Tutorial
Stop doing this by hand
Expense reporting is the kind of repetitive work software should just handle. Here is how to set it up once and forget it.
In about ten minutes you can turn expenses from a weekly chore into a background process: scan receipts, route them for approval automatically, and let categories fill themselves in.
Before you start
Turn a monthly chore into a background task
Expenses are tedious because they're manual, not because they're hard.
Keying in receipts, chasing approvals and categorizing line by line is work that adds no insight, it just has to be done. Automating it doesn't remove the control, it removes the drudgery.
This guide sets up scanning, routing and categorization once, so the monthly report largely files itself and your team spends its attention on the numbers, not the data entry.
What you'll set up
Receipt scanning
Capture and read receipts automatically, no retyping.
Approval routing
Send each expense to the right approver on its own.
Auto-categorization
Line items sorted into the right buckets as they arrive.
Setup
Four steps
- 1
Turn on receipt scanning
Enable scanning so a photo of a receipt becomes a structured expense automatically.
- 2
Set approval rules
Define who approves what, by amount, category or team, so routing happens without you.
- 3
Add auto-categories
Map common vendors to categories once, and future expenses sort themselves.
- 4
Review and done
Check the summary, and let the workflow run from then on.
Result
What you'll save
- No more manual data entry from receipts
- Approvals routed automatically by your rules
- Consistent categorization without thinking about it
- Hours back every week
In practice
From shoebox receipts to a five-minute close
The real cost of manual expenses is not typing, it is chasing. Finance chases travelers for receipts, travelers chase approvers, and month-end becomes an archaeology project. Automation attacks the chasing, not just the typing.
Every captured receipt is matched to its card transaction and policy-checked on the spot, so problems surface while the trip is still fresh instead of three weeks later in a rejection email.
Teams usually phase it in: start with one card program, wire the export into the existing accounting system, and let a month of parallel running build trust before switching off the old spreadsheet for good.
We build software for teams who want their tools to fit the way they actually work — web, mobile, AI and the systems that tie them together. We write here about what we learn shipping it.