ExpenseBot Guide & FAQ

Yes. Once you have tagged a few expenses to a project, client, or trip, ExpenseBot learns the pattern and proposes the same tag on expenses that look like they belong to it. You confirm each suggestion — it does not silently retag your data, and a tag you set yourself is never overwritten. Suggestions appear in Review expenseson the rows they apply to, and for travel they arrive as one proposal covering the whole trip rather than one receipt at a time.

Two optional Automation Hub settings pair with this: a reminder when expenses are sitting untagged, and a monthly report built automatically for a tag you pick. Both are off until you turn them on.

When a client gives you money upfront — for props, parking, ad spend, craft services — ExpenseBot tracks it as a client advance, not income. In connected ChatGPT or Claude, say “Record a $500 client advance from Acme today.” ExpenseBot resolves the client group, shows the exact write for confirmation, then records one negative Cash advance received row. In the app, check Client advance for expenses, select or create the client's Client tag, and use that same tag on every project expense. The Client advances section on your Income tab shows the lifetime running net. It only appears for a client with a recorded cash advance; ordinary client tags and vendor credits do not create a balance. When the project wraps, tap Refund leftover to settle (or generate a Bill Client invoice if you spent more than they gave you). Vendor refunds and reimbursements use the separate Credits & Refunds workflow.

Review vendor totals in your spreadsheet and reports. For contract context, upload a vendor agreement and run Compliance Check on a report. ExpenseBot can link a matching expense to the source agreement and shows the contract's extracted cancellation deadline in the contract workspace. Review extracted terms against the original agreement. ExpenseBot does not currently send automatic contract-renewal reminders.

Yes — and we built a dedicated wedding flow that goes well beyond a single "Wedding" bucket. When you type a wedding description into the AI tag wizard (Settings → Manage Tags → ✨ Create a Tag with AI), it detects wedding intent and creates five tags at once:

• Wedding – Attire — gown, tux, alterations, hair, makeup, jewelry
• Wedding – Venue — venue rental, caterer, bar service, cake, rentals
• Wedding – Vendors — photographer, videographer, DJ, florist, officiant, planner
• Wedding – Stationery — invitations, save-the-dates, favors, gifts
• Wedding – Honeymoon — flights, hotels, resorts, excursions, rental car

Matching, untagged receipts can use these groups, including recent receipts from the last 90 days. Review the suggestions in Review expenses; custom tags and your corrections are preserved.

Tracking who paid: Add paidby:bride (or groom, bride's family, groom's family) to the subject line when forwarding a receipt. ExpenseBot stamps "Paid by Bride" into the Notes column — without touching the category tag, so your budget totals still roll up cleanly. Or add a second Gmail (bride@gmail.com) as a verified forwarding email under Settings → Forwarding Addresses (with a chip label like "Bride") and attribution is automatic — no subject-line typing needed.

Dedicated Wedding Budget Report: once you're tagged for wedding tracking, a specialized report appears on My Reports — budget vs actuals by vendor category, top vendors per tag, deposit/final-payment pairing, a monthly burn chart oriented around your wedding date, and a Paid-By split flagging who over- or under-paid vs the ratio you set (50/50, 60/40, etc.).

Generic reports: Go to My Reports → Create Report → Report by Tag and pick all five "Wedding –" tags for a per-category breakdown. Filter the Notes column in your spreadsheet to split costs by payer.

The same approach works for any life event: home renovation, baby expenses, moving costs, or an anniversary trip.

Yes. Pick Realtor during onboarding or activate Real Estate Agent in Settings; both paths create the same five reviewable expense groups:

• Realtor – MLS — MLS fees, NAR/state dues, E&O insurance, license renewal, lockbox (Supra, ShowingTime)
• Realtor – Gifts — closing gifts, housewarming, thank-you cards (US users can review the federal gift-limit report)
• Realtor – Listings — staging, photography, drones, virtual tours, yard signs, open house supplies
• Realtor – CE — continuing education, designations, conferences, coaching, training books
• Realtor – Tech — CRM (Follow Up Boss, kvCORE), DocuSign, ShowingTime, Canva, scheduling apps

Matching receipts can be suggested for these groups, including untagged receipts from the last 90 days. Confirm suggestions in Review expenses; custom tags and your corrections stay authoritative.

Country-aware reporting: US users see Schedule C references for the highlighted groups. Canadian self-employed users can confirm that status in General Settings to see T2125 references. Everyone else gets a neutral business P&L.

Useful reports with in-app previews: Realtor Business P&L includes every non-personal business expense and highlights the five Realtor groups; the Gift Limit Checker groups gifts by recipient. US users see Schedule C references. Canadian users see T2125 references only after confirming they are self-employed; commissioned employees and other users receive neutral business-P&L wording. Year-end evidence flows through the standard Year-End Report.

Mileage stays in ExpenseBot's dedicated mileage tracker — no separate realtor mileage tag is needed.

Yes. The Realtor Gift Limit Checker report audits your gift spending against IRS §274(b) and CRA limits and flags every recipient at risk of having gifts disallowed at audit.

• USA — IRS §274(b) caps deductions at $25 per recipient per tax year. Anything beyond is non-deductible.
• Canada — no hard cap, but gifts over $500 CAD per recipient trigger a "verify reasonableness" flag.
• Other countries — total-by-recipient breakdown without flagging.

How it flags: USA users see recipients sorted by year-to-date total — 🟢 under $25 fully deductible, 🟡 at limit, 🔴 over with the non-deductible excess broken out separately. Canadian users see the reasonableness flag at $500 CAD instead.

How it identifies the recipient: ExpenseBot checks four sources in order — (1) tag sub-name (Realtor – Gifts – Alice Johnson uses Alice Johnson), (2) Notes column (Paid for Alice or For: Alice), (3) merchant name as fallback (flagged with ?), (4) Unassigned. The easiest way to add a recipient is paidfor:Alice Johnson in the email subject when forwarding the receipt.

The report scans any tag whose name ends in Gifts — Realtor – Gifts, Client Gifts, Wedding – Gifts, or generic Gifts — and shows a "tags scanned" count up front so you can confirm your gift receipts are being included. Catches over-limit clients before your accountant does.

Yes — ExpenseBot has a dedicated agency flow for marketing, PR, ad, and creative agencies that bill expenses back to named clients. The convention is simple: tag receipts with Client – <Name> (e.g., Client – Acme Corp, Client – Global Media). The AI tag wizard detects "agency" intent — type something like "ad spend for Acme Corp" or "Canva subscription for client work" and it creates the right Client – tag automatically. From then on, any receipt mentioning that client in the merchant, subject, or notes auto-tags to the right partition.

Agency Per-Client P&L report: once you have any Client – tag, the Agency Per-Client P&L report appears on My Reports. It runs as a two-step preview — pick a tax year, click Preview, and see income / expenses / net for the year, top losing clients (red), top earning clients (green), and any passthrough warnings (e.g. "Acme — paid $4,200 on your behalf, never rebilled"). Click Generate to spawn a Google Sheet for your accountant. Year-end taxes (Schedule C / T2125) flow through the standard Year-End Tax Report, which already maps the agency expense bundle to the right form lines.

Works for sole-prop agencies (Schedule C) and incorporated agencies (LLC/Inc with T2125 or separate corporate return). Receipts for your own overhead (software, office supplies, staff meals) stay in the normal expense categories — only client-specific spend gets the Client – tag, so your own P&L and each client P&L stay cleanly partitioned.

Turn any expense report into a clean, AP-friendly invoice in two clicks. Tag receipts to a project, trip, or client (e.g. Acme Rebrand, Trip – Berlin, Client – Acme), run a Report filtered by that tag and date range — your usual flow — then click Bill Client on the report card.

What you get: ExpenseBot generates a styled Google Doc invoice in your Drive with every receipt as a line item, a markup line (if you set one), totals, your business info, and a footer linking back to the supporting expense report. The Doc is your private working copy — tweak descriptions, add a thank-you note, anything you want before sending.

Send the right way — PDF only: Download the PDF and send it to your client (the traditional, audit-friendly way to invoice — immutable, exactly what corporate AP departments file), or use Save as Draft to stage a draft in your own Gmail with the PDF attached, addressed to your client. Send from your own address — no middleman, threads cleanly with your client's reply. The live Doc never leaves your Drive.

Set business info once: In Settings → Billing Profile, fill in your business name, address, tax/EIN/GST/VAT number (auto-labeled by country — USA: EIN, Canada: GST/HST, UK: VAT, Australia: ABN, etc.), and default payment terms (Net 30, Net 14, etc.). Every future invoice prefills from there. Optional — you can fill it in for invoice #1 if you'd rather, and we'll save it then.

Works for freelance designers, consultants, agencies billing back ad spend or passthrough, photographers billing travel and assistant fees — anyone tracking expenses against a tag, trip, or project. Tax treatment of reimbursable expenses depends on jurisdiction, so the v1 invoice intentionally has no tax line and includes a footer disclaimer — consult your accountant if your client requires VAT/GST/sales tax handling.

Yes. First, create one client tag per client, such as Client - Acme. Then review expenses that still have no specific tag and assign only the rows that belong to that client. This review includes blank and default Business rows; it leaves Personal and already-specific tags alone.

When the matching expenses are tagged, open My Reports, create a report by that client tag and date range, then choose Bill Client on the finished report. Creating a client tag never assigns every unclassified business expense to that client automatically.

To catch client purchases that are missing receipts, connect the cards you use for client spending in Card Reconciliation. Full walkthrough: track expenses by client and bill them back.

Watch the whole flow — create the client tag, re-tag the expenses that belong to it, build the report, then bill the client back:

Yes. Open Settings → Delegated access, enter your assistant's email, and send an invitation. Your assistant accepts through their own ExpenseBot account — they never use your password or Gmail credentials — and can then help submit receipts, work with your expenses, and create expense reports for you.

The same screen lists active and pending invitations, and you can revoke access there whenever it's no longer needed. Details: giving an assistant delegated access.

Watch the invitation flow — sending the invite, and a look at what your assistant sees once they accept:

Yes — ExpenseBot has a dedicated rental property flow for landlords. Go to Settings → "Set up ExpenseBot for what you track" → Rental Property and add each of your properties (nickname, street address, purchase date, rental %). ExpenseBot creates a tag for each one (Prop – Brooklyn duplex, Prop – Queens condo, etc.).

Auto-tagging: receipts that mention a property address in the subject or body auto-tag via deterministic street-number + street-name matching — no Gemini guessing, no false positives. If you have two properties on the same street (123 Main and 127 Main), the exact street number disambiguates. Rent deposits detected by our Gmail income scanner match the same way, so both sides of the per-property P&L come together automatically.

Schedule E report: run My Reports → Rental Property Report (Tax Reports) and get a Google Sheet with IRS Schedule E line layout per property — Advertising, Cleaning & Maintenance, Insurance, Management Fees, Repairs, Taxes, Utilities, HOA/Condo Fees — plus manual-entry fields for mortgage interest (from your 1098) and depreciation.

House hack / owner-occupied: set Rental % to the portion actually rented (e.g., 50% for half a duplex). The report prorates shared expenses automatically.

Three new Expense Accounts (Cleaning and Maintenance, Property Management Fees, HOA and Condo Fees) are added to your spreadsheet on first property setup so nothing is ambiguous at tax time. Works for any portfolio size, from 1 property to 20+.

Yes. ExpenseBot tracks rental property expenses per property (not lumped as one "rental" category). Add each property in Settings → "Set up ExpenseBot for what you track" → Rental Property with an address and rental %, and receipts with that address auto-tag to the right property. At tax time, ExpenseBot generates Schedule E (US) or T776 (Canada) worksheets with one section per property, ready for filing. See /rental-property-tracker.

