Receipt tracking for a small business
A paper receipt is still how a lot of shops and trades prove what they spent. It is also the thing that ends up in a truck door, an apron, or a laptop bag, and then fades. Tracking receipts means capturing the slip while you can still read it, and keeping a line you can search when someone asks.
Photograph it the day you get it
Thermal paper goes blank. A picture from next month may be a white strip with a logo. The habit that works is short: when the slip is in your hand, photograph it before it goes in a pocket. Keep the vendor name and the total in the frame. If the slip is long, make sure the total is readable, because ReceiptGrid stores one file on each line. The picture you keep should show the parts you will need later.
Use the phone camera, or upload a PDF from email. JPEG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, and PDF are accepted. A blurry photo is still better than no photo, because you can correct the numbers while you can see the paper.
Write down the fields you will look up
A line you can use later has the date printed on the slip, not the day you got around to filing it. It has the vendor, the amount you paid, and the tax if the slip shows a tax line. Amount is the expense. Tax sits beside it so a report can total tax without adding it on top of the amount a second time.
Add how you paid (card, cash, check, ACH, or wire), a category, and the job or project when the cost belongs to one customer. Mark the line reimbursable when someone else should pay you back. Home keeps a year-to-date total of those open reimbursable lines.
A simple week
- Same day: photograph the slip and check vendor, date, amount, and tax.
- If the guess is wrong, fix it before you post. The original file stays on the line.
- Once a week: open the ledger, search any vendor you do not recognize, and set aside a slip you do not need.
- Once a month: run a report for the month and see whether a category looks empty because you forgot to file, not because you did not spend.
Categories you will still understand
A new account starts with Travel, Meals, Office, Supplies, Software, Utilities, Fuel, Lodging, Services, and Other. Rename them in Settings, add one you actually use, or archive one you do not. "Fuel" and "Supplies" are easier to explain in December than a pile of uncategorized totals. The names you pick are the names on the export.
Make the second visit shorter
When you accept a slip, ReceiptGrid remembers that vendor’s category, payment method, and tax rate. The next slip from the same store fills those in. If the new line looks like one you already posted, you get a warning before it lands twice. You can still add it when it really is a second purchase.
Search, instead of emptying the shoebox
Ledger search looks at the vendor, the notes, the project, and the text read off the slip. Filter by date or category when you only need fuel for March, or one customer’s job. Open the original photo from the line when a number is questioned.
If the server has Tesseract, ReceiptGrid reads the page and fills a guess. If it does not, the upload still saves and you type the row. Either way the file stays attached. You are not stuck because optical character recognition missed a digit.
When the books need to leave your phone
That is a report, not a different product. Pick the dates and download Excel, CSV, or an accountant packet. The packet is the CSV plus the images, named with the date and the vendor. See expense reports and organizing receipts for taxes. A workbook or CSV of the same lines is covered in receipt to Excel or CSV. Paying an employee back is covered in reimbursement receipts for employees. Slips kept beside 1099 work are covered in receipts for self-employed and 1099 work. Prices and the trial are on Pricing.