ExpenseBot captures the spending in a mobile notary or signing agent business as it happens — the driving between signings, the toner bought on the way to an appointment, the E&O renewal that arrived by email — and files it into a categorized Google Sheet in your own Google Drive.
Why this trade is hard to track: you are paid a flat fee per signing, the work happens at someone else's table, and almost every cost of getting there is yours. The costs are variable while the fee is fixed, so the gap between them is invisible unless each cost is attached to the job it belongs to.
Capture three ways:
- Calendar-derived mileage — ExpenseBot reads the signing addresses from your Google Calendar and estimates drive distance at your country's rate (IRS in the US, CRA in Canada, HMRC in the UK). No background GPS app. Because it works from calendar addresses, the distances are estimates.
- Photo capture — photograph the paper receipt at the office-supply counter and ExpenseBot reads the vendor, date and amount off it. Toner, paper and parking tickets are almost all paper, and this is the route that stops them leaking.
- Gmail auto-capture — connect Gmail once and ExpenseBot scans it overnight for emailed receipts: office-supply orders, bond and E&O renewals, NNA certification and background-screening confirmations. It labels what it reads so nothing is double-counted, never sends email, and never deletes anything.
The leg people forget: the drive from one signing to the next. Home-to-first-appointment gets remembered because it feels like the start of the day; the eleven miles to the 2pm across town does not. A signing agent with four appointments has three of those legs every working day, and in aggregate they are frequently more distance than the drives from home. For this trade the driving is usually the largest cost by a wide margin.
Costs worth capturing in this trade: printer, toner and paper (a loan package can run well past a hundred pages, printed twice if the borrower wants a copy); a dual-tray printer for legal-size documents; notary journal, stamp and seal; surety bond; E&O insurance; commission filing and renewal fees; NNA certification and background screening; mobile scanner; phone plan; parking and tolls at the signing.
Per-signing profit: tag the costs and the fee to the same signing or hiring company and ExpenseBot rolls them up against each other. Two signings offered at the same flat fee can clear materially different amounts once the driving, the toner and the parking are attached — which tells you which hiring companies send work that actually pays.
Your notary journal is not your expense records. The journal is a legal record of the notarial acts you perform — who appeared, what was signed, what identification you examined. Its requirements differ by state and in many states keeping one is a statutory obligation. ExpenseBot handles the expense side only; it does not record notarial acts and must not be used as a journal.
At tax time: everything lives in a categorized Google Sheet in your own Google Drive — you own it and keep it if you ever leave. Export to QuickBooks Online, Xero or Sage with one click, or just share the sheet. Accountants use ExpenseBot free.
Every deduction question here is educational rather than advice: what a cost is and how to record it is what ExpenseBot handles; what is deductible in your situation is your tax professional's call. Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.