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Worked example · A shoebox of receipts

Drop in the receipts already on your Mac.

The photos in Photos › Utilities › Receipts, the PDFs from Mail or Downloads: drop them on the notebook, in the Mac app or in a browser. After a yes of its own, Graphite reads each one as printed, checks it on your device, files it under its year with the original beside it, and adds up each month. A CSV and the originals for your accountant are an export away.

  1. Drop them in
  2. Find them filed
  3. Add them up

Step 1 of 3

Drop them in.

Drop in the receipts already on your Mac — the photos in Photos › Utilities › Receipts, the PDFs from Mail or Downloads. Each is kept in the Inbox as it is.

  1. Drop them in, as they are.

    Drop photos or PDFs anywhere in the notebook outside a note's text, paste them, or choose them with Add files on the Graphite button. Each is kept in the Inbox byte for byte — JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP and HEIC photos, and PDFs, up to 25 MB each — and waits there to be read.

    Keeping them needs no AI key, no account and no network.

Step 2 of 3

Find them filed.

After a yes of its own, Graphite reads each one as printed — merchant, date, total, tax, payment — checks it on your computer, and files it under Receipts by its year, with the original beside it, unchanged. One it can't check waits in the Inbox with one question.

  1. A yes of its own, naming your provider.

    Reading receipts is asked about apart from filing notes. The question names the provider each receipt goes to, says whether it's your key, counts what's waiting, and says that Graphite writes what it reads next to the original, for you to check and change.

    A photo is sent as a smaller JPEG copy without its location, and a PDF as it is. Graphite's server keeps none of it; on OpenRouter, receipts go only to providers that keep nothing. With a free Gemini key, the question says that Google may use what's sent to improve its products; with a DeepSeek key, that DeepSeek stores what's sent in China and may train on it.

    Graphite doesn't send photos or PDFs to DeepSeek or Groq, or PDFs to xAI, to be read. With one of those keys, the receipts wait in the Inbox, which says why and offers a box for the receipt's text, read in its place.

  2. Read as printed, checked on your device.

    Graphite asks for each receipt's merchant, date, total, tax, tip and payment — a card's brand and last four digits, or cash — and a category from a fixed list of twelve. The model is asked to copy each value as printed and to leave out what it can't read, and never to make the numbers agree.

    Then it checks the reading on your device: the parts add up to the total, the tax is no more than the total, the date is a real day that's neither later than tomorrow nor more than ten years old, the currency is one it knows, and it isn't a receipt you already have. A reading that fails a check is read once more. If it still fails, the receipt waits in the Inbox with one question, and you pick or type the right value. Graphite never changes a value to make it fit.

  3. Filed by year, the original beside it.

    A receipt that passes is filed under Receipts by its year — Receipts/2026/2026-10-03 Corner Café.md — with the original moved there beside it, its bytes untouched. The note is plain markdown: its fields in the frontmatter, the original shown at the top, and what's printed as Graphite read it. On the Mac, a HEIC photo also gets a JPEG copy beside it, so other apps can show it.

    Each receipt is one line in the Logbook, with Undo, which puts the original back in the Inbox if you haven't changed the receipt since. Open a receipt and its card shows the original beside its fields: change any of them, and mark it checked. Change its category, or whether it was for work or personal, and Graphite offers to do the same for the receipts it reads from that merchant from then on.

Step 3 of 3

Add them up.

Receipts adds up each month per currency and by category, for Work, Personal or both. Export a CSV and the originals for your accountant, with no key. Ask your notebook what you spent on travel in September, and Graphite adds up the receipts and shows the ones behind the total.

  1. Each month, added up by Graphite.

    Receipts, in the sidebar once there's one, lists them by month, newest first. Each month shows its total in each currency and by category, for Work, Personal or both, and how much of it you haven't checked yet. Graphite adds them up itself, in each currency's smallest unit: the model never produces a total, and amounts in different currencies are never converted or added together.

    Above the months it always says: Totals are sums of what Graphite read and you checked. Graphite isn’t tax software.

  2. A CSV and the originals, for your accountant.

    Export takes what's shown: a CSV with a row for each receipt — date, merchant, total, currency, tax, tip, category, work or personal, payment, what it was for, the original's file, and whether you checked it — and a .zip of the originals, where the CSV says they are. Neither needs an AI key, a subscription or the network.

    In a browser, receipts are kept in that browser: export them, or use the Mac app, to keep them for years.

  3. Ask what you spent.

    Ask your notebook what you spent on travel in September. It sends a line for each receipt the question may be about, never a total, and the model only says which receipts it means: Graphite adds them up, shows the receipts behind the total, and says what it couldn't count.

Not yet

What it doesn’t do yet.

  • No phone app yet: use Graphite in your phone's browser. Receipts stay in that browser unless you export them.
  • No currency conversion: totals are per currency.
  • Graphite isn't tax software. Totals are sums of what Graphite read and you checked.
  • It doesn't collect receipts from your email: save the PDF, then drop it in.
  • It doesn't read a PDF over 2.8 MB: paste the receipt's text instead.
  • In a browser that can't open HEIC photos, it keeps them but doesn't read them: add them as JPEGs, or use the Mac app.
  • No return-by or warranty dates.