Smart Receipts: The Future of Receipting

Receipts are just a part of life, sometimes annoying, something useful scraps of paper that accumulate in the bottom of handbags, pockets and wallets until they are gathered up and disposed of – or stored on the off-chance that they might be needed later, either to claim expenses or to action a guarantee or warranty.

They can sometimes be the cause of annoyance, frustration or even great upset – usually when they get damaged or cannot be found when they are needed for a return or in the event of a dispute.

Current paper receipts are not perfect. They can get lost, being quite small, and they can tear easily, unless carefully stored. Thermal receipts – quite a common feature with many businesses – fade in a fairly short time, and can also be affected by extremes of heat and cold. Holding your receipt down with a cup of coffee can cause the thermal paper to activate, losing the necessary information, while excessive cold can fade the words and numbers even more quickly.

Even if you are careful with your receipts and store them carefully, it can still be a time-consuming and irritating process to hunt down the right receipt when you need it for any reason.

What if there was a different way for receipts to be?

How about paperless receipts that automatically upload to your smartphone or smartwatch, from there bouncing into the cloud for permanent storage? Or at least, storage until they are no longer needed, it would be a simple matter to update the settings so that receipts are only kept for as long as they are relevant.

The technology for this to happen already exists: Bluetooth is already widely used for a variety of purposes while RFID technology, of the sort used for contactless payments would lend itself well to the task of receipt gathering. Using the latter would mean that the device would need to be held close to the till system, as with contactless payments, so there would be no risk that someone else could claim the receipt as their own for nefarious purposes as might happen with Bluetooth and its more widespread range.

For those who are not comfortable with contactless technology, they can still make use of the paperless receipting systems by inputting an email address and gathering your paperless receipts in this way. Another alternative could also be for QR codes to be embedded into paper receipts so that those without immediate access to technology can still make use of online storage options for their paperwork.

With multi-device sign-ins now possible, it will not matter if the device you use to upload the receipts is lost or damaged. The receipts can be stored in the cloud, and retrieved from any device, simply by signing into your account.

Smart receipts can take so much stress and hassle out of daily life, even allowing you to search for the right receipt with keywords or amounts so the right one presents itself in mere seconds of looking. It is the little things that make life comfortable or not – while the smart receipt might not be world shattering, it will change the world for the better in small but noticeable ways.
With multi-device sign ins it won't matter if you lose or break device, just sign in on a bew device and access it through could back up