It’s February. Tax season is breathing down your neck. And somewhere in your office there’s a shoebox of crumpled receipts, 47 starred emails you never organized, and a Google Sheet you last touched in March.
Small business expense tracking shouldn’t be this hard. But you know the drill — you’ll spend an entire weekend in a panic, squinting at faded thermal paper, cross-referencing bank statements, and cursing yourself for not doing this sooner. Again.
Here’s the thing — you’re not bad at this. The tools are bad at this. Spreadsheets fall apart after 50 rows. QuickBooks costs $35/month and requires an accounting degree. Expensify is built for corporate expense reports, not your coffee shop. And if you’re self-employed or running a small team, you don’t need any of that complexity.
What you actually need is dead simple: a way to log what you spent, slap a receipt on it, and pull a clean report when tax time rolls around. No accounting software. No learning curve. That’s it.
So let’s build that.
Why Most Small Businesses Fail at Expense Tracking
Think about your history of trying to keep track of business expenses. You’ve probably attempted at least two of these:
The Shoebox. You grab every receipt, toss it in a drawer, and tell yourself you’ll organize it “this weekend.” By December, half the receipts have faded to blank thermal paper and the other half are buried under takeout menus. One coffee spill and your deductions are gone.
The Spreadsheet. January rolls around, you create a beautiful Google Sheet. Color-coded columns. Dropdown categories. A SUM formula at the bottom. By March, you’ve forgotten which column is “vendor” vs. “merchant,” there are three blank rows nobody can explain, and someone entered an amount in the notes field.
The “I’ll Remember It” Method. You won’t. Next.
The Enterprise Software. You sign up for QuickBooks, connect your bank account, import 6 months of transactions, stare at 400 uncategorized line items, close the tab, and never open it again. These tools are built for businesses with bookkeepers on staff. If you’re running a 5-person shop, you don’t need bank reconciliation, depreciation schedules, and accounts payable workflows. You need to know where your money went.
What actually works is a system with three properties:
- Easy to enter — logging an expense should take less than 2 minutes, ideally from your phone
- Easy to find — you can filter by date, category, or vendor instantly
- Easy to export — when you need “all Q3 expenses,” you can pull a clean CSV in 30 seconds
If your system nails those three things, you’re ahead of 90% of small business owners.
Business Expense Categories: What to Use and Why
If you’re wondering how to categorize business expenses for taxes, you’re going to spend an unreasonable amount of time choosing categories if you’re not careful. Don’t overthink it. Start with the standard IRS Schedule C buckets — these are the ones your tax preparer (or TurboTax, if you’re filing yourself) expects to see.
| Category | What belongs here | Real-world examples |
|---|---|---|
| Meals & Entertainment | Food and drinks for business purposes | Client lunches, team meals, coffee for a meeting |
| Travel | Getting somewhere for business | Flights, hotels, rideshares to client sites |
| Office Supplies | Stuff that keeps your office running | Paper, pens, printer ink, cleaning supplies |
| Software & Subscriptions | Digital tools you pay for regularly | Google Workspace, POS system, design tools |
| Professional Services | People you hire for expertise | CPA, lawyer, freelance designer |
| Rent & Utilities | Your physical space costs | Rent, electricity, water, internet |
| Marketing & Advertising | Getting the word out | Social media ads, print materials, signage |
| Vehicle & Mileage | Business use of your car | Gas, maintenance, parking (business trips only) |
| Equipment | Tools and machines | Laptop, espresso machine parts, furniture |
| Insurance | Business protection | General liability, professional liability, property |
A few things to keep in mind:
- Start with fewer categories, not more. 8–12 is plenty. You can always add categories later, but agonizing over whether something goes in “Office Supplies” or “Operational Materials” is a waste of time.
- Keep a catch-all. Call it “Other” or “Miscellaneous.” Toss anything ambiguous in there and re-sort it during your monthly review.
- Create custom categories when a pattern shows up. If you’re a coffee shop spending $2,000/month on wholesale beans, “Cost of Goods” deserves its own line.
- Check with a tax professional. If you work with a CPA or use a tax preparer at filing time, ask them about your categories. A 5-minute conversation now saves 5 hours of re-work in April.
Disclaimer: this article is about organizing expenses, not tax strategy. Your categories may differ based on your business structure. Always confirm with a qualified tax professional.
How to Track Expenses for Your Small Business (Step by Step)
Whether you’re a sole proprietor, self-employed, or running a team of five — this system works regardless of what tool you use. If you’re doing your own bookkeeping and wondering where to start, this is it.