Yes. ExpenseBot generates T776 Statement of Real Estate Rentals worksheets for Canadian landlords, with gross rents on Line 8141, expenses mapped to Lines 8521 (advertising), 8690 (insurance), 8710 (interest), total expenses on Line 9369, and net income/loss on Line 9946. US landlords get Schedule E worksheets. One T776 per property, as CRA requires. See /rental-property-tracker.

The Rent Roll grid uses one glyph per property per month so you can spot shortfalls at a glance:

• ✓ green — full rent received (within 5% of expected, allowing for rounding and small late-fee deductions)
• ≈ amber — partial payment; the actual dollar amount appears under the glyph so you see "≈ 1500" at a glance
• ✗ red — no payment found and the property was active that month
• — grey — no payment expected (vacancy, untracked, or pre-activation)

Hover any cell to see received vs expected with the delta — e.g. CAD 2,367.00 received / 2,630.00 expected (-263.00). Multi-source rent (a tenant paying in two installments) is summed before comparison, so two $1,000 deposits read as a full ✓ for a $2,000 expected rent.

Set the Expected monthly rent at Settings → "Set up ExpenseBot for what you track" → Rental Property. Until you set a value, every received payment shows as ✓ because there's nothing to compare against — the property's status reads Untracked with a Set rent → link straight to the editor.

Three lines on Schedule E and two on T776 are left blank in the generated worksheet for you or your accountant to fill in. They aren't auto-routable from email because their source documents are year-end forms — not receipts.

The worksheet has a row for each line with the label pre-filled and the Cost column blank — type the figure directly into the cell. The Total Expenses and Net Income/Loss formulas pick up your manual entry automatically. Each property in the report has its own set of these rows.

Yes. ExpenseBot is designed for office managers and personal assistants at small offices (3-20 people). Your team forwards receipts to a shared alias or lets Gmail auto-scan catch them, and you review everything in one Google Sheet. Export to QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, or Wave in one click. No IT setup required — any Google Workspace account can onboard in 10 minutes. See /office-manager.

As an executive assistant, you can add and manage multiple executives from your ExpenseBot account. Set up their email addresses, configure Gmail scanning, and start capturing their expenses immediately.

Once you invite an executive, they receive an email with instructions to sign in. Executives can then view their expenses, review reports you've prepared, and approve them — all without needing to capture receipts themselves.

Forward a receipt email to receipts@expensebot.ai from your ExpenseBot email address or a registered forwarding address. ExpenseBot can read:

• Receipt details embedded directly in the email body
• Image attachments of receipts
• PDF attachments
• Word attachments (.doc, .docx)
• Excel attachments (.xls, .xlsx)

It adds confirmed expenses to your spreadsheet and surfaces anything that needs a decision under View receipt activity on the home screen:

On the ExpenseBot home screen, select View receipt activity under Email a receipt. It has two tabs:

• Recent shows whether the receipt was added, already existed in your spreadsheet, was not added, is still processing, or will be retried.
• Needs attention shows only items where you can enter details or make a decision — not every duplicate or routine skip.

Activity cards can also show who forwarded the email, the merchant, and the amount. Your Expenses spreadsheet remains the final record of expenses that were added.

Yes. Forward the email to receipts@expensebot.ai. ExpenseBot can process Word (.doc, .docx) and Excel (.xls, .xlsx) attachments as well as PDF and image receipts.

If a document cannot be read safely or lacks enough transaction details, it appears under View receipt activity → Needs attention instead of being silently dropped, so you can complete it or mark it as not an expense.

It means ExpenseBot received the document but needs your decision before it can be treated as an expense. You can:

• Enter missing details to complete and save the expense
• Open receipt page if the receipt is behind a sign-in or download link
• Not an expense to dismiss quotes, unpaid documents, and other material you don't want recorded

Duplicates and routine skips do not appear there just because they weren't added.

For cash expenses or when you don't have a receipt, send an email to receipts@expensebot.ai with cash: at the start of the subject line, followed by the amount, description, and optionally a date.

Each expense is automatically categorized by AI, tagged as "No Receipt", and added to your spreadsheet. You can put details in the subject line, the email body, or both.

Yes. Add it as a Forwarding Email in Settings. If most receipts arrive at the Gmail you signed up with, you can skip this.

If you receive an error like 550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding, your company's Microsoft 365 admin has blocked external email forwarding as a security policy.

Your IT admin can find the setting in Microsoft 365 Admin Center → Exchange → Mail Flow → Remote Domains, or via PowerShell using Set-RemoteDomain.

Connect Gmail and let the AI find receipts automatically — no forwarding rules required:

Yes — connect up to 3 Gmail accounts (subscription feature), and the historical scan range applies independently per account. Subscription covers current-year and ongoing scanning for each connected account. One selected completed year is a $20 one-time unlock. Any Past Year access is $79 one time and covers every completed calendar year available when you purchase, across all connected Gmail accounts, one year per scan. Annual billing includes last completed year after the first annual payment.

Scans process in the background so you can close the page. All receipts across all accounts land in the same master spreadsheet, dated by their original transaction date.

The scanner uses multiple layers to find your receipts automatically — no setup or rules needed:

You don't need to add senders or set up keyword rules — the more receipts you process, the smarter the scanner gets for your account. If something is still being missed, apply the "ExpenseBot" label to the email in Gmail and the scanner will pick it up and learn from it.

Yes. Here's how the two scan types cover archived mail:

In both cases, once an email has been processed it's excluded from future scans — so nothing gets duplicated.

Sign in to ExpenseBot and click the "Scan Gmail for receipts & income" button on your home screen — it has the Gmail logo and sits just below "Take Photo of Receipt". You can also go straight to it with this direct link: Connect Gmail & start scanning.

As soon as you approve, ExpenseBot automatically scans your recent email history for receipts and income and adds them to your spreadsheet — and from then on it keeps itself up to date automatically.

For free, ExpenseBot scans the last 60 days when you first connect Gmail, and your nightly scans keep it current going forward.

It's all driven from the year cards on the Gmail scan page — pick the year you want and follow the prompt. Scans run in the background and you'll get an email when they finish.

Open Process from Gmail, then select Action Needed. These items have not been added as expenses yet.

• Get receipt: open the protected receipt link, upload or forward the file, then choose Done.
• Receipt or invoice details missing: choose Add manually only if you can confirm a paid business expense; otherwise choose Don't add.
• Check if paid / quote or paid invoice: add manually only after the email confirms a completed business payment; otherwise choose Don't add.
• Review money in or out / invoice direction: choose Don't add as expense. ExpenseBot does not write Income from this screen.
• Review statement: add manually only if it represents one confirmed paid business expense; otherwise choose Don't add.
• Possible duplicate: compare both records, then choose Keep both or Don't add this one.
• Vendor credit: choose Add credit to reduce an expense, or Ignore.
• Choose currency: use this only when the source is genuinely ambiguous or conflicting. Choose the currency actually charged, then add the expense.

For possible receipts, open Suggested Receipts, process the real receipts, and mark obvious notifications as not receipts.

Use the path that matches where the missing document is:

Have a PDF or image file instead? Open Add Expenses → Upload Receipts and upload it directly. ExpenseBot will add it to your master sheet.

Do not upload a payment confirmation as a second expense when its invoice is already recorded.

Please tell us about missed Gmail receipts at support@expensebot.ai so we can investigate and improve detection.

Yes. Exclusion rules let you skip specific merchants or expense categories during Gmail scans — matching receipts are never written to your spreadsheet.

Excluded receipts are labeled ExpenseBot-Excluded in Gmail for a transparent audit trail. Your scan confirmation email shows exactly what was excluded and which rule matched. Nothing is deleted — the original email stays in your inbox.

Note: Exclusions only apply to Gmail scans. If you manually upload a photo or PDF receipt, it always goes through — deliberate uploads reflect explicit intent.

Yes. By default ExpenseBot scans your inbox, but you can point it at specific Gmail labels instead — handy if a filter auto-files your receipts into a Receipts folder, or you just want a busy inbox left alone.

Good news: your daily scan now picks up new receipts wherever they land — including ones a Gmail filter files or archives out of your inbox — so you usually don't need to add anything here. This setting is for when you want to narrow the scan to specific labels (or scan only those folders and skip the inbox). Historical "catch-up" scans search all your mail (every label, folder, and archived message), so they find older receipts wherever they sit — unless you've unchecked Inbox to scan specific folders only, in which case catch-up scans stay limited to those folders too. If you remove your last folder while the inbox is off, the inbox turns back on automatically — so you're never scanning nothing.

Most people leave Inbox checked and let ExpenseBot find receipts wherever they land. Use this only when you want to narrow the scan to a specific label.

ExpenseBot makes it easy to find and import receipts directly from Google Photos:

If you have screenshots, saved images, or other receipt photos stored directly on your device (not in Google Photos), you can import multiple images at once:

Yes! Click the Google Drive button in ExpenseBot to open the Drive Picker. Browse or search your Drive, select up to 300 receipt files at once (100 on the free trial), and AI processes them all automatically.

Open expensebot.ai in Safari on your iPhone, sign in with Google or Apple, and tap Upload. Safari opens iOS's native photo picker.

1. Long-press the first receipt photo in your camera roll
2. Tap additional photos to multi-select (up to ~100 per batch)
3. Tap Upload — AI processes every image in parallel
4. Each receipt becomes a row in your Google Sheet with vendor, amount, date, tax, and category extracted

Learn more: iPhone Receipt Scanner

ExpenseBot ships a free "Scan Receipts" Apple Shortcut. Install it in under 2 minutes:

1. Download the Shortcut from the Apple Shortcuts setup page → tap Add Shortcut
2. Run it once — the first time only, it asks for your personal upload URL. Copy it from Settings → Integrations → Apple Shortcut and paste it. Saved automatically.
3. Open Photos.app, select receipt photos, tap Share → "Scan Receipts"
4. Photos upload in one tap; results appear in your Google Sheet in ~2 minutes

Photos and images only: JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP (up to 15 MB each). If a photo was offloaded to iCloud, the Shortcut downloads it first automatically. For PDF receipts, use the in-app upload button. Also triggerable via Siri ("Hey Siri, Scan Receipts").

In Settings, under "Set up ExpenseBot for what you track", open the Medical Expenses card and click "Choose program". In the "Which medical program?" picker, choose "HSA / FSA (US employer)". (The other options are HUD / Section 8 and CRA Medical for Canada — Canadians reimbursing through a PHSP should pick CRA Medical.) You only do this once.

Receipts then arrive two ways: the Gmail scan picks up emailed pharmacy, doctor, dental and vision receipts, and you can photograph the paper ones.

The report lives at My Reports → Tax Reports → "HSA / FSA Claim Organizer". Pick a plan-year window for an FSA, or lifetime cumulative mode for the HSA shoebox approach where you reimburse yourself years later. Then download the receipt bundle (see the ZIP question below) and upload it to your administrator.

Yes — My Reports → Insights → "Income by Source" gives you one row per payer: who paid you, how much, the fees, and the net. It groups variations of the same payer together (so "Stripe", "STRIPE INC" and "Stripe Inc." collapse into one line) and labels the form type you're likely to receive from each — 1099-K, 1099-NEC, or T4A in Canada.

Run it year-to-date, for the prior year, for the last 90 days, or over a custom range. Deposits, interest, dividends and refunds are excluded, so the total is comparable to gross receipts. When the forms arrive, those per-payer totals are what you hold them up against.

Where a platform reports gross but paid you net, the difference is the platform's fee — a deductible business expense. Creators can set a fee rate per platform via "Manage platform fees" on the Add Income tab, and ExpenseBot suggests rates by detecting consistent patterns in income you've already captured. Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.

Yes — every ExpenseBot report has a one-click "ZIP (Receipts)" download alongside CSV / XLSX / PDF. Available on HUD Medical, CRA Medical, HSA/FSA, PHSP, and regular expense reports.

