You don't need accounting software. You need organized receipts.

The job you actually have

Most sole proprietors who buy accounting software don't need accounting software. They need a shoebox that adds.

Here's the situation. You're one person. Nobody is on your payroll, you don't hold stock on a shelf, and your business is essentially you plus a phone plus a car. You do the work. Money comes in. You spend money on things to do the work — a lockbox, a ream of paper, a tank of gas, lunch with a client. Once a year, somebody — an accountant, a tax preparer, a relative who's good at this — turns that into a Schedule C.

Nowhere in that sentence is there a general ledger, a chart of accounts, a trial balance, or a reconciliation. Those are real things that real businesses genuinely need. But they are the tools of bookkeeping, and bookkeeping is a different job from the one you're actually stuck with, which is: I have a pile of receipts and a deadline.

The software industry has an incentive to blur that line, because bookkeeping software is worth a monthly subscription and a shoebox isn't. But if you've ever opened a double-entry accounting app, felt a wave of dread, and closed it again — that reaction was information. You were being handed the wrong tool.

What your accountant wants from you

Worth asking yours directly, because preferences vary. But the answer is remarkably consistent, and remarkably small:

That's the packet. Notice what it is: a list and some files. There's no accounting concept anywhere in it.

The only three jobs

Strip it all back and there are three, in this order:

Capture is the one that decides whether your year goes well. The other two are mechanical. Any system — paper, spreadsheet, app — that makes capture take under thirty seconds will beat a more powerful system that makes it take three minutes, because the three-minute one doesn't get used in March when you're busy.

What you can skip

These are real features of real products. For a one-person business whose return someone else prepares, most of them are solving a problem you don't have.

• Double-entry bookkeeping. Debits, credits, a balance sheet. Necessary if you have investors, a loan covenant, or inventory. Otherwise it's machinery with nothing to lift.
• Bank sync. Convenient, genuinely. It also means handing your banking credentials to a third-party aggregator, and it imports transactions, not receipts — you still have to categorize them and you still don't have the documentation. It's less of a shortcut than it looks.
• Invoicing. A separate job from tracking expenses. Plenty of people invoice from a document template and are fine.
• Quarterly estimated tax calculators. Useful if you're on your own. If you have an accountant, they'd generally rather tell you the number themselves than have software guess it.
• Profit and loss dashboards. Pleasant to look at. Rarely the thing that changes a decision in a one-person business.

None of this is an argument that these features are bad. It's an argument that paying monthly for all of them, in order to use the receipt scanner, is a bad trade — and that the dread you feel opening the app is the cost of carrying machinery you never asked for.

A system that works, regardless of what you use

This works with a folder and a spreadsheet. It works with an app. The system is the point, not the tool.

If you do this with a free spreadsheet and a phone camera, you will be ahead of most self-employed people, and your accountant will be pleased with you. Genuinely — that's not a throwaway line. The system above is free.

Doing it in an app instead

The spreadsheet version works. It fails for one reason: step 1. Capturing a receipt into a spreadsheet means typing four fields with one hand while holding a sandwich, and so it doesn't happen, and so by March the system is fiction.

That's the specific problem Spndle was built for. We make it, so weigh what follows accordingly. It is an expense log, deliberately — not an accounting package:

• Photograph a receipt and it fills itself in — payee, date, amount, suggested category. Capture drops to a few seconds, which is the whole game. How scanning works →
• Every Schedule C category is built in, so categorizing is a tap, not a decision about accounting.
• Mileage tracks by GPS at the IRS standard rate — start, drive, stop.
• The exports are the packet from the top of this page: PDF itemized list, PDF Schedule C summary with IRS line numbers, and CSV versions of both. How exporting works →
• Free to use, with a single $4.99 purchase to unlock PDF and CSV export. No subscription, and no bank connection — your data stays on your phone.

There's no ledger in it, no chart of accounts, and no dashboard. That's not a roadmap gap. It's the point.

When you do need more

This page argues against buying machinery you don't need. It is not an argument that nobody needs it. Get real accounting software — and probably a bookkeeper — if any of these describe you:

• You have employees or run payroll. Not a spreadsheet problem.
• You carry inventory. Cost of goods sold needs actual accounting.
• You need a balance sheet for a lender, an investor, or a partner.
• You're on accrual accounting, or you have receivables and payables that matter.
• You have enough transaction volume that manual capture is genuinely impractical — at some point bank sync stops being a convenience and starts being necessary.
• You file your own return and want the quarterly estimates calculated rather than working them out yourself.

If one of those is you, a simple expense log is the wrong tool and you should ignore everything above.

Questions

Do I need to keep paper receipts if I photograph them?

The IRS accepts legible digital copies, so photographs are generally fine as records. If you're dealing with substantial amounts or anything unusual, ask your accountant how they'd like it handled.

How long do I have to keep records?

Generally at least three years after filing, and longer in certain situations — including a much longer window if income was substantially understated. Digital files are cheap; when in doubt, keep them.

Is a bank or credit card statement enough on its own?

A statement shows that money moved and to whom. It doesn't show what you bought or why it was a business expense, which is the part that matters if a deduction is questioned. Keep the receipt.

What if I'm missing receipts for part of the year?

Reconstruct what you legitimately can from statements and calendars, mark those figures as estimates, and tell your preparer which ones they are rather than presenting them as documented. They can work with a known gap. They can't work with a surprise.

Can I just hand my accountant a shoebox?

You can, and plenty of people do. You'll pay for the hours it takes them to sort it, and you'll find out about missing documentation at the worst possible moment. A categorized list costs you ten minutes a month and buys back both.

I'm leaving QuickBooks Self-Employed. Is this the same thing?

Related — a lot of people arriving at this question are arriving from there. What happened to QuickBooks Self-Employed and what to do next →

This page is general information, not tax advice. Recordkeeping requirements and the treatment of any particular expense depend on your circumstances — consult a qualified tax professional about your own return.