and bills, rememberedSnap it, and Memento fills in the details, reminds you before dates run out, and backs up to your own Google Drive. Free for Android.Get it free

Capture it before you leave the shop

The receipt that gets lost is the one that went into a pocket "to deal with later". Photograph it at the counter or as soon as you get home, flat on a table, with the whole receipt in the frame. If it's long, take it in two parts and keep both together.

For an expense report or an accountant, you'll often need the receipts as one document. Turn the photos into a single PDF instead of sending fifteen separate images.

Try it: Image to PDFTurn photos of certificates, IDs, receipts or any document into one PDF, under the KB limit you need.

A five-minute monthly routine

Open your bank or card statement for the month.
For every purchase that matters, check you have the receipt saved.
Throw away paper receipts you no longer need, and any whose return window has passed.
Note any warranty end dates or bill due dates coming up next month.

Done every month, this takes minutes. Done once a year, it takes a weekend.

Let your phone do the filing

Memento turns a receipt photo into a searchable record. It reads the shop, the items, the amount and the date, files it in the right category, and finds it again when you type any of them. If the receipt has a warranty or a due date, it reminds you before it runs out.