Receipt Wranglers / Plenty of smartphone apps let you digitize that overwhelming pile of paper receipts you need come tax season. These three go further, by organizing electronic and printed records alike

 Laura Moser for the Wall St. Journal writes: 3 Apps  let you digitize that overwhelming pile of paper receipts you need come tax season. These three go further, by organizing electronic and printed records alike

Cyber Shopaholic's Best Friend:  OneReceipt /  Like nearly all receipt-organizing apps, OneReceipt allows you to "scan" a receipt by photographing it with your smartphone camera. Its standout feature, however, is a must-have for those who do a scandalous amount of shopping online: The service pulls email receipts from a Gmail or Yahoo Mail account and arranges them into one convenient dashboard, sorted chronologically. (Warning: Scrolling through three years of Zappos.com transactions can be horrifying.) The service separates out each purchased item on both electronic and printed receipts, too. So if, say, a Target receipt includes both printer toner and gummy worms, you can easily tag one as a business expense and the other as personal. We especially appreciated the monthly spending summaries that OneReceipt emailed as well as its "return alerts," which reminded us to hurry up and decide on those sandals we ordered. Available for iOS only. Free, onereceipt.com

The Outsourced Solution:  Shoeboxed  /  True, photographing receipts with your phone is a lot easier than feeding them into a scanner. But when you're faced with a whole month (or year) of crumpled papers, even this task can be daunting. With Shoeboxed's premium plans, you can mail even your most wrinkled receipts to the service's Durham, N.C., office to have them scanned and verified by a human being. Premium plans start at $10 per month for up to 50 scans. For subscribers with a $30-per-month plan or higher, Shoeboxed will also provide a Netflix-inspired postage-paid envelope. Like OneReceipt, Shoeboxed can also process e-receipts, but you have to find the emails and forward them to a special Shoeboxed address. Although that approach isn't as convenient as OneReceipt's, it's great if you're uneasy giving a company access to your private correspondence. Available for Android and iOS. Free, shoeboxed.com

  
 Virtual Accountant:   Expensify /  Aimed primarily at businesses, Expensify goes beyond basic receipt management: It also simplifies the process of logging billable hours and, with the help of your smartphone's GPS, exact mileage for business-related travel. What's more, it helps decipher and arrange those mountains of credit-card charges at year's end. One particularly indispensable feature, "Guaranteed eReceipts," generates tamperproof and traceable electronic documentation (key for IRS auditors) of most credit-card and bank transactions under $75, once you link your accounts on Expensify's website. (The IRS doesn't require paper receipts for purchases under that amount, provided you keep "timely and accurate records.") For a small fee, Expensify will also match paper receipts with their corresponding credit-card charge to make it easier to reconcile accounts. Available for Android, BlackBerry iOS and Windows Phone. Free, expensify.com