Step 1: Pick Your Categories
Use the table above as a starting point. Then pull your last 3 months of bank statements and see where the money actually went. That’ll tell you which categories you need and which ones you can skip.
Step 2: Set Up Your System
You’ve got three routes (we’ll compare them in detail in the next section):
- Spreadsheet — free, flexible, fragile
- Off-the-shelf software — polished but expensive and generic
- Build your own — customized to your workflow, cheaper than you’d think
Whatever you pick, make sure it works from your phone. If you can only log expenses from your laptop, you’ll forget half of them.
Step 3: Make It a Daily Habit
This is the whole game. Expense tracking fails when it becomes a backlog.
Set a phone alarm for 5 PM: “Log today’s expenses.” Two minutes, every day. Do it while you’re closing up shop. Two minutes daily beats two hours monthly — and it’s infinitely better than two panic-filled days in April.
Step 4: Photograph Receipts Immediately
The moment a receipt hits your hand, photograph it. Not “later today.” Not “when I get back to the office.” Right there, standing at the register.
Thermal paper fades. Receipts fall out of pockets. “I’ll do it later” is the most expensive lie in small business bookkeeping.
The IRS generally accepts digital copies, but confirm retention requirements with your tax professional before discarding paper originals.
Step 5: Review Monthly
Block 15 minutes on the first of every month. Look for three things:
- Miscategorized expenses — did that Costco run end up under “Office Supplies” when it should be “Meals & Entertainment”?
- Missing entries — check your bank statement against your expense log. Spot the gaps.
- Spending patterns — marketing spend creeping up? Utilities spiking? This is where expense tracking stops being a chore and starts being useful.
Step 6: Export Before Tax Time
Don’t wait until April. If you work with a CPA or tax preparer, send them a clean export every quarter. They’ll catch miscategorizations early and help you stay organized. If you file your own taxes, quarterly exports still help — it’s much easier to verify 3 months of expenses than 12.
Every Expense Tracker for Small Business, Compared
So what’s the cheapest — or best — way to track business expenses? You’ve got more options than you think. But they all come with trade-offs, and most expense tracking software is built for a different customer than you. Let’s break them down honestly.
The Quick Comparison
The average U.S. small business employer has about 5 employees. Here’s what each tool actually costs at that scale per year — not just the sticker price:
| Tool | Price | Annual cost (5 users) | Receipts | Bank sync | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tiller Money | $79/yr (flat) | $79 | No | Yes (21k+ banks) | Spreadsheet lovers who want automation |
| Wave | Free – $16/mo | $0 – $192 | OCR (Pro only) | Pro plan only | Micro businesses wanting free bookkeeping |
| Zoho Expense | $3/user/mo | $180 | OCR (all plans) | Yes | SMBs needing dedicated expense tracking |
| Expensify | $5/user/mo | $300 | OCR (SmartScan) | Yes (10k+ banks) | Teams doing expense reimbursement |
| FreshBooks | $33/mo + $11/user | $924 | OCR (~80% accuracy) | Not on Lite plan | Freelancers who also need invoicing |
| QuickBooks | $99/mo (Plus, 5 users) | $1,188 | OCR | Yes | Businesses needing full accounting |
| Build your own | Free (on Mocha) | $0 | OCR (Google Gemini) | No | SMBs who want exactly what they need |
That’s a $0–$1,188/year range for what is fundamentally the same job: logging expenses and pulling reports.
Now let’s get into the details.
Spreadsheets (Google Sheets / Excel)
The instinct is right — a spreadsheet is flexible, free, and familiar. The problem is everything else.
There’s no receipt storage (you need a separate folder of photos somewhere), no data validation (nothing stops you from typing “rent” in the amount column), and editing a spreadsheet on your phone is miserable. It works for solo freelancers with a handful of expenses per month. It breaks the moment you cross about 100 rows and need to actually find something.
If you love spreadsheets but want them less manual, Tiller Money ($79/year) auto-pulls transactions from 21,000+ banks into Google Sheets or Excel. It’s clever — your data stays in your own spreadsheet, and their Autocat tool handles categorization. But you still have no receipt scanning or mobile capture, which means you’re still photographing receipts separately and hoping you match them up later.
Wave
Wave’s pitch is “free accounting software,” and the free tier is genuinely useful — unlimited invoicing, basic expense tracking, and financial reports.
