The ability for smartphones to perform tasks typically associated with heavy-duty office equipment is one of the most liberating aspects of the mobile world. For instance, there have long been apps that turn your iPhone into a fully functioning document scanner, but if you’re looking for a solution to that normally painstaking function at about half the cost of something like TinyScan Pro, check out the recently-released FoxScanner.

FoxScanner distinguishes itself amongst the innumerable alternative scanner apps by virtue of a few “extra mile” inclusions. First and foremost, it gives you the ability to scan documents straight to PDF format without having to jump through hoops to convert the file type. Taking a quick look around, you’ll find that this isn’t as readily available as you might think without springing the extra few bucks that other more established apps cost. It also lets you scan to JPEG with images scanned in high resolution and keeping an accurate representation of the original paper document.

To scan, all you have to do is tap the camera icon and take a snapshot of the desired doc. Once you capture the image, cropping out the rough edges is easily accomplished through a tap-and-drag gridline control that lets you zero in on borders with the help of a pop-up magnifying glass bubble. Once the edges are defined, FoxScanner lets you choose the document’s final appearance: color scan, photo quality, crisp black and white, or greyscale.

Another neat functionality of FoxScanner is one that some desktop scanning programs don’t even allow: the ability to scan multiple items into a single PDF file. This can save you and the recipients of your scanned documents lots of time getting files into order if you’re, say, scanning a multi-sheet manuscript or saving your paper tax returns to your cloud drive for safe keeping. Further functionality comes from the app’s ability to access images directly from your iPhone’s camera roll.

After scanning has been completed, a single tap of the share icon lets you email your scan as an attachment, print or fax it remotely, or export it to the cloud via Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, or SugarSync. If you’re not ready to send just yet, scans are saved to the application’s document library for easy access later on.

FoxScanner requires iOS 7 or later and is also compatible iPad and iPod touch. It’s available now from the iTunes Store for $2.99. There’s also a free version with extremely limited functionality that maxes out your doc library to three files before asking you to upgrade. The free version also only supports sharing via email, but it’s a good introduction if you want to test the quality of your scans first before forking over your hard-earned dough.