When to use web upload vs other paths
Web upload is the right path when you have files already saved locally — PDF invoices a vendor emailed you, scans you've made before, screenshots of receipts, exported invoices from a portal. For everything that arrives by email, prefer email forwarding (one-shot setup, no manual upload step). For physical receipts on the go, use your phone — see scan with the mobile app.
The three paths produce identical documents in the system; pick whichever needs the fewest taps for your situation. Most teams settle into a mix: forwarding for digital invoices, phone camera for physical receipts, web upload for batches and PDF exports from portals.
The walk-through
The easy path: drag and drop
Drag any file from your desktop, downloads folder, an email attachment, or even another browser tab and drop it onto the TaxItEasy app. An upload zone appears as soon as you start dragging — you can drop on any page, not just the Documents page. The drop overlay shows you exactly where to release.
Multi-select works the same way: select 30 files in Finder or Explorer, drag the whole selection, drop, done. Each file gets its own progress bar. The upload itself takes a couple of seconds per file on a decent connection; the AI extraction that follows takes another 30–60 seconds per document and runs in the background, so you don't have to wait.
The button path: Documents → Upload
If drag-and-drop isn't an option (browser limitation, accessibility, kiosk mode), open the Documents page and click Upload in the top right. The file picker opens; pick one or many files. From here the flow is identical to drag-and-drop.
Tracking progress
Each file shows:
- Upload progress bar (small, completes in a couple of seconds).
- Processing badge (virus scan + content-type check, sub-second usually).
- Extracting spinner (the AI step — typically 30–60s for a clean invoice, sometimes 2 minutes for a multi-page PDF or a heavily formatted statement).
- Done — the document opens with all extracted fields visible, and you get an in-app notification.
You can navigate away while extraction is running. The status is sticky — return to the Documents page anytime to see what's still processing.
Supported formats and limits
We accept the formats below and verify the actual file bytes, not just the extension. A .pdf that's really a renamed .txt will be rejected with invalid file type.
- PDF — single page or multi-page. The whole PDF is treated as one document; line items are extracted across pages.
- JPG / JPEG — phone photos, scans saved as JPEG, screenshots.
- PNG — screenshots most commonly; also fine for scans.
- HEIC — iPhone's default photo format. We convert internally; no extra step on your side.
Other formats (DOCX, XLSX, EML, TIFF, BMP, GIF, WebP) are not accepted. For DOCX/XLSX invoices, print to PDF first. For EML email files, use email forwarding instead — that's exactly what it's for.
Max size: 20 MB per file. Bigger files get rejected with a clear message and a suggestion to split or re-export. Most phone photos and PDF invoices come in well under that limit. If a vendor sends you a 40 MB scanned PDF, open it in Preview / Adobe and export at lower resolution before uploading.
Quantity per upload: no hard cap. You can drag in 100 files at once. The only ceiling is your plan's monthly document count.
Plan limits (per calendar month): Free 10, Starter 30, Business 75, Growth 200. Resets on the 1st. See understanding your document counter for what counts toward the limit and what doesn't.
For the formats list in one place, see supported file types and sizes.
What happens after upload
The AI takes over and produces:
- Vendor name, address, VAT ID (if visible on the invoice)
- Invoice number, invoice date, due date
- Net, VAT, gross totals plus VAT rate
- Currency (auto-converted to your base currency for multi-currency users at live ECB rates)
- Line items: quantity, unit, price, line total
- A suggested category (e.g. Office supplies, Travel, Software)
Each field carries a confidence score. Anything above 70% is auto-applied; lower-confidence fields are highlighted yellow and ask for your confirmation. See what the AI reads, and how to correct it for the correction flow.
Troubleshooting
My upload failed with invalid file type. We checked the file's real bytes and they don't match what its extension claims. Most commonly this is a renamed image, a corrupted PDF, or a document saved as the wrong format. Open the original in its native app and re-export as PDF or JPG. If that doesn't help, see upload failed — troubleshooting.
My file is over 20 MB. Three options: (1) open the PDF in Preview / Adobe and re-save with lower image quality (usually drops 50–80% with no visible loss for invoices); (2) split the PDF into separate pages and upload each as one document — they'll show up separately; (3) for very long bank statements that are honest 30+ MB documents, request the same data as a CSV from your bank instead — most banks export CSVs that are kilobytes.
Upload counter went up but the document doesn't appear. The file passed the size check, failed the content scan or virus scan, and was rejected after the counter incremented. The document doesn't count against your quota in this case — refresh the Documents page after a minute and the counter will be correct.
I uploaded the same file twice. We detect duplicates by file hash. The second upload shows a duplicate detected notice, links to the existing document, and is not counted against your quota. The duplicate-detector is exact-match only; if you re-export the same invoice with a different PDF generator, the hashes differ and we'd treat them as separate documents (you'd see the same vendor + amount in both).
The upload finished but extraction is stuck on "Extracting…" for 5+ minutes. Rare but possible for very long multi-page PDFs or files where the OCR pipeline can't read any text (corrupted PDF, all-blank scans). After 10 minutes the pipeline times out and marks the document Extraction failed. From the document detail page you can click Re-scan to retry up to 3 times. If it keeps failing, write to [email protected] with the document ID; we'll look at it.
Drag-and-drop doesn't trigger anything on my browser. Firefox with strict mode or Brave with shields-up can suppress the file-drag handler. Either lower the shield for app.taxiteasy.org or use the Upload button on the Documents page — same end result.
I want to upload a folder. Browser file pickers don't have a "pick folder" option for security reasons. Open the folder, select-all the files inside (Cmd+A / Ctrl+A), and drag the selection. That works the same way.
Related
- Scan with the mobile app — for physical receipts and on-the-go
- Set up email forwarding — the no-upload path for emailed invoices
- What does the AI read, and how do I correct it? — after upload, before approve
- Supported file types and sizes — the full format reference
- Upload failed — troubleshooting — when something goes wrong