I photographed a month of receipts in random order; how do I sort them by date before making one PDF?

Why order matters before you build, not after

An accountant reads the file top to bottom and ticks each receipt against the bank statement. If the receipt from the 25th sits before the one from the 3rd, they jump around the pages and may ask you for a receipt that is there, just in the wrong place. Sorting the list takes a minute; reordering the pages of a finished PDF is an extra job with another tool.

In Images to PDF the list is labelled Images in the order they will appear, and every row shows its position number, a thumbnail, the file name, the pixel size and the file size. Position 1 is page 1 and the last position is the last page, with no exceptions.

Step by step with fourteen receipts

1. Select all the receipt photos at once from your gallery. They land in the list in whatever order the browser hands them over, which is rarely date order.
2. Glance at the thumbnails, or at the file names if your phone names photos by capture time, and find the oldest receipt.
3. Press move up until the oldest receipt reaches position 1. The status line confirms each move, for example that the file moved to position 1 of 14.
4. Repeat with the next receipt until the list runs from oldest to newest.
5. Remove duplicates or the blurry shot you took twice, then press Create PDF and page through the preview.

A trick that saves most of the clicking

Fewer moves means fewer mistakes. Before selecting, rename the photos in your file manager with the receipt date at the start, such as 03, 07 and 15, or simply photograph next month's receipts in date order. Many browsers pass selected files in name order, so the list arrives nearly sorted and you only fix one or two stragglers.

What if you change the order after building?

Any change to the list or to the settings after you build throws the previous PDF away immediately, and a message says the settings or the image list changed and you should press Create PDF again. That is deliberate: you can never download an old file that no longer matches what is on screen.

If the file has already gone to the accountant and you spot a page out of place, you do not have to start over. Pages that are already inside a PDF are rearranged with the PDF page reorder tool; this converter arranges images before they become pages.

Receipts from more than one source

Some months, part of the paperwork is phone photos and part is PDF invoices a supplier emailed. Build the sorted photo PDF first, then combine it with the supplier files using Merge PDFs in the order your accountant prefers. The tested limit here is 20 images per file, which covers most months.