You export a month of receipts, double-click the file, and lunch at Café Müller now reads Café Müller. The euro sign in your note has turned into €. The data isn't broken. Excel guessed the wrong encoding when it opened the file.
Slipsheet turns receipt photos and PDFs into one row per receipt in a UTF-8 CSV. Here's how to open that file in Excel or Google Sheets so every accent, € and £ comes through as written.
Why Excel garbles accents in a CSV
A CSV is plain text, and it doesn't say which encoding it uses. Slipsheet writes the export as UTF-8 without a byte-order mark, the invisible marker some programs look for to spot UTF-8. With no marker, a double-click can make Excel read the file as Windows-1252, an older Western encoding, and each accented letter shows up as two odd characters.
The fix is to tell Excel the encoding yourself: import the file instead of double-clicking it.
Before and after
The same bytes, read two ways:
| Read as UTF-8 (imported) | Read as Windows-1252 (double-clicked) |
|---|---|
| Café Müller | Café Müller |
| client lunch, €2 tip in cash | client lunch, €2 tip in cash |
| taxi £12.50 | taxi £12.50 |
Open the Slipsheet CSV in Excel
- Open a blank workbook and go to Data > From Text/CSV.
- Pick your export. It's named like slipsheet-20261007.csv.
- Set File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8). The preview should now show Café Müller spelled right.
- Click Load.
Already double-clicked and seeing Café? Close the file without saving and import the original. Saving the garbled view writes those wrong characters into the file.
Google Sheets reads UTF-8 fine. Use File > Import, upload the CSV, and the accents come through. On the Pro plan you can skip the file: Slipsheet syncs your receipts to Google Sheets.
An example row
One invented receipt from a café in Munich, as it lands in the export with all nine columns in order:
| date | merchant | total_amount | currency | tax_amount | category | client_tag | notes | file_name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-14 | Café Müller | 18.40 | EUR | 2.94 | Meals | Atelier Brun | client lunch, €2 tip in cash | IMG_5120.HEIC |
For what each column holds, see the export column walkthrough. The export is a CSV that opens in Excel; native Excel and OneDrive export is coming soon.
Why not just type it in?
Typing receipts into a sheet yourself avoids the encoding question, but now you're copying merchant names, totals and tax off faded thermal paper one cell at a time. The shoebox skips the typing until tax season, then hands it all to you at once. Slipsheet reads each receipt with OCR, gives you one row to check, and keeps the original file name in the last column so any row traces back to its slip.
Starter is $5/mo for 250 receipts. Pro is $12/mo for 1,500 receipts plus Google Sheets sync. Start with a 14-day free trial, no card needed. Try Slipsheet.
FAQ
Why does Excel show Café instead of Café?
Excel read the file's UTF-8 bytes as Windows-1252, an older encoding, so each accented letter became two characters. The file itself is fine. Import it with Data > From Text/CSV and set File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).
Is the Slipsheet CSV export UTF-8?
Yes. Every export is a UTF-8 CSV named slipsheet-YYYYMMDD.csv, with one row per receipt. It has no byte-order mark, so import it into Excel rather than double-clicking it.
Does Google Sheets open UTF-8 CSV files correctly?
Yes. Use File > Import and upload the CSV, and accents, € and £ come through as written. On the Pro plan, Slipsheet also syncs your receipts to Google Sheets.
Can Slipsheet export an Excel .xlsx file?
Not yet. The export is a CSV, and it opens in Excel. Native Excel and OneDrive export is coming soon.