Pointline product
Snap, extract, categorize.
An in-house v1 for contractors and small operators who need receipts captured fast - phone camera, OCR, structured categorization, and a tax-ready export. Built end-to-end at Pointline.
- Status
- Built v1
- Surface
- Mobile-first PWA
- Capture time
- <4 seconds
The opportunity
Receipts get photographed and forgotten.
Contractors and small operators photograph receipts and stuff them in a notes app. At tax time it's all manual - re-typing, categorizing, reconciling. Existing apps either gate the basics behind a subscription or feel like clunky enterprise expense tools that miss the "I'm in my car" use case entirely.
The mark
ReceiptSnap
Designed end-to-end
The approach
Build the smallest useful v1.
Open the camera, snap, extract amount/date/vendor/category, save. No login required for the first capture. Categorization defaults to common tax buckets and learns from corrections. Export at tax time as a clean CSV or send straight to a bookkeeper.
Brand system
Built on a calm, branded surface
The app should be done before you've put your wallet away.
Process
How it came together
- 01
Discovery
Watched how contractors actually capture receipts in the wild - gas station, lunch, hardware store.
- 02
Product architecture
Built around speed - minimum taps to capture, defer everything that's not snap-and-store.
- 03
Design + build
Mobile-first UI, camera surface, OCR pipeline, lightweight backend.
- 04
Internal release
Used at Pointline for our own expense tracking - the v1 sprint shape for this category.
Where it stands
Validated as a sprint reference.
Built and running internally. Validated the speed-first thesis - average capture time under 4 seconds, end-to-end. Available as the reference shape for Pointline product sprints in this category.
What we delivered
Four main things.
Brand & visual system
Calm, utility-first identity - built for a tool you open mid-task and close fast.
Mobile-first UX
One-handed flows, camera-led entry point, defer-everything-else principle.
Frontend (PWA + camera)
Installs from a link, opens straight to camera, works offline.
Backend + OCR pipeline
Vision model integration, structured extraction, category learning, CSV export.
What's inside
Product capabilities.
Camera-first capture
Opens straight to camera, no login needed for the first snap.
OCR + categorization
Vendor, amount, date, and tax category extracted in one pass.
Tax-ready export
One-tap export to CSV or bookkeeper handoff at tax time.
Correction learning
Categories adapt to how you actually file - not to a generic taxonomy.
Surface tour
Next
Brand and site for safe COBOL modernization.
z/Evolve · Brand + Site