Expenses & Receipts

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Receipt sweep runs mondays · 7:15am and keeps the Expenses dashboard fresh. Mondays — finds the receipts that arrived, files each one, and totals what is waiting to be claimed.
• Monthly report runs 1st of the month · 8am and keeps the Expenses dashboard fresh. The 1st — the month totalled and the claimable receipts on one sheet in your vault.
• What is captured lands in the Expense book record, which lives at Data/Expense Book in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Expenses dashboard reads from the record and shows, at a glance: this month · waiting to be claimed · receipts on the book · where each claim stands · where it goes · by project or client · month by month · longest waiting to be claimed · this month's report · the expense book · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Expense capture writes to Expense book · Receipt sweep writes to Expense book · Claim marking writes to Expense book · Expense book shown by Expenses · Expenses kept fresh by Receipt sweep · Expense book summarised by Monthly report · Receipt sweep run by Finch · Monthly report run by Finch · Finch holds Expense capture · Finch holds Claim marking.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Let the Monday Receipt sweep do the reading. Open Expenses on a Monday for This month and Waiting to be claimed, and put claims in from Longest waiting to be claimed rather than from a shoebox — it is oldest first, and a line that has turned red has waited more than a month.
• Say an expense the moment you pay it — "taxi to the client, 23.80, claiming it" — and Expense capture files it where the sweep would have. A paper receipt is a photo in the chat: Finch files the picture under Expenses/Receipts in your vault and points the row at it, so the receipt is never lost and never pasted anywhere.
• When you put a claim in, say so — "put the August claim in" — and when it comes back, say that too. Claim marking moves the rows, and Waiting to be claimed stays honest without a spreadsheet. Paste the remittance and it matches the amounts itself.
• On the 1st, open the sheet the Monthly report wrote under Expenses/Reports — the month totalled, every receipt still to claim with where it is — and hand it to whoever pays claims. This month's report on the board links straight to it.
• Ask Finch the questions a spreadsheet would make you compute — "what has the Northwind work cost so far", "what did I spend on travel last quarter". The answers come from your own book.
• Tell Finch the standing rules once — "anything on the company card is nothing to claim", "Coastal Rail fares are the Northwind audit" — and every sweep files by them. When a row is wrong, say so; that correction is what keeps the board true.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, records and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• The company-card rule, and what you claim back — said once, filed by every sweep after.
• The projects or clients the receipts belong to, and which merchants or routes go with which.
• How and when claims go in — monthly, per trip, through a named system — so the report lands when it is useful.
• When the Monday sweep runs, or turning it off and keeping the book by hand.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Adding the Kit offers the first sweep right away: connect your email on the same screen, start it with one tap, and watch it read back through six months of receipts — fares, hotels, software plans, equipment, meals out, tickets and fees — and file each one with its amount and where the receipt is kept. Which project a receipt belongs to, and whether you claim it back, are left for you rather than guessed. Prefer not to connect email? Tell Finch what you have paid for lately instead, and the book builds by hand.
2. When that first sweep finishes, Finch leaves a short note in your 1Presence inbox saying what it filed — how many receipts, from how many merchants — and invites two minutes together: what is not a business expense, which of these you claim back (the company-card rule), and the projects or clients the receipts belong to.
3. From then on the sweep runs on Monday mornings: it files what is new since the last run, totals this month and what is waiting to be claimed, and raises a card only when a claim has waited more than a month or a receipt could not be placed.
4. On the first of each month the Monthly report writes the month's sheet into your vault under Expenses/Reports and puts the line and the link on the board.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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