The ZIP contains:

• Every Drive-linked receipt PDF, numbered and dated: 001_2026-02-14_Shoppers_Drug_Mart_47.99.pdf
• index.csv — maps every filename to date / vendor / amount / expense-type / notes with per-row success/fail status
• README.txt — admin-specific upload instructions for your HSA/FSA provider (WageWorks, HealthEquity, FSAFEDS, Optum, Lively, Fidelity; Olympia Benefits, Benecaid, myHSA, Simply Benefits for Canada)

Enter eligible expense totals on Line 33099 (self, spouse, minor children) and Line 33199 (adult dependents you supported) of your T1 return.

• Threshold = LESSER of 3% of net income or the annual indexed cap — $2,890 for the 2026 tax year ($2,834 for 2025)
• Pick any 12-month period ending in the tax year — not just the calendar year
• Keep receipts for 6 years (CRA doesn't want them attached, but can request during review)

Full guide: The Complete CRA Medical Expense Tax Credit Guide. Landing page: CRA Medical Expense Tax Credit Tracker.

ExpenseBot processes Amazon order confirmations from auto-confirm@amazon.* (any country marketplace — .com, .ca, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .co.jp, etc.). The order confirmation is Amazon's receipt — Amazon doesn't send a separate one. We parse the plain-text body directly to extract items, total, tax, and order number, then drop the row into your spreadsheet. Works across 20+ Amazon marketplaces.

Amazon's status emails are skipped on purpose:

• shipment-tracking@amazon.* ("Shipped: …") — status update, not a charge.
• order-update@amazon.* ("Delivered: …") — status update, not a charge.
• return@amazon.* (refunds, returns) — we don't yet match refunds back to the original purchase.

Scanning those would create a duplicate row for every order, so we filter them out. If you see Amazon emails in Gmail but no Amazon rows in your spreadsheet, the most common reason is simply that you haven't placed a new Amazon order since signing up — your next order confirmation will be captured automatically. Subscribers can also use the "Scan older" option on the Gmail scan button to sweep historical orders from prior years.

Each allocation is taxed on its own category. A $150 receipt split into $110 Repairs and maintenance and $40 Small tools contributes to two deduction categories, each landing on the tax line its category maps to (Schedule C in the US, T2125 in Canada) — while staying one payment with one receipt.

• The personal portion is left out of the claim, not deleted. If you deliberately run a report that includes personal activity, it appears separately as "Personal – not claimed" and never enters the business total.
• An allocation set aside for tax review contributes $0 this year and is marked Capitalized / review, so you or your accountant can decide the treatment instead of it silently inflating this year's deductions.
• Year-End reads your whole year, including rows already used in an earlier report — nothing is double-counted or hidden.

One original payment divided into two or more allocation lines so each part can be categorized and reported correctly. It stays one payment with one receipt.

No. ExpenseBot keeps one parent payment and one receipt. The allocation lines sit beneath it and always add up to the original total.

Yes. The personal part is recorded as an explicit non-business allocation — it's kept, not deleted — so your records stay complete while only the business part is claimable.

Yes, using categories you've already set up in your Expense Accounts. Example: a $150 hardware receipt as $110 Repairs and maintenance and $40 Small tools.

Yes. Each allocation can use a different existing Tag, while Same as expense follows the parent transaction's current Tag. The receipt, payment, and payer remain single. A Tag-filtered report includes the matching allocation amounts, but ordinary report membership remains attached to the original payment so the same charge cannot be submitted twice.

Use Business % when the same mix applies to a whole category every time (a recurring default). Use a split for one transaction that's different or contains several categories.

No. Once you split a transaction explicitly, that split is authoritative for it — ExpenseBot won't re-apply the category's percentage on top. For example, a $100 internet bill you split $75/$25 uses $75 as the business amount, not 60% of $75.

Save stays disabled until they balance. Apply remainder assigns the exact difference so your cents always match the receipt.

Nothing — they're snapshots and stay as they were. Newly generated reports use your current split.

Yes — click a report's title in My Reports and it opens right in the app: every expense with search, sorting, receipt links, and a Summary toggle showing totals by category and tag.

• Accountants can fix categories on reports that aren't approved yet — the fix also updates your master sheet and teaches ExpenseBot for future scans.
• Report owners can remove an expense from an unapproved report — it returns to Review Expenses as unsubmitted, free to go into a different report.
• Merchant, date, and amount edits always happen in Review Expenses — a report is a snapshot, which is what keeps it trustworthy after sharing.

Not in this version. Report inclusion is set at the parent transaction, so all of a payment's allocation lines travel to the same report together.

Yes. From the web dashboard or via an AI assistant, say it plainly:

"Create a report for my Mexico trip, but leave out personal expenses."

ExpenseBot works out the trip and date criteria, then shows you the set before touching anything — how many expenses match, the totals in their original currencies, a few representative rows, and exactly which Personal-tagged or personal-category rows it plans to exclude. Nothing is grouped or created until you confirm.

It then builds the report from the exact expenses you approved and reports the real counts, including anything that conflicted or failed — never "all done" when it was partial. You get back the finished report, Review expenses, and your Google Sheet.

From there you can continue in the same conversation: "Share it with my accountant" (it asks you to confirm the recipient), "Download that report as a PDF", or "Take me to bill the client for this report".

Everything here can also be done by hand — group expenses in Review expenses, then create the report from the Reports screen. The conversation is a faster route to the same result, not a different one.

It reversibly removes the transaction from future report projections without deleting its row or receipt. You can restore it any time. This is different from marking part of a payment Personal — Exclude sets aside a whole transaction from reporting.

The transaction's total changed, or one allocation's category is no longer valid. Rebalance the lines or pick a configured category before using it in affected reports or exports.

Yes. Enter the allocation amounts as positive figures — ExpenseBot preserves the parent transaction's refund sign.

Anyone with an active free trial or a paid (or paid-equivalent) ExpenseBot account. Access is checked on the server.

Yes for QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Wave, and for supported generic/CSV exports. ExpenseBot keeps one parent transaction and sends its allocation categories as multiple lines, with the receipt attached or referenced once — the allocation lines are not separate card or bank charges, and they don't get separate receipt copies.

FreeAgent direct paid Expense/Bill pushes are blocked for split parents, because its current API shape can't safely preserve the split. Use a supported generic CSV or another supported direct destination instead.

Reports you've already generated stay as snapshots — after you change a split, create a new report so the export reflects it.

All your expenses are automatically organized in a Google Sheet stored in your own Google Drive. This means you own your data, can edit it anytime, and can share it with anyone using familiar spreadsheet tools.

Your expenses live in a Google Sheet. To view and edit on your phone, we recommend installing the free Google Sheets app:

Once installed, tapping "View Spreadsheet" in ExpenseBot will open your expenses directly in the Google Sheets app for easy editing.

No — once your data is in the sheet, changing categories, tags, totals, or any other field does not affect previously generated reports. Reports are created as a separate snapshot, so feel free to recategorize or update entries anytime.

Once added, the new option will appear in the dropdown for all future expenses.

Yes, filters are completely safe. ExpenseBot automation operates on the underlying data, not on the filtered view, so filtering never changes, hides, or deletes anything permanently.

One gotcha: if you leave a filter active and a new expense is added that doesn’t match it, that expense is hidden until you clear the filter. It is in the sheet — you just can’t see it through the filter.

For full control, use Create Report instead. Reports are a separate snapshot and are never modified after creation.

That lighter grey text is intentional — not a glitch. Grey rows are expenses that have already been added to a report (via Create Report). When you create a report, ExpenseBot greys those rows and stamps the date in the Submit Date column (column W, on the far right).

The grey is a visual cue so you can tell at a glance what's already in a report versus what's still outstanding and available to report.

ExpenseBot integrates with Google Maps to auto‑calculate distances. Enter your starting address and destination, toggle round‑trip if needed, and add it to your expense report with one click. The current IRS mileage rate is applied automatically to calculate your tax deduction.

The average business driver logs 10,000+ miles per year. At the current IRS rate, that's over $6,700 in tax deductions. ExpenseBot makes sure you capture every mile without a separate mileage tracking app draining your battery.

The IRS standard business mileage rate is 76 cents per mile for miles driven on or after July 1, 2026 (IRS Announcement 2026-11); miles driven January 1 - June 30, 2026 use 72.5 cents (Notice 2026-10). This applies to self-employed workers, freelancers, Uber and rideshare drivers, real estate agents, and anyone driving for business purposes. The deduction goes on Schedule C Line 9 (Car and truck expenses).

The medical and moving rate is 23.5 cents per mile from July 1, 2026 (20.5 cents for January 1 – June 30); the charitable rate remains 14 cents per mile all year. ExpenseBot always uses the current IRS rate when calculating your mileage deduction automatically.

Yes. Activate the driver setup in Settings → "Set up ExpenseBot for what you track" → "Rideshare / Delivery Driver" and you unlock the Vehicle Deduction Optimizer under My Reports → Tax Reports.

You have to claim either the standard mileage rate or your actual vehicle expenses — you cannot use both for the same vehicle in the same year. The Optimizer totals your real trips and receipts both ways and shows which method produces the larger deduction, mapped to Schedule C line 9 (US) or T2125 line 9281 (Canada). It applies the standard rate in force on the date of each trip, which matters in a year where the rate changes mid-year.

One caution: your first-year method choice can prevent switching later on the same vehicle, so it is worth getting right the first time.

Activating also unlocks the Audit-Ready Mileage Log — the per-trip record in IRS Publication 463 and CRA format. Estimates only — always confirm with your tax professional.

Not if you drive for Uber, UberEats, DoorDash, Instacart, or similar gig platforms. Your Uber driver CSV already records the actual route distance for every completed trip — more accurate than GPS estimation. Upload your Uber CSV to ExpenseBot and an IRS-compliant mileage log is built automatically.

For driving that isn't captured in a platform CSV (client visits, property showings, errands), the built-in mileage tracker records individual trips with Google Maps integration — no battery-draining background GPS app required.

Yes. Open Add Travel Expense → Import from Calendar. ExpenseBot looks through your Google Calendar for events that plausibly involved real physical travel — using the event's location and context — and shows you the credible candidates to review before any mileage expense is created.

It is careful about what counts as a trip. A genuine in-person appointment stays a candidate even if the invite also has a Zoom, Meet, or Teams link — a client meeting with a "just in case" video link is still a real trip. A meeting that only ever happened over video is excluded. Nothing is added without your review: this reconstructs a mileage log from appointments you already scheduled — it is not GPS tracking and does not guarantee a deduction.

A meeting that happened only over video is not mileage — you did not drive anywhere, so ExpenseBot excludes video-only events when it imports trips from your calendar.

The nuance is the hybrid case: a real in-person appointment where the invite also carries a "just in case" Zoom, Meet, or Teams link. That is still a genuine trip, so ExpenseBot keeps it as a candidate rather than throwing it out for having a video link. You review every candidate before any mileage expense is created, so you make the final call on which drives were business.

Whether a specific trip is deductible depends on your country's rules — ExpenseBot helps you build the record, not decide the deduction.

ExpenseBot can fill in attendees from your Google Calendar so you do not have to type them. Open Add Meeting Attendees in the meal-expense workflow. For each meal expense it looks for a calendar event on the same date and, when there is one confident match — judged on event title, timing, merchant or location similarity, physical location, and who accepted — it adds the accepted attendee names to the expense's Notes, preserving everything already there.

It reports how many expenses were updated, unmatched, changed at the same time, or could not be edited safely. It builds a better record with less typing — it does not decide deductibility or invent an attendee.

