I discovered receipt apps in June, and I have to say I really love them. The idea is that you take a picture of your receipt when you get home, no matter where it was purchased from, and you're rewarded with a small amount of points. Once you reach a certain amount of points, you can cash out.
ReceiptPal is the easiest between the two that I use, because all I do is take a picture of the receipt. It can be a movie ticket stub, a printed invoice receipt from the doctor's office, or whatever you have to prove that you spent money. Since I already take a minute to sit down and upload my receipts into my rebate apps, it doesn't take much effort to upload them to the receipt app as well.
Another thing I like about ReceiptPal is that they allow you to upload receipts up to 30 days after the date on them. Most apps require you upload purchases or receipts within 7 days, and if you've procrastinated and haven't uploaded them for a few days, you could miss out on some rewards. With ReceiptPal being so flexible, I can not worry about it the instant I get home (although I upload everything as soon as I get home anyway, it's just easier to get it all done while it's fresh in my mind).
There are two catches to using ReceiptPal.
You are required to upload 4 receipts in order to receive points. At the beginning of every week they give you a certain amount of "Receipt Cards" that you can fill with pictures of receipts from Monday to Sunday. Each card can hold 4 receipts. If you end the week with only 3 receipts in a card you can still breathe easy, because they roll over, meaning the first receipt you upload the next week will complete the card and you'll still be paid for it. Each completed card rewards you with 100 points. I believe the rule is that any partially used cards are deleted after a month of no activity (but who doesn't go shopping or buy gas at least once a month?). If I remember correctly, in the first week you are given 5 cards to fill, and in subsequent weeks they give you 3. If you only fill 1 card, the other two will still be there the next week in addition to the 3 new cards for that week, so there is no "use it or lose it" pressure.
After you have used up all your cards, if you still have receipts left over that haven't been uploaded you can still upload them for an entry into their weekly sweepstakes. I personally don't do this. Each receipt I upload gives me an entry anyway, and I can still upload receipts 30 days after the purchase, so why enter a receipt when it's only going to give me a sweepstakes entry when I could just wait until Monday and upload it for points AND a sweepstakes entry? Also, who the heck win's sweepstakes anyway? Just saying, no one I know, and I certainly never have.
The only other catch to using ReceiptPal is that you cannot cash out using PayPal. This is the only app I use that doesn't pay using actual money. Instead, you can decide how to "spend" your points, by choosing gift card options. 400 points (or 16 receipts) will give you a $1.00 Amazon gift card. 2,000 points will give you a $5.00 gift card to the location of your choice from their list of partners. This list includes Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart, Starbucks, CVS/Pharmacy, and Regal, just to name a few. I started using this app in June and tried to be faithful about uploading every receipt. From June until November when I first cashed out, I had enough points to get me $15.00 on amazon, which isn't a lot to brag about, but I was able to use it for Christmas gifts, and it was $15.00 I wouldn't have had otherwise. Also, I received the gift card immediately through email, so I was able to use it within minutes of telling the app I wanted to cash out. That was pretty nice considering we were doing Cyber Monday shopping and didn't have time to wait for a gift card to be physically mailed to us. I'm not sure if they email the gift card code for all of the gift card options, or just for online options such as Amazon. To be honest though, I only ever plan on cashing out through Amazon.
The "price" of your gift card is most expensive at the cheapest denomination, so if you save your points, you can cash out for bigger gift cards than could if you cash out on a regular basis. For example, if I save 7,500 points I can get a $25.00 gift card, but if I were to cash out on the $5.00 gift card every time I hit 2,000, it would actually cost me 10,000 points instead of the 7,500. In other words, it behooves you to save your points and cash out on larger gift cards.
Because it's free and easy and I'm uploading my receipts to other apps anyway, I will definitely continue to use this app. In fact, I have a goal to not spend my points at all next year until the holiday season, just to see how many points I can earn (and then turn around and use that to help offset my Christmas budget). I think I can save enough points to get the $100 gift card. If you start at zero, and earn an average of 300 points per week (because they only give you 3 cards per week and each card is worth 100 points each), then it would take a person about 63 weeks to earn enough points for the $100 gift card. ReceiptPal also gives you an extra card or two during weeks that have holidays (because they know you do more spending than usual, and therefore have more receipts than normal), so if you always fill your cards you could probably do it in 60ish weeks. That means if you always save your points for this payout you could probably earn it once every 14 months. I didn't spend all my points when we did Christmas shopping this season, so considering that I have a head-start, I think I can get there in about 11 months. We'll see! Either way, it's money that I wouldn't have had otherwise!
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