Best receipt scanner app in Canada: ten ways to capture receipts, priced and ranked

Dext, at $31.50 a month for 250 documents and 5 users, if a bookkeeper posts your receipts; the capture built into Xero or QuickBooks Online, at no extra cost, if you do your own books; and Float, at $0 per user, if the spending happens on company cards. Those three cover most Canadian small businesses, and many end up with a card tool plus a capture tool.

Hubdoc standalone is $15 CAD a month after a 30-day free trial, with unlimited documents. Xero subscribers do not need it, because Xero includes its own document capture (Hubdoc, labelled Smart Document Capture) on Starter, Standard and Premium. The standalone product mainly suits QuickBooks Online users who want supplier bills fetched and filed for a flat fee.

Hubdoc for filing at the lowest price: $15 a month, unlimited documents, no rules or claims. Dext for a bookkeeper-run business: $31.50 a month, 250 documents, 5 users, supplier rules that remember coding, expense claims, and publishing to Xero, QuickBooks Online or Sage. If someone other than you keeps the books, Dext pays for itself in review time.

The Dext Business plan is $31.50 a month plus GST when billed annually, which is $378 up front, for 250 documents a month and 5 users. Monthly billing costs up to 20% more. Through our link the first 3 months are 90% off, applied when you upgrade after the 14-day trial; there is no promo code, and codes on coupon sites do not work.

Hubdoc at $15 a month for plain filing, Xero or QuickBooks Online built-in capture at no extra cost if you already pay for the ledger, Float at $0 per user if the receipts come from company card spend or staff reimbursements, and Zoho Expense free for up to 3 users if the only job is expense reports. Expensify is a common search but bills in US dollars and is built for US expense reports.

No. The CRA accepts electronic records, including images of paper receipts, provided they are legible and can be produced in a format its software can read. Keep them for six years from the end of the tax year they relate to. A receipt captured into Dext, Xero or QuickBooks with the image attached meets the standard; check the image is readable before discarding the paper.

Not for GST/HST credits over $100. The CRA requires the supplier name, date and amount for every purchase; from $100 it also requires the GST/HST amount and the supplier registration number, and from $500 a description of the goods or services. A statement line shows none of the tax detail, so it does not support the input tax credit on its own.

Xero and QuickBooks Online both include it at no extra charge. Xero reads photos and forwarded emails into draft bills with the tax rate applied and allows unlimited users, but Starter caps bills at 5 a month. QuickBooks reads receipts with Intuit AI and matches them to the bank feed, but EasyStart is a single user. FreshBooks scans receipts from its Plus plan and Wave from Pro, both without rules or approvals.

Dext is the standard for bookkeeper-run businesses and firms because of its supplier rules, one inbox across clients, and publishing to Xero, QuickBooks Online and Sage. Firms price it on separate practice plans. Hubdoc is the lower-cost filing alternative, and Float is increasingly paired with Dext so card spend matches itself.

Float, which is Canadian-built and priced in Canadian dollars: Essentials handles employee reimbursements with mileage and matches receipts to company card spend at $0 per user, and Professional adds multi-level approvals from $100 a month for the first 10 active users, free for 12 months through our link. Zoho Expense is the free fallback for a team of three or fewer that only files expense reports. Both avoid the US-dollar billing that Expensify applies to Canadian customers.

They solve different halves. Float captures spend that happens on Float cards, matching the receipt to a transaction that already exists. Dext captures supplier bills and receipts paid any other way, and applies rules before posting to the ledger. Businesses with staff cards and supplier invoices usually run both; a business with only one kind of spend needs only one.

The good ones extract the tax amount from the receipt and post it to the tax rate you choose in the ledger, which is how the input tax credit reaches the return. Dext extracts the tax per document, Xero applies its tax rate on the drafted bill, QuickBooks tracks sales tax for the CRA, and Float advertises Canadian tax tracking. Provincial detail still depends on the tax rates set up in your accounting software.

Dext, Hubdoc, Zoho Expense, Xero, QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks and Wave all serve Quebec businesses. Ramp is not offered in Quebec. Float states it serves every province, including Quebec, with bill pay and support in English and French. QST handling ultimately sits in the accounting software’s tax rates.

Float Essentials is $0 per user for card spend and staff reimbursements. Xero and QuickBooks Online include capture in plans you already pay for. Zoho Expense is free for up to 3 users with receipt scanning. Wave’s free Starter plan does not include receipts; they arrive on Pro at $25. Hubdoc and Dext offer trials, not free tiers.