Invoices, receipts & expenses

Handwriting OCR is an AI service that turns handwritten documents into accurate, searchable, editable text. Unlike traditional OCR, which was built for printed text, it is built specifically for handwriting, including cursive, faded ink, historical scripts, and many languages, and it can translate non-English records into English in the same step. Upload a scan or photo and you get back clean text you can search, edit, and export to Word, Markdown, or plain text.

Handwriting OCR was founded in London in 2023, dedicated to applying modern AI to read the hardest handwritten documents: the cursive, faded, and historical pages that traditional OCR cannot handle. We are a small, independent UK team, the people who build the product also handle support, and we never use your documents to train models or share them with anyone.

It reads them well. Handwriting OCR transcribes handwritten and part-printed invoices, receipts, and expense forms, capturing vendor names, dates, line items, and totals as written. It identifies what is on the page without doing your accounting, so a digitized invoice is best treated as a fast, searchable first pass whose figures you check against the original. We do not return confidence scores, so verifying the numbers that matter is a human step by design.

Yes. On the Pro and Business plans, custom extractors let you define the fields you want, such as vendor, date, total, tax, or category, and pull them off invoices and expense forms into a spreadsheet (XLSX, CSV, or JSON). Table extraction does the same for tabular records like ledgers and line-item lists. For pages that mix a printed template with handwriting, transcription keeps the printed prompts and the handwritten answers together so it stays clear what was added by hand.

Not directly. Handwriting OCR hands back text and structured data (XLSX, CSV, or JSON) and offers an API on every plan, so you import the results into your accounting or ERP system, or build your own integration. We do not provide native connectors to accounting software, and we do not post invoices, match purchase orders, or process payments. We turn the handwriting into clean data; what you do with it stays in your systems.

Accuracy depends on how legible the original is. If you can read it, the system usually can, and a clearer scan always helps. Faded thermal receipts and poor phone photos are the hardest cases, so 300 DPI scans (or well-lit, in-focus photos) give the best results. Where a section is too far gone to read with confidence, check it against the original.

Yes. Part-printed invoice pads, delivery notes, and expense forms, where a printed layout is completed by hand, are among the most common documents we see. Transcription keeps the printed prompts and the handwritten entries together so the page stays clear, and custom extractors can pull the handwritten fields you care about into a spreadsheet.

Yes. Handwriting OCR processes handwriting across more than 300 languages and can translate non-English pages into English in the same step, which suits overseas suppliers, travel expenses, and multilingual records. Accuracy on unfamiliar scripts depends on handwriting clarity and script complexity, so testing with a sample page is the best guide for your documents.

Your documents remain private and are processed only to deliver results to you. They are encrypted in transit and at rest, not used to train AI models, not shared with third parties, and not retained longer than you choose (auto-delete is configurable from 15 minutes up to 14 days). Privacy is built into the service design as a fundamental principle, not an optional feature.

For organizations with formal requirements, the Business plan includes a GDPR Data Processing Agreement, a security documentation packet for procurement reviews, team access with admin controls, and audit logging. EU customers can choose EU-only data residency. We do not hold SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification and do not offer HIPAA compliance. If your organization has specific data-protection needs, get in touch and we can talk through exactly how processing works.