The catch: receipt scanning and automated bank imports are locked behind the Pro plan ($16/month), or you can add just receipt scanning for $8/month. On the free plan, you’re entering everything manually.
The bigger issue is support. If something breaks and you’re on the free plan, you get a chatbot and a help center. Paid users report multi-day response times. And Wave has no third-party integrations — no Zapier, no API, no connecting it to anything else.
Good for: Solopreneurs and micro-businesses (<10 employees) with simple finances who don’t need integrations. If you mostly send invoices and want to track expenses on the side, the free tier gets the job done.
Not good for: Anyone who needs receipt scanning without paying, reliable customer support, or a tool that talks to other tools.
Zoho Expense
Zoho is the value play. The free plan covers up to 3 users and includes receipt scanning on all tiers — something most competitors charge extra for.
At $3/user/month (Standard), you get bank imports, auto-categorization, and multi-currency support. The OCR reads receipts in 14 languages. If you’re already in the Zoho ecosystem (Zoho Books, Zoho CRM), it integrates cleanly.
The downsides: OCR accuracy is inconsistent, so expect manual corrections. Report customization is limited. The mobile app works but occasionally lags behind the desktop version. And the really useful features — custom approval workflows, advanced analytics — are locked to the higher tiers ($5–8/user/month).
Good for: Small teams that want dedicated expense management at a low price point, especially if you already use Zoho products.
Not good for: Solo operators (you’re paying for team features you don’t need) or anyone who wants polished UX.
Expensify
Expensify is free for individuals — you get about 25 SmartScans per month, which auto-extract merchant, date, and amount from receipt photos. The scanning quality is the best in the category.
For teams, it’s $5/user/month (or $2.50 if you use the Expensify Card). You get unlimited scans, corporate card reconciliation, and support for 10,000+ banks.
But Expensify is fundamentally built for corporate expense reimbursement — employees submitting receipts to managers for approval. If you’re a small business owner tracking your own expenses, the workflow feels backwards. The desktop interface is clunky. Customer support routes through a chatbot called “Concierge” that sends generic responses. And users on forums regularly report billing surprises — getting upgraded to paid tiers without clear notification.
Good for: Teams of 5+ where employees need to submit expense reports for approval and reimbursement.
Not good for: Solo business owners or tiny teams just tracking their own spending. You’re using 20% of a tool built for a different use case.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is really an invoicing platform with expense tracking built in. If you send invoices and track expenses, it’s a solid two-in-one.
The problem is the pricing. The Lite plan ($19/month) caps you at 5 clients and doesn’t include bank reconciliation. Plus ($33/month) gets you 50 clients and bank imports. Premium ($60/month) unlocks unlimited clients.
Receipt scanning works at about 80% accuracy — better than Wave, worse than Expensify. The mobile app exists but consistently lags behind the web version. And the most common complaint in reviews: bank feed connections fail regularly, creating duplicate transactions that you have to clean up manually.
Good for: Service-based freelancers and consultants who need invoicing + expense tracking in one tool and are OK paying $19–33/month for it.
Not good for: Product-based businesses, anyone who needs just expense tracking (you’re paying for invoicing you might not use), or anyone allergic to bank sync issues.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks is the 800-pound gorilla. It’s also full accounting software — invoicing, payroll, inventory, tax prep, financial reports — and the pricing reflects that.
The Solopreneur plan starts at $20/month. Simple Start is $35/month. Essentials is $75/month. Plus is $99/month. And these prices have been creeping up every year.
If all you need is expense tracking, QuickBooks is like buying a commercial kitchen to make toast. It’ll work, but you’re paying for industrial ovens, walk-in fridges, and a ventilation system you’ll never turn on. The interface is overwhelming for non-accountants, and QuickBooks’ own support team will tell you to hire a bookkeeper to set it up properly.
The October 2025 interface redesign made things worse — users describe it as “horrendous and glitchy,” and Capterra reviews from late 2025 are notably more negative than earlier ones.
Good for: Businesses that genuinely need full accounting — payroll, inventory, multi-user access, tax integration. If your accountant specifically asks you to use QuickBooks, use QuickBooks.
Not good for: Small business owners who just want to track what they spent. You’re paying for a tool that has entire certification courses built around it.
Build Your Own (with Mocha)
There’s a middle ground that didn’t exist a couple years ago: build exactly the tool you need.
You describe what you want — categories, fields, reports, receipt scanning, user roles — and Mocha builds it as a real, working web app. Not a spreadsheet. Not a mockup. An actual application with a database, authentication, receipt OCR via Google Gemini, role-based access (admin + employee), and CSV export.