In the Report Wizard, choose "Report by Date Range" and select a start and end date. Your expenses are automatically summarized by category in a separate tab — no extra steps needed:

Use tags to group expenses, then choose "Report by Tag" in the Report Wizard:

Open My Reports → Insights → Spending Breakdown. It shows your spending two ways: by category (groceries, utilities, software…) and by merchant (how much you spent at Amazon, Costco, etc. — variants like "Amazon.com" and "Amazon UK" are merged into one line).

Pick a date range, optionally filter to specific merchants, and click Preview to see the totals — then Generate for a clean spreadsheet. Totals are net of refunds and exclude transfers and bill payments, so you see real spending. It's free.

A category is the type of spending — groceries, utilities, software, travel. A merchant is who you paid — Amazon, Costco, Shell. Amazon sells across many categories, so your Amazon spending naturally spreads across several of them.

That's why the Spending Breakdown gives you both views: "by category" answers what you spend on, and "by merchant" answers where your money goes — including a single "Amazon" line totalling everything you spent there.

Where to find it: My Reports → Review expenses → Match card activity. If ExpenseBot's latest card check found unresolved refunds or credits, you'll see a Credits & Refunds (N) button — open it to review each item (date, description, amount, institution, card ending).

For each item you choose: Add to Spreadsheet for a real merchant refund, card reward, or statement credit — ExpenseBot records it as a negative expense so it offsets the original spending — or Ignore for card payments and transfers. Ignore decisions are remembered, so the same transaction won't reappear.

No. Credits and refunds go to a review list where you choose Add to Spreadsheet or Ignore for each item — this prevents credit-card payments and account transfers from being recorded as merchant refunds. ExpenseBot pre-filters the obvious payments, transfers, and loan payments, and leaves ambiguous credits for you to decide.

Yes. With a bank or credit card connected via Plaid, ExpenseBot re-checks your transactions every week and emails you only when something is missing:

• Card charges with no matching expense in your spreadsheet
• Bank deposits with no matching income in your income tab
• Refunds and statement credits that should offset an earlier expense

Each flagged item is a one-click Add to Spreadsheet or Ignore. Card payments and transfers between your own accounts are filtered automatically, and ignore decisions are remembered — nothing lands in your sheet without your click.

Where to find it: My Reports → click Review expenses → click Match card activity. Reconciliation lives on the expense side — if you opened the income-side Plaid screen first, you'll only see bank account options there (that screen is for income detection, not card matching).

Inside that flow you have two options: connect via Plaid (automatic, ongoing) or upload your CC statement manually as PDF or CSV. Uploads work one statement at a time, month by month — no bulk upload, but no cap on how many months you can do sequentially. Good for historical cleanup: download last year's statements from your bank's website and work through them.

Bank connections are secured through Plaid, the same technology used by major financial apps. ExpenseBot never sees your login credentials. You can also upload PDF statements manually if you prefer not to connect directly.

Manual reconciliation (PDF/CSV upload):

Upload your statement in a transaction-level format: CSV, OFX, QFX, MT940, or CAMT. Most cards offer a CSV download from their online portal under Statements or Transaction History; many US banks also offer OFX/QFX.

Monthly CSVs also work — just upload one per month, and a monthly statement PDF works as well: it's read and extracted for reconciliation automatically. The only PDF that can't be used is the AMEX Year-End Summary above, because it lists category totals with no individual transactions.

When you upload a credit card statement, refunds and credits are pulled into a separate Credits & Refunds review tab. Nothing is added until you choose Add to Spreadsheet. A credit is money the merchant put back on your card, such as a refund, return, chargeback, or billing correction.

For each genuine merchant refund (e.g. "DELTA AIR LINES refund $312") you can Add to Spreadsheet or Ignore it. Added credits are negative expense rows. Expand a credit in Review expenses and choose Link to purchase to connect it to the original purchase. Linking preserves both signed rows and amounts, including partial credits; it does not zero out or rewrite either row. Internal card payments — autopay and statement payments — are filtered out automatically and never shown.

Reports calculate net spend from those signed rows. When a report includes both a purchase and its full or partial credit, the credit reduces the category, tag, and report total.

Open My Reports → Review expenses, expand the expense, then choose Add document in Documents. You can attach a PDF or a JPEG, PNG, HEIC, HEIF, or WebP image as payment proof, an invoice, a receipt, a contract or agreement, or another supporting document. Each file can be up to 15 MB.

The file stays in your ExpenseBot folder in Google Drive and remains linked to the expense. It does not create another expense, replace the primary receipt, change the amount, or mark an invoice paid. New reports can list supporting links on a Documents & Credits worksheet without changing report totals. If a report row has a supporting document but no receipt, that document is also linked in the report’s Link column, labelled Document rather than the receipt’s View, so a reviewer can tell the two apart — a receipt link always takes precedence, and links already in that cell are never overwritten.

Yes. The Fee & Interest Detector uses your existing Plaid bank connection to find bank fees and interest charges — no new setup required.

The report shows the actual amount and number of charges, its exact coverage dates, the largest charge, and a dollar-ranked category breakdown. It then explains what to check for the charge type and gives you a copyable question for your bank. It never promises that a fee will be refunded.

ExpenseBot scans once a month and only notifies you when the result is reliable and useful. If the bank data is stale or incomplete, it holds the result instead of showing a misleading zero.

View your fee summary any time at expensebot.ai/my-fee-audit-report.

Yes — the Subscription Auditor scans your expense sheet for recurring charges and surfaces your full subscription picture: what you're paying, how often, and whether any price has changed.

No bank connection required — it works entirely from the expenses already in your ExpenseBot spreadsheet. Run it from My Reports → Insights → Subscription Auditor, from the Insights section of My Reports (appears once 2+ subscriptions are detected), or go directly to expensebot.ai/my-subscription-audit-report.

After your first scan, ExpenseBot monitors your expenses once a month and sends an Activity Center notification (plus push notification on mobile) if a new subscription appears or a price increases — you only hear about it when something actually changed.

Yes. After your first Subscription Auditor scan, ExpenseBot automatically re-scans your expenses once a month. If any subscription's price has increased — or a new recurring charge appears — you'll get:

• An Activity Center notification (bell icon, top right)
• A push notification on mobile if you have notifications enabled

Nothing is sent when there's no change — only when there's a real delta worth knowing about. You can also trigger a manual scan any time from My Reports → Insights → Subscription Auditor.

Not exactly. Ramp is a corporate spend-management platform for companies that need to issue cards, enforce spend policies, and automate AP. ExpenseBot is a Google-native financial workflow for freelancers, accountants, and small teams that want Gmail receipt capture, existing card reconciliation, income tracking, P&L, and tax-ready records in Google Sheets. They solve different problems — ExpenseBot works alongside whatever bank and card program you already have.

Yes. ExpenseBot is designed for businesses that already have their own cards and bank accounts. Upload a CSV export from any bank or card provider and ExpenseBot matches transactions to captured Gmail receipts automatically. No bank credentials, no card switch required — keep your Chase, Amex, Barclays, RBC, or any other card program.

Companies that need to issue corporate cards to employees, enforce spend policies, run AP automation, manage procurement workflows, and have a dedicated finance team or CFO. Ramp is purpose-built for CFO-led companies with formal spend-management operations.

Cash Radar is the feature; Pulse by ExpenseBot is the personalized weekly email it delivers (currently in Beta). Cash Radar scans receipts, supplier invoices, and income notifications ExpenseBot already captures from your Gmail, then sends Pulse — a plain-English weekly business update — when there is enough useful signal to report:

• Bills due soon — unpaid supplier invoices with vendor name, due date, and amount
• Expected or recent income — income and payment notifications, plus recurring income patterns
• Known cash need — confirmed bills due minus strong income signals (not a bank-balance forecast)
• Needs review — items with a missing due date, unclear invoice direction, or uncertain amount

It is an email report, not another dashboard to maintain. ExpenseBot should skip the email when there is not enough useful signal, so the first Cash Radar a user receives is worth reading.

Cash Radar is a cash-flow heads-up based on documents ExpenseBot can see — not a full projected bank-balance forecast. It shows known bills due soon, income signals, and review items, separated so you know what ExpenseBot found versus what still needs attention. Review items are excluded from the cash picture until confirmed.

No manual forecast spreadsheet is required. Cash Radar is readiness-gated: ExpenseBot sends it only after there is enough useful signal from captured supplier invoices, income notifications, recurring patterns, or review items.

P/L reports are historical — they explain what happened last month. Cash Radar is forward-looking: it shows upcoming bills due, expected income signals, and items needing review before month-end. Use Cash Radar for weekly cash awareness; use P/L for monthly or quarterly business results.

Yes — as a lightweight receivables view. When you create a client invoice from an expense report using Bill Client, ExpenseBot records it as an open receivable (money expected), separate from received income, with a status of Open, Paid, Overdue, or Review. The invoice stays linked to its report.

Cash Radar counts open client invoices as expected cash-in alongside supplier bills due — so you see both what you owe and what you're owed — but never as income already received. Your income tracking stays the source of truth for money that has actually arrived. This is built from invoices you create in ExpenseBot, not full accounts-receivable accounting; QuickBooks AR export is not part of it yet.

A one-click checkup inside ExpenseBot that scans your income, expenses, receipts, tags, reconciliation, and subscriptions for the month, then surfaces a short to-do list — each item with one direct action. It is not a chatbot and not generic advice; it reads your actual spreadsheet totals and current settings. Find it in Settings (Priority card #1) or My Reports → Insights.

Seven checks run automatically: setup completion, income vs expenses balance, missing receipts, pending tag suggestions, P&L readiness, subscription review, and creator/platform income detection. Each finding includes the evidence and exactly one action button.

No. ExpenseBot uses your spreadsheet totals and existing settings to surface actionable bookkeeping items — missing receipts, income gaps, tag suggestions, subscription changes. It does not provide tax or financial advice. For tax questions, consult a qualified accountant or tax professional.

Yes — ExpenseBot connects to ChatGPT, Claude, and any MCP-compatible assistant. See the ChatGPT, Claude & AI tools section for install steps, capability overview, video demos, and security details.

For a new report, use the final Create a Report screen to choose who it will be shared with when it is created. For an existing report, open My Reports, choose Share on its report card, add or remove people, then choose Save Changes. Choose Reviewer to check only that report, edit that report's Sheet, comment, approve, or request changes. A Reviewer does not receive access to your master expense sheet, other reports, Settings, or accounting tools. Choose Accountant for an ongoing accounting relationship and accounting tools. Removing a connected accountant from one report removes only that report from their list; it does not disconnect the relationship or change your Settings defaults.

In Settings, open Report Sharing and choose Manage Recipients. This list is preselected whenever you create a new report, but you can add or remove someone on the final Create a Report screen without changing the default. Removing a Reviewer from Settings stops including them on future reports and does not change existing reports. Disconnect on a connected accountant is different: it ends the accountant relationship and revokes their account access. To remove an accountant from only one report, use Share on that report card instead.

Open the secure link in the invitation email. A Reviewer sees only the shared report and can inspect its expenses and receipts, edit the Google Sheet, read or add comments, download it, then choose Approve or Request changes. Requesting changes requires an explanation; the owner sees it, fixes the report, and sends it back for another review. Accountants keep their existing client dashboard and accounting tools.

Once a report is approved in ExpenseBot, it becomes read‑only and locked in your Google Drive. This ensures compliance and preserves a secure audit trail for your finance team.

No — you don't have to start over. In Settings → Manage Expense Categories, rename your categories to your employer's coded names (like 8103-1900 - Meals). When you save a rename, ExpenseBot offers to update your past expenses to the new name too — you see exactly how many expenses will change before anything happens, it updates your main sheet only (reports you've already created stay unchanged), and you can undo right after.

