Use case: freelancers and sole traders

When you work for yourself, receipts pile up in three places: your inbox, your wallet and the apps you pay for. At tax time and invoice time you go looking for them. A simple ExpenseCatcher setup puts all of them in one folder and one sheet as they happen.

The setup

Catcher 1: Business costs. Software subscriptions, equipment, phone, co-working, courses. Point a Gmail filter at it with the senders who bill you every month, and forget about it.

Catcher 2: Billable to clients. Travel, materials and anything else you pass on to a client. Forward these by hand. If you bill several clients regularly, give the biggest ones their own catcher, such as Billable – Acme. The Catcher column in your sheet then says who to bill, and filtering by client takes one click.

Each catcher gets its own Drive folder and sheet. If you'd rather keep one sheet, point both catchers' Log to Google Sheet steps at the same spreadsheet. The Catcher column tells the rows apart.

Month-end in ten minutes

1. Open the billable sheet and filter by client.
2. Copy the totals into your invoice and attach the Drive links, or share the folder.
3. Glance at the Business costs sheet for anything unexpected, like a subscription you forgot to cancel.

At tax time

Your accountant, or you, get a sheet with every receipt's date, vendor, category, total and tax, plus a link to the original file. No shoebox, no screenshots of bank statements. Share the folder with read access and you're done.

Nice additions

• Only continue if… Total is more than 500, then Forward to an email: big purchases go straight to your accountant, who may treat equipment differently from everyday costs.
• Email me a summary on the billable catcher, so you have a running record of what to invoice.
• Save both addresses as contacts: Receipts – Business and Receipts – Billable. How.

Which plan

Two catchers need the Basic plan, which covers 5 catchers and 50 catches a month. See pricing.