The app is mobile-first — open it on your phone, photograph a receipt with your camera, and the built-in Smart Scan reads the text and auto-fills vendor, amount, date, and category. No bank sync (you enter expenses manually or scan receipts), but also no monthly subscription fees, no feature bloat, no fighting someone else’s workflow.
Good for: Small business owners and teams who are stuck between “spreadsheets aren’t enough” and “QuickBooks is too much.” Especially useful when you want your employees to submit expenses from their phones and need admin control over who sees what.
Not good for: Anyone who needs automatic bank transaction imports or wants vendor support they can call.
What It Comes Down To
Most of the tools above are built for a different customer than you. Expensify is for corporate expense reports. QuickBooks is for businesses with dedicated bookkeepers. FreshBooks is for freelancers who primarily invoice. Wave is free but limited without the Pro plan.
If you’re a small business owner who needs to log expenses, scan receipts, manage a small team, and pull reports — and you don’t want to overpay for 50 features you’ll never use — building your own is worth a serious look. (We’ve walked through this approach before with a custom CRM and a Typeform replacement — same idea, different tool.)
How You Can Build a Custom Small Business Expense Tracker in 20 Minutes
Here’s what the “build your own” approach looks like in practice. Open Mocha and we’ll build the whole thing in three prompts — starting with the core app, then adding management views, then the smart receipt scanner.
Step 1: The Foundation
This first prompt sets up authentication, the dashboard, the expense entry form, and the design system. Everything that follows will build on this base.
What it does: Helps small business teams log expenses, photograph receipts with their phone camera, categorize spending, and generate clean reports for tax time.
Users & Auth:
- Users sign up with email/password
- Two roles: Admin and Employee
- The very first user to sign up is automatically assigned the Admin role
- All subsequent users default to Employee
- Admins: manage categories, manage users, view all expenses, export reports, delete expenses
- Employees: add/view/edit their own expenses, upload receipts
- Simple onboarding: after the first admin signs up, ask for business name and fiscal year start month
Core features:
1. Dashboard — Total expenses this month and this year, breakdown by category (bar or pie chart), recent expenses (last 10), quick "Add Expense" button always visible. Admins see all team expenses; Employees see only their own.
2. Add Expense — Form with date (defaults to today), amount (USD), vendor/merchant name, category dropdown (Meals & Entertainment, Travel, Office Supplies, Software & Subscriptions, Professional Services, Rent & Utilities, Marketing & Advertising, Vehicle & Mileage, Equipment, Insurance, Other), payment method dropdown (Credit Card, Debit Card, Cash, Check, Bank Transfer, Other), notes (optional), receipt image upload, and a "Recurring" toggle with frequency options.
Design: White backgrounds, dark-slate sidebar (#1E293B), teal accent (#0D9488) for primary actions and active states, amber for warnings only. System font stack (Inter if available). Dashboard: large semibold stat cards with trend arrows (up green, down red), category breakdown as a clean bar chart with teal/slate bars and rounded corners. Sidebar: 240px dark sidebar on desktop with icon + label nav items, collapses to a 5-icon bottom tab bar on mobile. Cards: 12px border-radius, subtle 1px border (#E2E8F0), light shadow on hover. Forms: 48px-tall inputs with 14px text, generous padding, clear labels above each field. Tables: tabular-nums for all currency columns, alternating row backgrounds, sticky header. Mobile-first — 44px minimum touch targets everywhere. Think Mercury or Brex, not a generic admin template.
In under five minutes, you’ll have a working app with authentication, an admin/employee role system, a dashboard with charts, and a full expense entry form. The first user to sign up becomes admin automatically — additional signups default to employee, so they can only see and edit their own expenses.
You can already log expenses manually and see them roll up in the dashboard. Next, let’s add the views that make all that data actually useful.
Step 2: Lists, Reports, and Admin Tools
Now we’ll add the screens for browsing, filtering, and exporting expenses — plus the admin tools for managing categories and users.
1. Expenses List — Searchable, filterable table. Filters: date range, category, payment method, amount range, submitted by (admin only). Sortable by date, amount, vendor, category. Click any row to view/edit. Bulk select and delete (admin only).
2. Receipt Gallery — Grid of uploaded receipt images with amount and vendor overlaid as a white pill badge. Click to open full expense detail. 3-column grid on desktop, 2 on mobile.