Then create a date-range report in My Reports: the Summary page totals your spending by category — which are now your employer's codes. That's the coded summary your employer, treasurer, or grant funder is asking for. See the full walkthrough on creating an expense report with employer GL codes.

Renaming a category changes how future receipts are classified immediately. Your past receipts keep their old category name until you update them — and when you rename a category, ExpenseBot offers to update those past expenses at the same time. You'll see the exact count and total first, it changes your main expense sheet only (already-generated reports are snapshots and stay exactly as they were), and there's an Undo right after. Several old categories can map to one new coded category if you need that.

Tags let you group expenses by business trip, client, or project so you can create separate reports:

Yes. ExpenseBot scans your Google Calendar (past 90 days plus next 90 days) and proposes tags for recurring clients, projects, and trips. Built for anyone with recurring client meetings, scheduled gigs, or trips — chefs, photographers, consultants, agencies, freelancers, contractors.

What it proposes:

• Recurring meetings with the same attendee → Client – Acme Corp
• Distinctive upcoming events (wedding, shoot, launch, renovation, gala) → Project – Smith Wedding
• Travel-shaped events (trip, conference, expo, summit, festival, show) → Trip – Toronto Food Show
• Recurring same-location events → Location – Starbucks Downtown

Multi-calendar supported — pick which calendars to scan in Step 1. Selection is shared with the Calendar → Mileage feature so you only configure it once.

5-tier trust hierarchy when receipts arrive:

• Subject command (silent, ≥0.95) — for:Acme or project:Website-Redesign in the receipt subject overrides everything
• Attendee + same-day + plausible merchant (silent, ≥0.95) — receipt date matches a calendar event with the bound attendee
• Location match (silent, ≥0.95) — merchant location matches the bound event location
• Proximity to upcoming project (yellow suggestion chip, 0.7–0.95) — generic merchant near a single upcoming Project/Trip binding
• Multiple plausible bindings (inline dropdown, 0.5–0.7) — you pick

A merchant-class gate prevents false positives — a Best Buy laptop won't auto-tag to a "Lunch with Acme" event, hardware stores can't auto-tag to catering projects, etc.

Rolling 30-day sweep: once a day, ExpenseBot scans the next 30 days of your calendar for new patterns and creates bindings automatically — so as your calendar fills with future gigs, tags appear without you having to re-run the wizard.

Privacy: only event metadata (titles, attendees, locations) is sent to Google Gemini for clustering. Private notes, descriptions, and attachments are never read. Disclosed on Step 1 of the wizard before you continue.

Toggle off: turn off "Auto-tag from calendar" in Tag Management → Calendar Bindings (or in the Automation Hub). Existing bindings stay; new receipts won't auto-apply, but you can still tag manually or via subject commands.

Different from Calendar → Mileage: the older mileage feature uses event addresses to compute drive distance for IRS/CRA mileage deductions. Calendar → Tags reads event metadata for tag attribution. Both share the same calendar connection but live in different panels — they're complementary.

The wizard plugs into Google Calendar only — Apple doesn't expose a public REST API for iCloud Calendar. But you don't need the wizard to get the same per-gig auto-tagging value. Two universal paths work without any calendar integration:

Why we don't support Apple Calendar directly: Apple's authentication only exposes name + email, not calendar access. The only programmatic path is CalDAV with an app-specific password — a 5-step user setup versus Google's one-click OAuth. We've researched and planned the integration but it's deferred until adoption signal warrants. Reply to your trial or subscription email if you'd find direct Apple Calendar support valuable.

Color-coding tip: if you eventually move your gigs to a Google calendar, the wizard supports an optional "Filter by event color" step — scan only events you've colored a specific way (e.g. only Tomato red events). Apple's per-event coloring isn't standardized in CalDAV so this feature is Google-only.

ExpenseBot automatically determines the correct expense category account. Here's how you can customize them:

This is common with merchants like Apple, Amazon, or Google where one merchant sells everything from games to business software to personal subscriptions. For example, dozens of "Apple" charges might all be categorized the same way — but they include mobile games, iCloud storage, streaming subscriptions, and dating apps.

New categories apply automatically to all future receipts — no further action needed.

Categories (Column C) are your G/L accounts — like "Meals & Entertainment" or "Travel". AI assigns these automatically based on your chart of accounts.

Tags (Column K) are user-defined groupings that cut across categories. A "Las Vegas Trip" tag might include meals, flights, hotels, and Uber rides — all different categories, grouped under one tag.

Common mistake: don't create tags that repeat category names (a "Meals" or "Travel" tag) — the Category column already handles that automatically. A category answers what kind of expense is this?; a tag answers who or what was it for? "Travel" is a category; "Trip – Bali" is a tag.

Use one tag. A project rarely comes from a single supplier — a launch might involve a venue, a creative studio and an equipment supplier. Three merchants, three categories, one project.

Describe it to the AI Tag Wizard in plain language, e.g. "track expenses for the Harbor Launch project, including travel, materials, venue costs and equipment." The Wizard suggests a tag such as PROJECT | HARBOR LAUNCH | SUBMIT — you review it before anything is created, and creating it doesn't overwrite tags you already use.

For teams: with more than one seat, a Team Admin can push an approved project tag to selected teammates from License Manager > Project Tags. Everyone files against the same project name while keeping their own sheet — sharing the tag shares the label, not the data.

This is expense capture organised by project, not project-management or budgeting software. If it doesn't work the way you need, email support@expensebot.ai and tell us how you'd like it to work.

Use a trip tag — one tag groups flights, hotels, meals, rides, and other travel costs across categories, then one report pulls it all together.

Trip Intelligence can connect airport and destination expenses with different city labels and include multiple currencies, but it stays quiet when the evidence is weak. You can rename, accept, dismiss, or undo a proposal. It does not infer a client, overwrite a custom tag, or include Personal expenses.

Then run My Reports > Create a report > By Tag and select the trip tag — every grouped expense from that trip, all categories and dates, in one report.

Every account starts with two default tags: Business and Personal. They're starting points, not final classifications.

The key rule: AI features — the film scanner, persona scanners, the trip tagger — only suggest tags for rows that are untagged or still on a default Business/Personal tag. They never overwrite a custom tag you've set, so your own tags stay put while generic rows get re-tagged. Create your own under Settings → Expense Tags → Manage Tags or the Tags wizard.

No. Creating a new tag bundle through the wizard never overwrites a tag you've already assigned. When you save a new bundle through Settings → Manage Tags → ✨ Create a Tag with AI — Realtor, Wedding, Rental Property, Agency, or any custom AI-generated tag — ExpenseBot scans receipts from the last 90 days and only fills in receipts where the Tag column (Column K) is currently empty.

You'll see a toast like "5 tags saved. Applied to 37 existing receipts across all tags." — that "37" only counts previously untagged receipts. Your existing categorization is safe; the new bundle just fills the gaps in your untagged history and starts auto-tagging future receipts.

Want a previously-tagged receipt to use the new tag? Open your spreadsheet, find the receipt in the Tag column, click the cell, and pick the new tag from the dropdown. Manual edits always win — the wizard won't touch it again.

Yes — partially. Every account starts with Business and Personal as default tags in your spreadsheet's Tags tab, each with a Description column you can edit. ExpenseBot's classifier reads those descriptions on every receipt and looks for matching patterns in the receipt's text or image. If your description includes Visa 1234 and a receipt prints Visa ****1234, the AI matches and assigns the right tag (confidence 0.8).

Real-world hit rate is roughly 15–50% depending on your mix. The other half is handled by content-based classification — clothing/groceries/streaming → Personal, software/office/professional services → Business.

How to set it up: Open your ExpenseBot spreadsheet → Tags tab. Find the Business and Personal rows in column A. Append to each Description (don't replace the existing content — it's already doing useful classification work):

Also Business when receipt shows: payment by Visa
ending 1234, "Visa 1234", "****1234", or "XX 1234"

Same for Personal with your other card's last-4. The next nightly scan picks it up.

Higher-impact tip: the most accurate users add hints about their actual spending patterns, not just card numbers. Real example from a current user: "Any receipt with a tip present" → Business — that single line correctly tags every restaurant receipt where they entertained a client, regardless of card. Patterns like that work on every receipt because they're based on receipt content, not payment method.

Go to your main ExpenseBot spreadsheet, click the Settings tab, and enter your Employee ID in cell B2. Now all reports will include your Employee ID.

Use the Report Wizard to delete or undo a report:

No — deleting a report does not delete your expenses. Your expenses stay exactly where they are in your master sheet; deleting a report only removes that report's own separate Google Sheet and un-marks the rows it used.

Your master Expenses Google Sheet is the source of truth. The Review Expenses screen is a live view of that sheet — edits in either place stay in sync. Edits you make to category, tags, vendor, amount, dates, or notes are never touched by the app automatically.

Creating a report stamps the master rows it used with a date in the Submit Date column and greys them, and builds a brand-new, separate Google Sheet just for that report.

Deleting a report is safe. It sends that report's own separate sheet to your Drive trash — it does not touch your master Expenses sheet. Your expenses stay exactly where they are; deleting just clears the Submit Date stamp so those rows flip back to Not in reports and are available again.

A regenerated report only pulls in expenses that aren't already stamped In reports — to re-include expenses from a report you no longer need, delete that report first, then regenerate. Report cards are snapshots frozen at creation time, so editing your master sheet afterward won't change an existing report's totals until you regenerate it.

Open Review Expenses, select Sort Google Sheet, then choose Newest first or Oldest first. This explicitly reorders the rows in the Expenses tab of your master Google Sheet.

ExpenseBot does not automatically move rows while you are editing or while new receipts arrive. It validates every expense date first and reads the rows back after sorting to confirm that nothing was lost or changed.

New report spreadsheets are created newest-first automatically. Split allocations stay beside their original expense as one group.

Correct the recorded transaction without deleting managed history:

You can add teammates any time from Settings — no need to reset your account or start over.

ExpenseBot has one seated product. Your seat is seat 1 — you're already paying for it. Adding a teammate adds another seat. Two or more seats automatically turns on team management.

Go to Settings → Invite your team, choose how many teammate seats to add, and pick your billing interval — $10/seat/month or $100/seat/year. You can start with one extra seat (just you + one teammate) and add more later.

License Manager then appears in your sidebar so you can invite teammates by email, assign seats, and sync G/L accounts and tags across everyone. Accountants who add teammates keep their accountant view and get a three-way toggle (Accounting / Team / Expenses) to move between client books, team licenses, and their own expenses.

No. The team trial starts without a credit card and does not automatically become paid.

The team owner can open License Manager and choose Set up billing. If checkout is completed more than 48 hours before the trial ends, the first charge is scheduled for the trial-end date; close to or after expiry, billing may begin immediately.

If billing is not set up by expiry, team access pauses, but each user's spreadsheet and receipts remain in their Google Drive.

After upgrading to Teams, the License Manager appears in your sidebar. From there you can invite teammates by email, assign seats, and sync G/L accounts and tags across your whole team.

Connect your corporate cards via Plaid and ExpenseBot automatically syncs transactions each month. The system matches receipts captured via Gmail scan to statement lines — by the time the statement arrives, 80–90% of receipts are already matched. Unmatched charges are flagged in the admin dashboard, and one click sends a reminder to the cardholder listing their missing receipts.

If you prefer not to connect via Plaid, download your corporate card statement from your bank and upload it as a PDF or CSV under My Reports → Review expenses → Match card activity. Uploads work one statement at a time, month by month — no bulk upload, but no cap on how many months you can do sequentially. Works with any bank, in any format.

Invite clients and enable automatic report sharing to streamline collaboration:

Leave comments on individual expenses or add notes about the entire report:

Upload your policy PDF and ExpenseBot evaluates any report against it instantly.

