A receipt looks trivial. It isn’t. Put a year of them together and you have a detailed map of someone’s life: where they go, when, how much they earn and spend, what they eat, what medications they buy, where they travel. Some cloud-scanning workflows can send this data to a remote service as soon as you take a photo.
PKTD is built the other way around. Here’s why that matters.
The hidden cost of “free” cloud scanning
When a receipt app uploads your images to its servers, a few factors deserve attention:
- Your spending history then lives on a third party’s computer and depends on its security measures, incident handling, and business model.
- Receipt images often contain partial card numbers, names, and locations — sensitive by anyone’s definition.
- Cloud data can be retained, analyzed, or shared under practices you should verify in the provider’s privacy policy.
These risks do not mean every service behaves the same way. They make it worth checking what is uploaded, why, and for how long instead of relying only on a general privacy promise.
What “on-device” and “local-first” actually mean
On-device means the heavy lifting — reading the text off your receipt — happens on your iPhone using Apple’s built-in Vision OCR, not on a remote server. Local-first means your receipts, categories, and totals are stored on your device by default, not in a company database.
With PKTD specifically:
- Receipt images are not sent to PKTD or OpenAI for AI parsing.
- Text is extracted on device; image metadata like GPS is stripped before the processed image is saved.
- Your ledger lives locally by default. If you enable sync, data can go through your private iCloud; exports and sharing can also move data off-device.
”But doesn’t AI need the cloud?”
On-device OCR reads receipt text whether or not you use optional AI. If you enable optional AI parsing and consent, PKTD sends redacted receipt text for cloud processing as part of the normal scan flow. The receipt image is not sent.
That design gives you a choice: use on-device OCR without optional cloud AI, or consent to cloud AI suggestions for structured fields while keeping receipt images out of AI parsing.
Privacy is a tax feature too
There’s a practical upside beyond peace of mind. Because records are stored on your device by default, you can keep organized receipts accessible without depending only on a third party. CRA generally requires records and supporting documents to be kept for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to, but exceptions can require a different or longer period. GST/HST records have similar general retention requirements, with exceptions depending on the record and circumstances.
The bottom line
You shouldn’t have to trade your financial privacy for a tidy expense list. On-device, local-first scanning gives you both.
See how PKTD works or download it on the App Store — receipt images remain local by default, while optional AI, iCloud, exports, and sharing follow the boundaries described above.
This article describes PKTD’s privacy-first design in general terms. For exactly what is and isn’t processed, read our privacy policy.