3. Reports / Export — Date range presets (This Month, Last Month, This Quarter, This Year, Last Year, Custom). Summary table by category. CSV export (includes Submitted By column). Print-friendly view. Admin: export all team expenses.
4. Categories Manager (Admin only) — Add custom categories, edit names, hide unused ones.
5. User Management (Admin only) — List all users with their role. Promote Employees to Admin.
You now have a complete expense management system — filterable lists, a visual receipt gallery, clean reports with one-click CSV export, and admin controls for categories and user roles.
Load it up with your real expenses and you’ll be filtering by category, exporting monthly reports, and browsing receipts in the gallery view within minutes. There’s one more feature that turns this from a good tool into a great one.
Step 3: Smart Scan
This is the hero feature — photograph a receipt and the app reads it automatically. One prompt adds OCR, mobile camera capture, and a polished mobile experience.
Smart Scan: On the Add Expense form, add a receipt image capture button. On mobile, open the camera directly so users can photograph receipts on the spot. After a receipt image is uploaded, resize it to a maximum of 1280px on the longest side (maintaining aspect ratio) only if the original is larger — never upscale. Store the resized image in the database. Then use the Google Gemini API (Vertex AI, model: gemini-2.5-flash) to read the receipt and auto-fill vendor, amount, date, and suggest a category. User can review and correct before saving.
Mobile polish: Persistent floating teal "Add Expense" FAB (bottom-right), camera button opens native capture directly, 44px minimum touch targets everywhere.
Important: This app does NOT give tax advice or calculate deductions. It's purely an organizer.
The standout feature: Smart Scan. You photograph a receipt with your phone camera and the app reads it using Google Gemini — Google’s fast, cost-effective vision model — auto-filling the vendor name, amount, date, and suggesting a category. You review the auto-filled fields, correct anything it got wrong, and save. It’s the same OCR workflow that Expensify charges $5/user/month for, except you own it.
The whole thing has authentication, role-based access, and looks like a real business tool. No code. No database setup. No hosting configuration.
Compare that to the alternatives:
| What you get | Mocha | QuickBooks Simple Start | Wave Pro | Spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Custom categories | Exactly yours | Preset (customizable) | Preset (customizable) | Whatever you type |
| Receipt scanning (OCR) | Yes (Google Gemini) | Yes | $8/mo add-on or Pro | No |
| Phone camera capture | Yes | Yes (mobile app) | Yes (mobile app) | No |
| Multi-user roles | Admin + Employee | 1 user only | Unlimited (no roles) | No access control |
| CSV export | Yes | Yes | Yes | It already is one |
| Monthly cost | $0 | $35/mo | $16/mo | $0 |
| Setup time | ~20 min | Hours (steep learning curve) | ~30 min | ~1 hour |
| Fits YOUR workflow | Exactly | You adapt to theirs | You adapt to theirs | If you maintain it |
If you want to try it, sign up for Mocha (free to start) and paste the prompts above. (Want to tweak them? Our prompt power-up guide covers how to get better results.)
How to Actually Stick With Expense Tracking
Building the system is the easy part. Consistently tracking your expenses is where most people fall off. If you’ve tried to organize your business expenses before and given up, these habits are what make the difference.
The 2-minute rule. If entering an expense takes more than 2 minutes, your system is too complicated. Remove fields you’re not using. Cut categories. Speed beats perfection.
Set a daily alarm. 5 PM, every day: “Log today’s expenses.” Treat it like closing out the register. Two minutes now saves you hours later.
Photograph every receipt immediately. Standing at the register. In the parking lot. Before you start the car. Not “later.”
Review your category breakdown monthly. This is where tracking stops being a chore and starts being useful. When you see that marketing spend doubled or utilities are trending up 15% quarter-over-quarter, you’re getting real insight into your business. Most owners don’t know where their money goes until tax time. You’ll know on the first of every month.
Export quarterly. Whether you work with a CPA, use a tax prep service, or file yourself — quarterly exports keep everything organized and make tax season a non-event.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stop Dreading Tax Season
Small business expense tracking boils down to three things: log what you spent, categorize it, attach the receipt. Whether you’re self-employed, running a team of three, or managing a 10-person shop — the best system is the one you’ll actually use consistently.
If spreadsheets work for you, great. If you need QuickBooks, fine. And if you’re stuck in the middle — where spreadsheets aren’t enough but enterprise software is overkill — you can build something that fits exactly how you work. In about 20 minutes.
Build your own expense tracker with Mocha — free to start.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional for guidance specific to your situation.