ExpenseBot integrates with a wide range of accounting software:

• QuickBooks Online: Direct sync for both expenses and invoices
• Xero: Direct sync — connect once with OAuth and ExpenseBot creates the transactions in Xero, attaches the receipt, and matches or creates the contact
• Zoho Books: Direct connection (owner-only public beta) — reviews receipts against your selected bank or card feed before anything posts, then creates Expenses or Bills with the receipt attached; a reviewed CSV export remains available as the file alternative
• Sage 50 Canada: Export ready‑to‑import files
• Sage 50 USA: Export ready‑to‑import files
• Sage Intacct: Export with automatic dimension mapping
• FreshBooks: Export with automatic G/L mapping
• NetSuite: Export formatted for NetSuite import
• Microsoft Dynamics Business Central: Export with G/L account mapping

Our AI export maps expenses to the correct G/L accounts for any accounting system, saving hours of manual categorization.

ExpenseBot reads every account in your file, then decides which ones a purchase can be coded to. Nothing is thrown away — accounts that cannot be used are shown dimmed, not removed.

• Expense and cost-of-goods-sold accounts are imported and selected for you.
• Fixed asset and current asset accounts are imported and available — select them if you code capital purchases or prepaid items. They are not selected by default because most purchases are not capitalized.
• Bank, A/R, A/P, income and equity accounts are shown dimmed and cannot be selected: a receipt is a purchase, so coding one to a bank or income account would produce an entry your accounting package rejects.

This works the same whether the file came from Zoho Books, QuickBooks, Xero, Sage or a plain CSV.

The direct Zoho Books connection (owner-only public beta) is match-first: before posting, ExpenseBot checks your selected unreviewed bank or card feed, recognizes transactions that already exist, categorizes a single safe feed match in place, and only creates a new Expense or Bill when nothing matches. Ambiguous matches stop for your review, and nothing posts until you review the summary and choose Send.

• Exact remote-reference checks + a posting ledger. ExpenseBot records what it posted and checks Zoho for the exact reference before writing, so a retry cannot silently double-post. If Zoho's response is ever unknown, ExpenseBot stops and asks for reconciliation instead of retrying blindly.
• Using the CSV alternative instead? A file import cannot inspect Zoho's feed — choose a cutover date, export only transactions not already booked in Zoho, and import one Preview row before the remainder.
• Nightly Gmail scans update ExpenseBot only. They do not create Zoho transactions.
• Zoho history does not train ExpenseBot. ExpenseBot can remember reviewed category corrections made inside ExpenseBot, but a coding change made only in Zoho does not flow back into the spreadsheet.

Open the Zoho Books setup guide →

Class and Customer are set when you send a report to QuickBooks. Pick them once and they apply to every line item unless a row has its own value. They work with Purchases, reimbursement Bills, and vendor Bills.

Recommended workflow:

1. Organize reports so all rows share the same grant, donor, or project
2. Click Send to QuickBooks on the report
3. In the export dialog, pick Class (e.g. the grant or department) and Customer (e.g. the donor or client)
4. Confirm — every line item is tagged automatically

Need different values on different lines? Your expense sheet has a Class column and a Customer column (columns AC and AD, toward the right end). Type a value on an individual expense's row and that row is pushed with its own Class and Customer, overriding what you picked in the dialog; leave a row blank and it inherits the report-level setting. That way one report can still be coded grant-by-grant without splitting it up.

Ideal for nonprofits tracking restricted grants, consultants billing to multiple clients, or any org splitting costs by department or project. Classes and Customers are fetched live from your QBO account so the dropdowns always reflect your current setup.

Yes. Smart routing handles mixed reports automatically at push time — you don't need to separate receipts and invoices into different reports anymore.

• Already-paid receipts → QBO Purchase posted against your bank or credit-card account, ready to match against the bank feed
• Unpaid vendor invoices → QBO Bill payable to the vendor, one Bill per vendor with invoice rows as line items
• Out-of-pocket reimbursements → choose Reimburse me to create one QBO Bill payable to the submitter

Before anything lands in QuickBooks, the confirmation step shows what will be created. Split categories remain lines of the same Purchase. Nothing is created until you select Send to QuickBooks.

When you select Send to QuickBooks, ExpenseBot loads the active bank, credit-card, and vendor records from that connected QuickBooks company.

• Payment accounts: receipts are grouped when ExpenseBot recognizes the same card or account. If it cannot identify a source, it asks for that original receipt separately instead of silently choosing the first account.
• Vendors: exact and previously confirmed matches are filled in. You choose an existing vendor or create one only when the match is unresolved.
• Remembered choices: ExpenseBot learns only after the corresponding QuickBooks transaction succeeds, and the choice stays with that connected QuickBooks company.

Unpaid Bills do not ask for a payment account because they have not been paid yet.

Yes. When a report is pushed to QuickBooks, the original receipt document — PDF, Gmail receipt image, or scanned attachment — is automatically attached to the QBO transaction record. No manual upload in QuickBooks after the fact.

The attachment appears on the Purchase or Bill record in QBO, the same way it would if you had uploaded it manually via QuickBooks' own Attach button.

This is particularly useful for:

• Nonprofits managing government grants — auditors expect documentation attached to the expense record, not filed separately
• Outsourced bookkeepers — the QBO file is the complete audit trail; no separate receipt archive to maintain
• General expense workflows — the attached receipt is available for instant review when a question comes up about a specific transaction

No — as long as you omit it before you push. The quickest way is straight from the report: open the report and click Omit on the row. (Careful not to confuse it with Remove from report, which sends the expense back to Review Expenses to be reported later instead of retiring it.) You can also omit from the expense row in Review Expenses:

Accountants and bookkeepers: click Acting as: Self in the top bar and choose the client first — there's no Omit control on your own Clients page — then open Reports and click Review [client]'s expenses. In your own account: open Reports and click Review expenses. Then:

1. The list opens on Not in reports. If the expense is already in a report, switch to the In reports tab.
2. Click the chevron (⌄) at the right end of the row to expand it — the actions are hidden until you do.
3. Click ⋯ More actions → Omit from reports & insights, then confirm Omit expense.

Several at once: click Select, tick the rows, then Omit.

Timing doesn't matter — ExpenseBot checks your omit list twice. Omit before you create the report and the expense never goes into it. Omit after the report exists and the report still lists the row, but the push re-reads your omit list at the moment you push, so QuickBooks never receives it. You don't need to rebuild the report — seeing the expense still sitting in the report doesn't mean the omit failed.

This is the usual fix when a vendor sends both an invoice and a paid receipt for the same amount: both documents are worth keeping in your sheet, but only one belongs in your books. Omit the one you don't want to claim and push — QuickBooks receives a single entry.

To check an expense is omitted, look at the expense — not the report. It shows an Omitted badge on the row, appears in the Omitted tab, and its Notes column in your Google Sheet reads "Excluded from future ExpenseBot reports". An existing report still lists it, because a report is a snapshot.

Omit is reversible from the Omitted view. Xero, Wave and FreeAgent honour omitted expenses the same way.

No. Every expense ExpenseBot successfully creates in QuickBooks is recorded against that specific QuickBooks company, so a second push skips those rows and sends only the rest — and tells you how many were skipped. Fixing a category or a vendor and pushing again is safe.

If a push fails partway through, the entries already created are still recorded, so retrying sends only what's left rather than the whole report.

ExpenseBot asks you to confirm first in two cases:

• You switch export type — expenses already sent to that company as Purchases aren't re-sent as Bills unless you say so
• An older push we can't attribute — for reports pushed before this tracking existed, ExpenseBot asks rather than guessing which company they went to

Pushing to a different QuickBooks company is never blocked. Wave creates one transaction per report, so re-pushing a submitted report asks for confirmation there too.

Yes. In the QuickBooks push dialog, set Class = grant program and Customer = funder/donor. These apply to every line item that doesn't specify its own. The simplest workflow is one ExpenseBot report per grant so you set Class once per push; when one report has to cover several grants, type the grant on an individual expense's row in the sheet's Class column (column AC) and that row overrides the dialog. Classes and Customers are pulled live from your connected QBO account. Class tracking is available on QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced. Receipt PDFs attach to each QBO transaction at push time, supporting grant audit documentation requirements.

Yes. IRS Publication 463 explicitly allows self-employed individuals to use the standard meal allowance (the same federal GSA rates) instead of actual restaurant receipts for business travel. You still need a travel log showing the date, destination, and business purpose of each trip. The 50% meal deduction limit applies at tax-filing time on Schedule C line 24b — so a $68/day per diem becomes a $34 deduction. ExpenseBot's per diem tracker applies the 50% cut automatically and saves the audit trail to your expense spreadsheet.

When you travel for business, IRS Publication 463 limits your departure and return days to 75% (three-quarters) of the standard M&IE rate. For the $68/day standard CONUS rate, your first and last travel days are worth $51 each. For the $92/day NYC/SF/DC rate, those days are worth $69. The rule applies regardless of what time you depart or arrive. ExpenseBot handles this automatically — toggle a day as a travel day and the 75% is applied; the per-day meal checkboxes are greyed to indicate the rule is in effect.

The GSA FY2026 standard CONUS M&IE rate is $68 per day. High-cost non-standard areas reach $74, $80, $86, or $92 per day depending on the city. New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Chicago are among the top-tier cities at $92/day. FY2026 rates run October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026. Self-employed individuals can use these same federal rates for Schedule C meal deductions — they are not limited to employees.

Yes. ExpenseBot is listed in the ChatGPT app directory and the Claude connectors directory — one click, no token or config. Two MCP servers are on the official MCP Registry for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any MCP client.

See the ChatGPT, Claude & AI tools section for install steps, what you can ask, video demos, and security details.

ExpenseBot has a native Zapier app, listed in the Zapier App Directory under Accounting. Add ExpenseBot as an app inside a Zap and sign in when Zapier opens ExpenseBot's consent screen — authentication is OAuth 2.0 with PKCE, so there are no API keys or client secrets to copy by hand.

A Zap can upload receipt files and read the exact processing outcome, create reviewed expenses, add mileage and income, start and monitor a Gmail receipt scan, find expenses, and generate expense reports. Two polling triggers — New Expense and New Report — let a Zap react to activity. Client, project, and trip group fields select from groups that already exist in ExpenseBot; no action creates one.

You need an ExpenseBot account with its Google Sheet connected before a Zap can do anything useful, and Gmail must be connected inside ExpenseBot before any scan action. Map your trigger's stable unique ID into Source Event ID on every data-creating action so a Zapier retry replays safely instead of writing a second record.

Full setup, field mappings, and the outcome-routing pattern are on the Zapier integration page, with the endpoint-level contract at Zapier REST API reference.

ExpenseBot features a direct API integration with QuickBooks Online — not just an export. Connect once through our guided wizard via direct OAuth from your ExpenseBot dashboard, and expenses sync automatically with one click.

Unlike export-based integrations, the QuickBooks API sync means no manual file uploads or imports — just click "Submit to QuickBooks" and the bill appears in your accounting system, ready for payment.

Admins can manage licenses, sync G/L accounts, and standardize tags across the team:

These features ensure consistency while saving time through AI automation.

Upload your company's expense categories and G/L accounts to ensure consistent coding across all team members:

Purchase multiple licenses at once and assign them to team members:

Tax cash flow is a planning reserve, not a tax bill. It starts with business income recorded in your Income tab and subtracts current deductions ExpenseBot can classify. Personal and omitted expenses do not reduce the estimate; capitalized costs and items set aside for tax review stay visible but are not treated as current deductions.

Choose a 25%, 30%, or 35% reserve assumption and enter the running total of estimated-tax payments you have already made. The displayed US or Canadian date is the next standard payment date, not confirmation that you owe a payment.

Coverage has five product/tax layers plus a separate bank-connection boundary — all real, but not the same thing:

Every supported country gets the Year‑End Tax Wizard; the deduction engine and government forms layer on top where available. Being a supported country doesn't by itself include bank connections, deduction rules, filing worksheets, or filled forms — those are the separate tiers above.

