
Review of Lemon, Which Turns Paper Receipts Into Digital Versions - donohoe
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/lemon-turns-paper-receipts-into-digital-versions/?src=twr
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driverdan
Why doesn't Mint introduce this to their service? Having financial info in the
same place as my digital receipts just makes sense. It would also allow better
classification of purchases.

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jsdalton
Agreed. This would make a better killer feature of Mint than it does a
standalone product.

For now I'll sit around wishing Mint would acquire them.

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drewda
Wishing Intuit would acquire them, right?

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jsdalton
Yes, thanks for the clarification.

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blahedo
This stood out:

> _Lemon’s name is derived, he says, from a Web site address he had purchased
> years ago; it made sense for this venture, he said, because it’s easy to
> remember and it reflects the process of making the “lemonade” of digital
> receipts out of the “lemons” represented by paper versions._

My initial reaction was that this seemed like a terrible way to choose a brand
name; then I thought, is it really any worse than anything else? (The
justification is a little iffy, though. Better just to say it doesn't really
mean anything at all...)

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xbryanx
I can't get over the extremely negative connotation I have with the word
lemon. Not "lemons," which sound nice and zesty. But a "lemon" which sounds
like a regretted crappy purchase.

~~~
eli
_shrug_

I'm not sure "largest remaining tropical rainforest" is what you want people
buying paper books to be thinking about, but it turned out OK for Amazon

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edash
The IRS, at least, accepts digital copies of receipts:
[http://www.irs.gov/publications/p552/ar02.html#en_US_publink...](http://www.irs.gov/publications/p552/ar02.html#en_US_publink10008576)

I've used Shoeboxed since 2008 to keep all my receipts, so I don't have to
physically store anything. I don't actually _like_ Shoeboxed. However, it
syncs with my accounting application (Outright) and there's no better option
which does this.

I hope Lemon works on their integrations—viewing receipts with a single click
from your accounting application is the killer feature.

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nooneelse
> Mr. Casares says the app is targeted at consumer users; eventually, it may
> seek to make money by selling aggregated, anonymous shopping data compiled
> from its user base to businesses.

How feasible is it for Lemon Inc. to use the receipt data to deduce
information useful for stock bets well ahead of earnings reports and the like?

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thinkcomp
For those who may remember Bling Nation, Lemon is what's left of it. (Wencesao
was the co-founder of Bling Nation and the Lemon app's Android package is
com.blingnation.)

<https://market.android.com/details?id=com.blingnation>

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wccrawford
"Wences Casares, a co-founder of Lemon, said the company checked with 300
merchants and more than 95 percent accepted the picture in the phone, while
the rest requested a printed copy of it."

... It wasn't that long ago that every company required the original receipt.
It's basic fraud prevention.

~~~
sector
I'd like to see a list of accepting/rejecting retailers, because this seems
quite strange to me. A lot of companies use anti-fraud paper and secure inks
to reduce alteration of receipts. I would expect that loss prevention groups
would be less than thrilled with this app.

~~~
eli
Really? I assumed large retailers are pulling up an internal record of the
original purchase when you make a return.

~~~
sector
Many retailers still sync up daily via batch processes creating a race
condition where copies of a real receipt could be used at multiple locations
on the same day.

There are also issues with exception handling processes that dictate what
clerks are to do if there's a problem with a receipt that are likely
exploitable if photo receipts are accepted.

As it stands these holes exist but the harm is reduced by the fact that if you
want a fake receipt, you need the right receipt paper and printing equipment
which basically means that only professional criminals have a shot at
exploiting the problem.

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spacemanaki
I was really excited to try this out, and I just uploaded a receipt. However,
they don't appear to be itemizing the receipts, so for a receipt I happened to
have in my wallet for a lunch with 4 separately priced items, I can only see
the total on the site.

Am I missing something? This is basically useless to me without that feature.
Is there any service that exists right now that supports this? (preferably
with an Android app)

 _edit_

The screenshots on the Android mkt show itemized receipts, so maybe it's a
paid feature. I've emailed support asking about it, but in any case, they
appear to support this or plan to. Nice!

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aidenn0
It seems every week another service comes out that makes me weigh the value of
my privacy. If I used this, Lemon would have a staggering amount of data about
me, but it sounds so darn useful!

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jsherry
Question for those who've used this, how does it handle really long receipts
that don't fit in one picture?

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chollida1
Does anyone know if the government, Canadian in my case, will accept
computerized receipts like this for tax purposes?

90% of the tax documents I keep are receipts. It would be nice to get ride of
most of this stuff.

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rvonkeys
I'm guessing the HN + NYT coverage is making this site run dog slow.

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steverb
Crap. I pitched this idea to about 10 people (other devs) last year and
couldn't get anyone interested in trying it with me.

I obviously need to work on my sales skills.

