Expense Tracker for Self-Employed Professionals & Freelancers

Track freelance expenses in seconds

The habit that works is the one that takes no willpower. With ScanMyReceipt it takes a few seconds at the point of purchase:

• Scan it. Photograph a paper receipt, or pick screenshots of emailed and in-app receipts from your gallery. You can select several at once.
• Check it. The app reads the merchant, date, total, tax, payment method and line items. Glance at the date and total and fix anything that's off.
• Label it. Pick a category, add a client tag, and write a short note about the business reason if it isn't obvious.

Receipts save on your phone first, so this works with no signal in a parking garage. The details are read once you're back online.

Track expenses by client or project

Freelancers usually need to answer two questions about every expense: what kind of cost was it, and who was it for? ScanMyReceipt handles the first with a category and the second with tags.

• Tag each receipt with a client or project, such as Acme Redesign or Job 1042. A receipt can have several tags.
• Search by tag to see everything you've spent on one client, down to individual line items.
• Filter the export builder by that tag to send a client the receipts for rebillable costs, as a PDF with the images or a spreadsheet.

Here's how that looks for a few kinds of self-employed work:

Subscriptions are easy to lose track of. Design tools, hosting and cloud storage rarely produce paper, so screenshot the emailed receipt or billing page each month and add it from your gallery. That keeps software spending in the same library as everything else. When a client asks for proof of a rebillable cost, filter by their tag and export those receipts as a PDF with images.

Keep Schedule C categories tidy

If you file Schedule C, your expenses eventually land on lines such as advertising, office expense, travel and meals. The app's categories don't have to match those lines exactly, but a consistent category on every receipt makes the mapping quick for you or your preparer. Our 1099 expense tracker page shows which app categories usually map to which Schedule C lines, with a free spreadsheet template.

Some costs need a bit more than a category: a phone you also use personally, or a car you drive for work and errands. Tag those (for example "Vehicle" or "Home office") and use the note for anything your preparer will ask about.

A 10-minute monthly routine

1. Scroll through last month's receipts and add any missing client tags.
2. Check that anything over a few hundred dollars has a note.
3. Export Last month as Excel or PDF and save it with your other business records.
4. If you make quarterly estimated payments, export the quarter with a custom date range when it ends.

For a fuller system, read our guide on how to track expenses when you're self-employed. At tax time, the tax receipt scanner page covers exporting a full tax year and what the IRS expects from scanned receipts.

ScanMyReceipt helps you organize and manage receipt records. It does not determine whether an expense is deductible and does not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional for advice about your specific situation.

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Related pages

• 1099 expense tracker
• Receipt export
• Receipt organizer
• Pricing