The Australia and UK filing worksheets are Beta and do not submit a return. Review every figure and email support@expensebot.ai if anything looks wrong. Tax figures are estimates — confirm with your tax professional.

Generate a complete year‑end tax report in one click from My Reports — all expenses categorized, deductions calculated, and receipts attached. The result is a comprehensive spreadsheet ready to hand to your accountant or upload to tax software; if you change expenses afterwards (add, recategorize, split, or omit), regenerate it so the numbers stay current.

Unlike regular reports (which only include unassigned expenses), the year‑end report includes every expense for that year — even those already in other reports. Each category gets its own summary tab.

For US freelancers, ExpenseBot can pre-fill your Schedule C with expense totals by category. Canadian freelancers get the T2125 Statement of Business Activities. Australian sole traders and UK self-employed users can review a Beta worksheet that organizes Year-End figures for ATO/myTax or SA103F entry. The worksheets do not file or lodge a return; review them carefully and email support@expensebot.ai if a figure or filing label looks wrong.

Needs Tax Review is a safety hold, not a deduction category. ExpenseBot uses it when a government payment or refund cannot be classified safely from the bank description alone. The item stays visible with a $0 automatic deduction instead of being guessed into Property Tax or another tax line.

1. Open the generated Year-End workbook and select 🏦 BANK TRANSACTIONS.
2. Find rows whose Category is taxPaymentReview.
3. If a row is really an ordinary business or home expense, change its Category there. 🏦 BANK SUMMARY recalculates automatically.
4. If the same item also exists as a receipt expense, correct it in Review expenses and regenerate Year-End so future reports use the corrected source data.

This is different from Set aside for tax review in Review expenses, which is for a receipt purchase that may need capitalization or another non-current treatment.

Yes. For GST/HST-registered Canadians, ExpenseBot reads the GST/HST off every receipt and computes the claimable input tax credit (ITC) per receipt using ITC = tax paid × business-use % × deductible %, then reduces the deductible expense base by the recovered ITC (you can't also deduct tax you're getting back as a credit).

• Province-aware “GST/HST paid (ITC claimable)” summary on reports — GST, HST, or a GST + provincial split
• The 50% meals limit is applied to the ITC on client meals
• India GST users get CGST/IGST lines for GSTR-3B

ExpenseBot computes and displays your ITCs so the numbers are ready to transcribe onto your GST34 return — it does not file the return for you. Learn more on the input tax credit tracker page.

Many expenses are only partially deductible when used for both business and personal purposes. ExpenseBot lets you configure the business use percentage for each expense category, and automatically calculates the deductible portion.

Set these percentages once in your expense category settings, and ExpenseBot applies them automatically to every expense in that category. Your year-end tax report shows both the full expense amount and the calculated business deduction.

Yes. Software and SaaS subscriptions used to run your business are ordinary and necessary business expenses under IRC §162(a) — see IRS Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business — and on the cash basis you deduct them in the year you pay.

There is no dedicated software line on Schedule C. Most recurring SaaS sits in Line 18 (Office expense); anything that doesn't fit goes to Line 27b (Other expenses), itemised in Part V. Where a tool serves both work and personal life, you deduct the business share rather than the whole charge.

Full guide: Are software subscriptions tax deductible?

Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.

You deduct the business portion, worked out by a method you can explain and then apply consistently — not the full amount, and not nothing.

In ExpenseBot you set this once: Settings → Expense Categories, then the Business % field on the relevant category. Every expense in that category carries the split automatically, and the year-end report shows both the full amount paid and the calculated business deduction.

Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.

If you’re self-employed, yes — but only the business-use share of the bill, not the whole bill. If you’re a W-2 employee, an unreimbursed personal cell phone is generally not deductible on a US federal return; ask your employer about a reimbursement or stipend instead.

A separate line used wholly for business is the one case where the full cost is deductible — there’s nothing personal to apportion out, so there’s no percentage to defend.

One US-specific trap worth knowing: IRC §262(b) treats any charge for basic local telephone service on the first telephone line to a residence as a personal expense — however much you work from home. A second residential line used for business isn’t caught by it.

Setting it up is the same as any other mixed-use cost: Settings → Expense Categories, then the Business % field on your phone category. Full guide: Is my phone bill tax deductible?

Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.

Home office expenses are only partially deductible — you can only claim the portion of your home you use exclusively for business. ExpenseBot lets you set a single home office percentage once, then applies it automatically to every relevant expense.

Configure it once in Settings → Expense Categories and ExpenseBot applies the percentage to every expense in those categories. Your year-end tax report shows both the full expense AND the calculated deduction — feeding into Form 8829 → Schedule C for US freelancers, or the business-use-of-home section of T2125 for Canadian freelancers.

Note: Both the IRS and CRA require the space to be used regularly and exclusivelyfor business to claim these deductions.

Yes — ExpenseBot tracks income alongside expenses. Four input methods feed a single Income tab in your spreadsheet, and a reconcile-with-bank step keeps everything in sync.

Using ChatGPT or Claude? Attach an income screenshot, PDF, CSV, TSV, or text export and ask ExpenseBot to import it. ExpenseBot parses the file and shows the complete proposed rows before anything is saved; you then confirm the exact import. Imports over 100 parsed rows, or anything that benefits from visual editing, open the same authenticated Add Income review used in the app.

Reconcile with bank: once a month (or anytime, on demand), click Reconcile with bank to compare your Income tab against the deposits in your linked bank account. ExpenseBot lists every gap and lets you accept, edit, or ignore each one in seconds. Your year-end report shows a reconciliation status (✓ once you've reconciled at least 83% of months) so your accountant knows whether the totals are bank-verified.

No double-counting. When the same payment shows up across multiple sources — say, a Stripe email and the Stripe deposit hitting your bank — ExpenseBot's matcher recognizes them as the same event and only counts it once. The Income tab is the single source of truth; manual entries, Gmail-detected income, bank reconciliation matches, and year-end worksheet adjustments all flow through it.

Yes — automatically for Cash App, Venmo, Zelle, and Interac e-Transfer. When ExpenseBot's Gmail scan sees an outgoing payment from one of these platforms to someone who previously paid you, it writes a negative-amount row to your Income (Beta) tab with reference refund-of:<original_record_id>. The original incoming row is left untouched, so you keep both the receipt and the refund as audit evidence.

Net income on Schedule C / T2125 sums all rows including the negative — so a $1,000 receipt followed by a $200 refund nets to $800. This matches IRS Schedule C Line 2 (Returns and allowances) and CRA T2125 Line 8290 reporting convention: refunds are reported as separate adjustments, not by reducing the gross receipts line.

What if the recipient never paid me before? No row is written. Most outgoing peer payments are personal (paying a friend back, splitting a bill) and don't belong on a business books spreadsheet at all.

For platforms not yet auto-detected (PayPal personal sends, wires, cash), log the refund through any of these manual paths — all three produce the same negative-amount Refund-issued row with the correct refund-of:<original_record_id> reference:

• Add Income → manual entry — set category to "Refund issued" and enter a negative amount.
• Add Income → From CSV — drop in a CSV that contains refund rows. The AI auto-detects refunds (negative amounts or "refund" descriptions), tags them as Refund issued, and resolves the cross-link to the original income row by payer match.
• Add Income → From screenshot or PDF — same behavior: refund rows in a Cash App / Stripe / PayPal monthly statement get extracted as negative-amount Refund-issued rows.

All three paths share dedup with the Gmail-scan refund detector — if the same refund event later shows up in your Gmail and we already wrote the row from a CSV import, the email-side scan skips it instead of creating a duplicate. Same in reverse. You won't get double-counted regardless of which path the refund came in through.

Yes. When you connect your bank, every deposit runs through a 4-layer matcher against your existing Income tab so the same payment doesn't get double-counted.

Anything that doesn't match surfaces as a potential income gap. Click Reconcile with bank monthly (or anytime) to walk every gap one by one:

• Accept — add it to the Income tab as a new entry
• Edit — adjust merchant, category, or amount before adding
• Ignore — for transfers between your own accounts, refunds, or anything else that's not income (the ignore rule sticks for that source going forward)

Matched income flows into the right tax form automatically: Schedule C Line 1 / T2125 Line 7 for gross business receipts, Schedule B / T5 for interest and dividends, Schedule E / T776 for rent (routed by property tag). The year-end Bank Summary tab shows your reconciliation status — ✓ Reconciled at ≥83% of months — so your accountant knows the totals are bank-verified.

Yes — ExpenseBot has a dedicated HUD Medical Recertification Report. If you're in Section 8, public housing, Section 202, or Section 811 housing and the head of household is 62+ or disabled, federal law (24 CFR 5.611) lets you deduct unreimbursed medical expenses from the income your rent is based on. Every $1,000 documented saves roughly $25/month off your rent.

Setup takes five minutes: choose HUD / Section 8 under Medical Expenses. ExpenseBot automatically creates the Health & Medical and Pet Supplies tags for you, without duplicates, and guides you through connecting Gmail for qualifying receipts — prescriptions, copays, doctor visits, hearing aids, Medicare premiums, and service animal expenses. Run a historical scan to catch up on the past year, then review your expenses and preview the itemized worksheet before sharing it with your housing coordinator.

For detailed guidance on exactly what qualifies, how Medicare premiums are entered, how to preview your rent savings, and how the recertification date window works — ask our AI assistant.

Write special prefixes on receipts before photographing. ExpenseBot's AI reads your handwriting and automatically processes them — no manual entry required after upload.

This simple technique saves hours of manual categorization. Write "TAG:Acme" on all receipts for that client, and they're automatically grouped together for easy reporting. Write "w/ John Smith" on dinner receipts to document who you met with. Perfect for freelancers tracking multiple clients, consultants billing projects, or anyone who needs to document business meal attendees.

Sometimes — it depends which of two buckets the expense falls into.

When a receipt is gone, evidence still ranks by strength: the original receipt, then the merchant's confirmation email, then a vendor-reissued invoice, then a bank statement paired with a calendar entry, and last a written reconstruction. A bank statement alone proves amount, date, and payee — but not business purpose, which is the thing usually being tested.

Merchant confirmation emails are the most commonly overlooked source, which is why ExpenseBot scans your Gmail for receipts and writes them into a Google Sheet you own. See our full guide to deductions with no receipts. Estimates — confirm with your tax professional.

An MCP connector is a standard way to give an AI assistant or agent access to a real system you already use, with permissions you control. MCP (the Model Context Protocol) is an open standard, so one connector works across every assistant that supports it instead of needing a separate integration built for each one.

You approve the connection yourself, and the connector can only perform the specific actions it publishes. In practice it is the difference between an assistant that can describe how to file a receipt and one that files it in your own account.

"MCP server" and "connector" describe the same component from different sides — the server is the software exposing the tools; "connector" is what the assistant's interface usually calls it once you add it. A plain-language overview of the category, which connectors exist, and what they can and cannot see is at MCP connectors.

Choose the path the agent supports:

• ChatGPT or Claude.ai: install ExpenseBot from its app/connector directory, click Connect, then sign in. No token.
• Gemini Spark: open Settings & help → Connected Apps → Custom apps for Spark, add https://mcp.expensebot.ai/mcp, and complete browser sign-in. No token. Google's current Spark eligibility requirements apply.
• Viktor or another remote/custom agent: open Integrations → Add custom MCP and add https://mcp.expensebot.ai/mcp. Prefer browser OAuth. If Viktor requests a static credential instead, create a named revocable ExpenseBot token and place it only in Viktor's secure credential field.
• Claude Desktop, Cursor, or a local agent: run npx -y @expensebot/mcp-server-auth and store a revocable ExpenseBot token as the EXPENSEBOT_TOKEN environment secret.

