Add Receipt OCR to Your Lovable.dev App in 5 Minutes

The problem: AI builders don't read crumpled receipts

Tools like Lovable.dev are remarkable at generating apps — but they stop at the file boundary. You can build a beautiful expense upload interface in minutes, yet the actual extraction of merchant names, purchased items, taxes, and totals from faded thermal paper requires a dedicated Receipt OCR API. Most teams either skip this feature or spend days trying to force a general-purpose vision model to format line items correctly.

The solution: one API call, structured JSON

StructOCR's /v1/receipt endpoint accepts a photo and returns a clean JSON object with every field pre-labeled — no prompting, no parsing, no post-processing. Because it speaks plain HTTP, Lovable can wire it up from a single fetch call. You describe what you want, and Lovable writes the code.

Integrate StructOCR in Lovable (3 Steps)

1. 1

   Create a Lovable project and describe your app

   Open lovable.dev and start a new project. In the chat box, describe the app you want to build — be specific about the receipt fields you need.

   💬Try this prompt: "Build a receipt scanner app. Users can upload a photo of a receipt and see the merchant name, date, time, and total amount extracted automatically."
2. 2

   Tell Lovable to call the StructOCR API

   Once Lovable scaffolds the UI, paste the follow-up prompt below. Lovable will write the fetch call, handle the file upload, and wire the response to your UI components.

   💬Follow-up prompt: "When a user uploads an image, send it as a multipart/form-data POST to https://api.structocr.com/v1/receipt with an Authorization header containing my API key. Display the returned JSON fields in the results panel."

   // Lovable generates something like this — you just supply the key const response = await fetch('https://api.structocr.com/v1/receipt', { method: 'POST', headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${import.meta.env.VITE_STRUCTOCR_KEY}` }, body: formData, });
3. 3

   Add your StructOCR API key and publish

   Go to Project Settings → Environment Variables in Lovable and add your StructOCR key. Then hit Publish. Your receipt parser is live.

   💬Variable name: VITE_STRUCTOCR_KEY — get your free key at structocr.com/dashboard

   VITE_STRUCTOCR_KEY=sk_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What you can build in Lovable with this integration

• Corporate expense tracker: Let employees snap photos of their lunch or travel receipts and automatically populate a reimbursement tracker. Perfect for building custom expense management automation workflows.
• Loyalty & rewards scanning: Build a consumer app where users upload grocery receipts to prove purchase of specific brands and earn reward points automatically.
• Personal budgeting dashboard: Create a financial tool that reads your daily coffee and retail receipts, categorizes the spending, and calculates monthly totals — all inside Lovable.
• Tax preparation assistant: Parse hundreds of receipts to separate tax amounts and deductible expenses without manual data entry.

The prompt and the code

Copy the Lovable prompt into your project chat to generate the integration. The JavaScript tab shows what Lovable produces — useful if you want to verify or customize it.

Prerequisite: A free StructOCR account — get your API key at structocr.com/dashboard (no credit card required)

I need to add receipt OCR to this app.

When a user uploads an image:
1. Send it as multipart/form-data to: POST https://api.structocr.com/v1/receipt
2. Include the header: Authorization: Bearer ${VITE_STRUCTOCR_KEY}
3. The response is JSON with fields: merchant_name, date, time, total_amount, tax_amount, currency, items[]
4. Display each field in the results panel below the upload button
5. Show a loading spinner while the request is in flight
6. Show an error message if the upload fails

Use the environment variable VITE_STRUCTOCR_KEY for the API key.

What the API returns

Every field is labeled and typed. Your Lovable app can render this directly without any transformation.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "is_valid": true,
    "confidence": "high",
    "merchant_name": "Blue Bottle Coffee",
    "date": "2026-04-22",
    "time": "08:45 AM",
    "currency": "USD",
    "total_amount": 14.5,
    "tax_amount": 1.25,
    "items": [
      {
        "name": "Caffe Latte - Large",
        "quantity": 2,
        "price": "11.00"
      },
      {
        "name": "Butter Croissant",
        "quantity": 1,
        "price": "3.50"
      }
    ],
    "validation_error": null
  }
}