Billing & Time

Expense vault & receipt capture

Capture receipts as you go and keep an accountant-ready ledger of every business expense — overhead and project-billable, in one place.

The vault

The Expenses page in the sidebar is the central vault for your workspace (Solo plans and up). Every expense — whether captured from a project page or directly here — shows up in one searchable list with totals and filters.

Filter chips:

•All — every expense in the workspace
•Project — expenses linked to a specific project (hits the project P&L)
•Overhead — business expenses with no project (rent, software, etc.)
•Unbilled — billable project expenses you haven't added to an invoice yet

Search by vendor, description, or notes. Filter by tax category or project. Export the current view to CSV for your accountant.

Capturing a receipt

Click New expense and either Take photo (opens an in-app camera on desktop, or your phone's camera on mobile) or Upload (image or PDF up to 12 MB). The receipt is stored securely; we record an immutable SHA-256 hash of the original so the file can be verified on audit.

AI receipt scan

On Studio plans and up, the moment an image receipt finishes uploading we run it through an AI vision model that extracts:

•Vendor / supplier name
•Date
•Total amount and currency
•VAT amount (if shown)
•Suggested SARS-aligned tax category

The form prefills with what the AI found, plus a small “AI” badge next to each filled field. Fields with low confidence are flagged in amber so you know what to double-check before saving. You can re-scan the same receipt at any time, or just type over what AI got wrong.

Tip: The AI never invents fields. If something is not clearly visible on the receipt — say the supplier hasn't printed VAT separately — that field stays blank for you to fill in manually.

Project vs overhead

Every expense is either project-linked (hits the project P&L and is reimbursable from a client) or overhead (no project, just affects your cashflow). Both flow into the cashflow burn calculation. You can re-assign an expense between project and overhead at any time.

Mark project expenses as billable to bill them back to the client. Select multiple billable expenses on a project and add them to a draft invoice in one click.

Tax categories

The category list is SARS-aligned: Travel & accommodation, Motor vehicle, Telecoms, Software & subscriptions, Bank & finance charges, Marketing & advertising, Subcontractors & professional fees, Stationery & printing, Postage & courier, Office rent & utilities, Repairs & maintenance, Insurance, Training & development, Equipment & tools, Meals & entertainment, Bank-charged FX fees, Other.

Retention & deletion

Receipts are retained for the period your tax law requires. For South African subscribers that's a minimum of 5 years from the end of the tax period (extending to 7 years where the Companies Act applies). When you delete a receipt before that window passes, we strip the receipt file but keep the expense row in restricted form for the remainder of the retention period. After the window, the row deletes in the ordinary course.

Note: This means a delete request inside the retention window is honoured for the file image, but the line item stays for tax-audit purposes. We'll confirm in writing when this exception applies — it's the same handling every accounting tool uses.

Cash flow integration

Every expense — project-linked or overhead — feeds the cash flow forecast via your last 90 days' burn rate. The more receipts you capture, the more accurate your forecast.