Help me connect this AI client to ExpenseBot through MCP.

1. Determine whether this client supports remote HTTP MCP with OAuth, or only local stdio MCP.
2. For remote OAuth MCP, add https://mcp.expensebot.ai/mcp and let me complete sign-in and consent in the browser. Do not ask for a client secret.
3. For local stdio MCP, use npx -y @expensebot/mcp-server-auth and have me store a new ExpenseBot token as the EXPENSEBOT_TOKEN environment secret.
4. Never ask me to paste the token into chat. Never print, log, or save it in command arguments.
5. Verify by listing tools and running one read-only request.
6. Do not run a write action unless I explicitly approve it.

Open the connection chooser →

Eligible Gemini Spark users can add ExpenseBot as a custom Connected App:

1. On a computer, open Gemini → Settings & help → Connected Apps.
2. Under Custom apps for Spark, choose Add a custom app.
3. Enter https://mcp.expensebot.ai/mcp, click Next, and complete ExpenseBot sign-in.
4. In a Spark task, type @ and select ExpenseBot when you want explicit routing.

Full Gemini Spark setup walkthrough →

ExpenseBot's AI connectors let you work with your expense account from inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini Spark, or any MCP-compatible assistant:

• Submit receipts — drop a photo or PDF into the chat and say "log this expense"
• Search expenses — "show me my Amazon receipts over $50 from last month"
• Scan Gmail — trigger a receipt scan on demand instead of waiting for the nightly run
• Create reports — "create a Q1 travel report, leave out personal expenses"
• Run analytics — "compare Q1 vs Q2 spending by category"
• Add cash expenses — "add a $15 cash lunch at Chipotle today"
• Check tax deductibility — "is this Uber ride deductible?"
• Group by client/project — "group my recent client meals, create a report, and help me bill the client"
• Group, report, and bill — one sentence groups expenses, excludes personal, builds a report, and opens the Bill Client screen

Browse the practical prompt guide →

ExpenseBot is an approved app in the ChatGPT directory. One click, no token or config:

1. Open ChatGPT → Apps section
2. Search "ExpenseBot" — or open the ExpenseBot listing directly
3. Click Connect
4. Sign in with the Google account you use for ExpenseBot
5. Click Allow on the consent screen — done

Full ChatGPT setup walkthrough →

ExpenseBot is a listed connector in Claude. One click, no token or config:

1. In Claude, go to Customize → Connectors
2. Search "ExpenseBot" — or open the ExpenseBot listing directly
3. Click Connect
4. Sign in with the Google account you use for ExpenseBot and approve — done

Full Claude connector walkthrough →

Yes — here are four short demos showing what the connector can do once installed:

ExpenseBot publishes two MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers on npm and the official MCP Registry. They work with Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue, Windsurf, Cline, and any MCP-compatible client.

Setup (3 minutes):

1. Open the signed-in AI Assistant Tokens screen → Generate. Copy the token (shown once); never paste it into chat.
2. Add to your client's config. For Claude Desktop, edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Mac) or %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "expensebot": {
         "command": "npx",
         "args": ["-y", "@expensebot/mcp-server-auth"],
         "env": {
           "EXPENSEBOT_TOKEN": "YOUR_TOKEN_HERE"
         }
       }
     }
   }

3. Restart your client. Try asking: "What expenses do I have from Amazon this year?"

Claude Code (CLI): claude mcp add expensebot -- npx -y @expensebot/mcp-server-auth, with EXPENSEBOT_TOKEN supplied through its environment or secret settings.

Cursor: edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json with the same config, then Settings → Tools & Integrations → confirm tools loaded.

Find both servers on npm: @expensebot/mcp-server-auth and @expensebot/mcp-server. Choose the right MCP setup →

Signed-in ExpenseBot users can open the interactive What can I ask ExpenseBot? → gallery. Each supported example is shown as a clickable card — clicking one prefills the question in ExpenseBot's ChatWidget (the blue chat icon at the bottom right of every page) so you can review it before sending.

The ChatWidget is connected to your live expense data and supports the in-app actions shown in the gallery, including expense search, reports, and Gmail workflows. The external connectors have a broader tool surface, so the gallery is the source of truth for what can be launched inside ExpenseBot. No separate install or token is needed.

Start with the public prompt guide — copyable questions organized by task: receipt submission, spending search, Gmail scanning, reports, and client billing.

Browse the ExpenseBot AI prompt guide →

The ChatGPT and Claude 1-click connectors use OAuth (sign in with Google) instead of PATs — same scoped-access model, different auth method. See the Privacy & Security section for the full data-handling and third-party-sharing details.

No — ExpenseBot does not charge an extra connector fee. Availability inside ChatGPT or Claude can still depend on that platform's current plan, region, and workspace settings. ExpenseBot itself is free to create at expensebot.ai with a 60-day full-featured trial, no credit card required.

CASA (Cloud Application Security Assessment) is the independent security assessment framework used in Google's restricted-scope review process. ExpenseBot completed its 2026 assessment in April through ESOF AppSec (TAC Security), a CASA-authorized independent assessor. The assessment covered:

• Secure secret management and credential handling
• HTTPS-only connections with TLS 1.2+ encryption
• Secure cookie configurations
• Protection against common attack vectors (XSS, CSRF, injection)
• External penetration testing with verified pass results
• 54 OWASP-based security controls documented and validated

Apps that handle restricted Google data are reassessed annually. A successful CASA assessment validates the controls in scope; it is not a blanket Google endorsement of the product.

It depends on the type of Google account you signed in with.

• Google Workspace accounts (your own company domain): files stay private. Nobody can open a receipt or report by URL, and when you share a report, recipients are granted access individually by email address. This is automatic for any Workspace account — nothing to configure.
• Personal Google accounts (gmail.com and similar): receipts and reports are created with an "anyone with the link" permission. The links are long, unguessable, and never published or indexed, and that permission is what makes one-click sharing with an accountant or spouse work. Anyone who has the link can open that file.

If you are on a personal account and want your files locked down regardless, contact support and we will switch your account to restricted sharing. Existing files are updated too, and sharing a report afterwards still works — recipients are added by email instead of by link.

Yes. Under Settings, choose Reset Account to delete the ExpenseBot folder in your Drive and start fresh. This does not affect your subscription. ExpenseBot removes every ExpenseBot-owned Gmail label from your primary and linked Gmail accounts, then verifies the labels are clear.

If Gmail permission had already expired or been revoked, the reset explicitly warns that cleanup could not be verified. Reconnect Gmail and contact support@expensebot.ai before rerunning the scan. Do not delete or resend your original receipt emails.

You can revoke ExpenseBot's access entirely from your Google Account permissions at any time.

Durable receipt files, reports, and spreadsheets are stored in your own Google Drive, under the residency settings of your Google account or Workspace domain. ExpenseBot also uses infrastructure outside your Drive:

• Primary document and Gmail processing runs on Google Cloud Run in Montreal, Canada.
• Temporary OCR objects pass through a Google Cloud Storage US multi-region bucket and are removed after processing.
• Limited account, integration, processing, security, entitlement, and audit metadata is stored in Firestore's United States Central multi-region.
• The web and API layer uses Vercel functions in Washington, D.C., with static content delivered through Vercel's global network.

ExpenseBot does not currently offer UK-only or EEA-only residency. See the Privacy Policy for the full provider, transfer, retention, and privacy-rights disclosure, or contact info@expensebot.ai before an organizational deployment with specific residency requirements.

Open the Automation Hub, find Scan result emails in the Gmail Scanner card, and choose Weekly digest — routine successful results are combined into one Monday email. (The default is "After scans with new activity".)

These are not held for the digest:

• Problems — a failed scan, or a Gmail connection needing reconnection
• Items needing your review
• Manual or historical scans you ran yourself

So a quiet week means things worked. Worth knowing: the daily scanner already stays silent when it finds nothing new, so if you're hearing from it most days, it's finding receipts most days. Scheduled report emails have their own separate frequency on their own cards, and deadline reminders and feature tips live in Settings → Email Preferences.

If you see "Notification permission denied", your browser has blocked notifications for ExpenseBot. This is a browser-level setting that the app cannot override — only you can re-enable it.

How to fix it:

• Chrome (Desktop): Click the tune icon in the address bar → Site settings → Notifications → change from Block to Allow
• Chrome (Android): Tap the lock icon → Permissions → toggle Notifications on
• Safari (Mac): Safari → Settings → Websites → Notifications → find expensebot.ai → Allow. Also check System Settings → Notifications → Safari
• Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll to Permissions → Notifications → click Settings → find expensebot.ai → change to Allow → Save Changes
• Edge: Click the lock icon next to the address bar → Permissions for this site → set Notifications to Allow
• DuckDuckGo Browser: DuckDuckGo Browser does not support web push notifications. This is a browser limitation, not a settings issue. Please use Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge instead

After changing the setting, go back to ExpenseBot Settings and toggle push notifications on. See Google's guide on managing notifications for more details.

Yes — a couple inside a group of housemates, two siblings splitting a parent's care, or one side of a wedding can be pooled into a single party so the settle-up is computed between groups instead of between individuals.

• Open My Reports → Partnership Spend Report, choose your dates, click Preview.
• Type a group name next to each detected payer — e.g. Sam and Alex both in Household 1, Jordan in Household 2.
• Click Preview again: the settle-up now reads "Household 2 owes Household 1 $220". The wedding version calls these sides.

Yes. Create a client tag, use Review expenses to assign the exact matching rows, then create a report by that tag and date range. On the finished report, choose Bill Client to prepare the invoice.

ExpenseBot does not guess that every blank or default-Business expense belongs to one client, and it does not send the invoice without your review. See the step-by-step client billing guide.

Personal and Omitted mean different things. An expense is Personal when its expense category, Tag, or a split allocation is Personal. It stays available for review, but it is not deductible, reimbursable, or part of business profit. Omit is for a whole transaction that should stay in your records but be left out of future ExpenseBot calculations.

Example: if a $100 receipt is split into $70 Office supplies and $30 Personal, business reports count $70. If a duplicate $75 hotel receipt was imported twice, omit one copy; the row and receipt remain available, but only one $75 expense counts.

User-created reports: Date Range reports exclude the Personal Tag and Personal expense category by default, and you can edit both exclusions before preview. If you deliberately include Personal activity, it appears separately as Personal - not claimed, with distinct Business / claim and All selected totals. Report by Tag remains scoped only to the Tag you chose.

Year-End: reads the complete master ledger for the selected year, including expenses already used in another report. Personal amounts may be shown for review but never flow into deductible tax lines. Omitted rows are not exposed individually; only an optional count is shown. Business and personal portions of split receipts remain separate. If a relevant classification changes, ExpenseBot asks you to regenerate the report.

Business P&L and Cash Radar: use business activity for revenue, expenses, and profit. When nonzero Personal spending or owner funding is excluded, the result explains the amount. Owner contributions are cash added, not revenue. Personal-mode reports instead use Income, Spending, and Surplus / shortfall language and retain personal spending.

Use Review expenses to correct a Personal category or Tag, open the Omitted view there to restore an expense, or use Review incometo restore omitted income. Already-generated reports are snapshots; regenerate a stale Year-End report after correcting its source data.

If income is really an expense, open Review income, expand the entry, choose This is an expense, confirm the fields, and choose Move to Expenses. If an expense is really income, open Review expenses, expand it, choose More actions → This is income, confirm the fields, and choose Move to Income.

ExpenseBot preserves the original row and its source evidence, marks that source Omitted so it is not double-counted, creates one linked row in the correct ledger, and offers Undo.

Use Omit instead when the transaction should not count anywhere. Reports you already created are snapshots, so regenerate any report that should use the corrected transaction.