Scan receipts and split costs in your household

By Epidot Solutions AB Published March 27, 2026

Money is one of the biggest sources of friction between people who share a household, and it is rarely the big one-off purchases that do the damage. It is the recurring stuff: the weekly shop, the small outlays, the things nobody quite keeps track of. A survey by US investment firm Fidelity found that 58 percent of couples feel they do not contribute equally to household finances, that nearly one in four say the imbalance affects their relationship, and that almost half avoid money conversations to head off an argument. US research even points to arguments about money as the single strongest predictor of divorce, stronger than income, debt or net worth. And most of it is everyday spending: the average US household spent $6,053 on groceries alone in 2023 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Meanwhile the receipt itself, the one honest record of what was actually bought, is almost built to disappear. Thermal receipts may begin to fade in as few as six months, according to the US National Archives (NARA), and the paper is chemical-coated: the EU restricted bisphenol A (BPA), a suspected endocrine disruptor, in receipt paper from 2 January 2020, and its replacement BPS is suspected to affect the hormone system too (European Chemicals Agency). The slip in your pocket is at once the most honest record you have and the worst possible place to keep it.

Two simple habits fix most of it: capture the receipt the moment you get it, before memory and the paper both fail, and keep a shared, fair tally of who owes whom until the debt is settled. Those are exactly the two things EpiHem does, and what this guide walks through. EpiHem does not promise to save you money or to fix a relationship. But it takes the bookkeeping friction out of shared spending and makes it visible and honest.

The receipt is the honest source

Most households split costs backwards: at the end of the month, someone tries to remember who paid for the groceries in week two, scrolls through the banking app and estimates the rest. The problem is not dishonesty, it is that memory is bad at small amounts. What actually cost 342 becomes "about three hundred", and ten such roundings in the same direction add up to a skewed split that nobody can quite put their finger on.

The receipt has none of those problems. It records the store, the date, every item and exactly what it cost, from the start. If you split based on the receipt instead of on memory, the whole discussion about what was actually bought and what it cost simply disappears. The one catch is that the paper does not last, as we saw above, so the trick is to get the receipt into something that does last while it is still readable. That is where scanning comes in.

Everything you share, in one place

In EpiHem every receipt lands in the Receipts view. Each one sits as a card with its amount, tags and, if it has been allocated to projects, how many it counts toward. At the foot of the card is whatever is still open, for example what someone owes, with a button to settle up. Receipts that need your attention, one to review or a debt to settle, are grouped together so nothing slips through.

That is the whole point of keeping receipts in the app rather than in your wallet: you see the sum of everything and who owes whom, not one loose slip at a time.

Scan the receipt, let EpiHem read the lines

Adding a receipt takes a few seconds. You photograph it in the app, pick an image from your gallery or choose a PDF, and EpiHem reads the text and separates it: store, date and total set apart, and each product line on its own row, with description, quantity, unit price and line total. That line breakdown is what sets a real receipt scanner apart from merely saving a picture of the receipt.

No scan is perfect, and EpiHem does not pretend otherwise. Uncertain lines are flagged so you can see where something may have gone wrong and correct the description, quantity or price directly. A long receipt you photograph in sections, up to four images, read together as one. And if the receipt is faded or creased, you can add a close-up and let the AI re-interpret the lines, an enhancement you can undo if it did not help.

Split the cost, see who owes whom, and settle up

Once the receipt is in, you divide the cost. There are three ways: split equally between the people involved, enter exact amounts when someone put their own items on the belt, or no split at all when the purchase is only yours. If you choose exact amounts, the split has to add up to the receipt total, so nothing goes missing along the way.

Just as important is who paid, because that decides which way the debt points. If Anna paid the EUR 320 Bauhaus receipt and they split it equally, John owes her half. If the purchase was made from a shared household account instead, there is often no debt to record at all. The payments are listed under the receipt, and when John has paid his share, you tap Settle, either for the single receipt or for all debts with one person at once. A receipt can also be allocated to a project, in whole, as a percentage or as a fixed amount, so the expense counts toward the project's budget, and linked to a list. The same receipt can be split across several projects at once, and anything you leave out stays unallocated.

See where the money went

Over time the receipts become more than individual purchases. In the Statistics view you see where the money actually went, for example by tag: a donut chart of the spending and comparison bars that show whether it was groceries, the renovation or something else that ran away with the month. It is not there to judge, but to save you from guessing.

The statistics, which do the adding up and comparing over time, are part of EpiHem Premium, as are the scanning and splitting, with one subscription covering the whole household.

It is all on your phone, where you actually scan

Receipts make the most sense on your phone, because that is where you actually scan: at the checkout, the moment the receipt lands in your hand. You take the photo, the lines appear, and you can drop the paper straight away, before it starts to fade at the bottom of a pocket.

Everything lives in the app and on the web, so whoever did the shopping on the way home and whoever is at the desk see the same receipts, the same balance and the same split.

Getting started

Receipt scanning, expense splitting and statistics are part of EpiHem Premium, where one subscription covers the whole household rather than a fee per person. When you want to stop guessing and start from the receipt instead, this is where you begin.

More on how receipts and statistics work is on the feature pages. If you are following up the weekly shop it ties into meal planning, and if the outlays belong to a renovation, the guide on how to plan a renovation shows how to gather them into a project. To see how EpiHem compares with other apps for households, read our comparison of household apps. Coming from a dedicated expense-splitting app? See how EpiHem works as a Splitwise alternative.

The figures in this guide were verified in July 2026.

Common questions

Can EpiHem scan receipts and split the cost?

Yes. EpiHem does both steps in the same app: you photograph the receipt, the line items are read automatically, and the cost is split equally or with exact amounts per person. The app then keeps track of who owes whom until the debt is settled. Some dedicated expense apps also take receipt photos, but usually as a plain image, without reading the receipt line by line.

Do you have to scan every receipt?

No. Scan the receipts that should be split or followed up, and skip the rest. In EpiHem you can also add a receipt manually without a photo: enter the store, date, amount and currency, and it can be split just like a scanned receipt. If you tag and scan all your receipts, though, the statistics give a fuller picture of where the money actually goes, so it comes down to how closely you want to follow your household's finances.

What if the app misreads the receipt?

Uncertain lines are flagged so you can see where something may have gone wrong, and you can correct the description, quantity and price directly. For faded or long receipts there is AI enhancement: add a close-up photo and the lines are re-interpreted, and you can undo the enhancement if it did not help.

Does it work with receipts in different currencies?

Yes. In EpiHem every receipt has its own currency, and debts are kept separate per currency. A receipt in euros and one in dollars become two separate debts; nothing is converted and no exchange rates are guessed.

Is receipt scanning free in EpiHem?

No. Receipt scanning, expense splitting and statistics are part of EpiHem Premium, where one subscription covers the whole household rather than a fee per person.