In the 20 years or so that I've been travelling for work, I have had to scan receipts. First of all, there was often a deluge of paperwork and receipts, and there's no way I could carry those around and keep track of them. They had to be scanned, though they originally had to be on paper, so I could fax them in.

After a while, $EMPLOYER stopped requiring receipts to be faxed and allowed us to upload .pdf and .tiff documents ... so paper became a special case and even more burdensome.

And of course, I've used the submit receipts and delete local copies method because even dealing with electronic receipts across personal and employer computers is too much hassle.

Now, however, every company wants to do electronic receipts and "pull" type billing (where they hit your card or bank account periodically without any action on your part, and if they make an error, you have to depend upon them agreeing and sending excess funds back ... while any related overdraft or overlimit fees would remain your responsibility). They also all want you to submit an e-mail address and a cell phone number so they can spam you with unneeded and unwanted notifications.

This happened just as I no longer had access to a receipt scanner (or any other scanner ... I've long used the "tape receipts to a sheet of paper" method and a regular scanner), so going fully back to paper hasn't been a viable option either.