Tidy Orders

Upload tutorial

Use the Upload tab in Tidy Orders

The Upload tab is the one place to bring any purchase artifact into Tidy Orders — a phone photo of a receipt, a screenshot from a vendor's order page, a paste from your clipboard, or a full multi-page PDF statement. Every file flows through the same parser, so the result lands consistently in your review queue.

Tutorial 5 min read Updated June 28, 2026
Goal: get receipts, screenshots, and statements into Tidy Orders in the format that's easiest for you in the moment — without thinking about which "type" of upload you're doing.

What the Upload tab accepts

The same drop zone handles all of these:

Receipt photos JPG, PNG, WEBP, or HEIC from your phone. Crooked angles and crumpled paper are fine.
Screenshots Order confirmation pages, app screenshots, or anything you can capture from your screen.
PDF statements Bank, credit card, and vendor statements — multi-page PDFs are read end to end.

Behind the scenes every file is sent to the same vision parser, which extracts each line item and then runs it through Tidy Orders' classification pipeline (your vendor memory, your rules, and AI as a fallback).

On desktop: drop, paste, or pick

  1. Open Upload from the sidebar.
  2. Drag files from Finder/Explorer onto the dashed drop zone, or click the zone to open a file picker. You can pick up to 12 files at once.
  3. Already have something on your clipboard? Just press ⌘V / Ctrl+V anywhere on the page — useful for screenshots you just took with Cmd+Shift+4 or the Snipping Tool.
  4. Review the queued files. Each tile shows a thumbnail (or a PDF icon) and a small ✕ to remove it before parsing.
  5. Click Parse N files. You'll watch each tile flip from "Parsing…" to a green checkmark with the count of transactions extracted.
Tip: a batch can mix file types. Drop two receipt photos and a PDF statement together — they all parse in the same run.

On mobile: snap and go

The Upload tab switches to a thumb-reach layout on phones. One primary Add photo button at the bottom opens your camera or photo library, and each photo you add appears in a list with a live "Reading receipt…" status.

  1. Tap Add photo.
  2. Take a new photo, or pick one (or several) from your library.
  3. Wait a few seconds — Tidy Orders extracts the line items and shows "N transactions added" on the row.
  4. Tap Add another to keep capturing, or Review in queue to jump to anything that needs your attention.

What happens after a file is parsed

Every extracted transaction goes through the same classification pipeline as your bank and email imports:

  • Vendor memory — if you've classified this vendor before, the same category is applied.
  • Your rules — anything matching a rule you set is applied automatically.
  • AI fallback — for everything else, Tidy Orders proposes a category with a confidence score.

High-confidence results (≥ 90%) are auto-approved and skip the queue. Anything less confident lands in Review Queue with the proposed category pre-filled.

The success card on the Upload page tells you exactly which is which — for example, "5 classified automatically · 2 waiting for your review."

The original file is kept

Every successful upload is stored in the Receipt Vault and linked to the transactions it produced. Open any transaction's detail view to see the original image or PDF — handy at tax time when an auditor asks for the source document.

If you ever hit the storage cap, Tidy Orders will tell you on the Upload tab rather than silently dropping a file.

Troubleshooting

  • Nothing extracted? The image may be too dark or cropped. Re-shoot with the full receipt in frame, then re-upload.
  • Wrong category? Edit it in Review Queue. The fix is saved to your vendor memory, so the next upload from that vendor lands correctly.
  • HEIC files not displaying? They still parse, but some browsers can't render the thumbnail. The data is intact.
  • Big PDF? Multi-page statements are supported natively — give it a few extra seconds.