Hacker News Reader

Comment by toddmatthews | Hacker News Reader

just curious, why do you even need to scan receipts? Cant you just use a credit card and import transactions from the card provider?

View on HN

The point of receipts is if the IRS ever audits you.

is the credit card trail not good enough?

For amounts over $75, it is not.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rr-03-106.pdf

that's strictly for reimbursing an employee for an expense.

Good catch. I’ve been audited before, so I err on the side of caution and keep as much documentation as reasonably possible to substantiate business expense claims. Electronic storage is cheap, and audits are unpleasant.

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

got it, makes sense, thanks

Thanks again for pointing out my mistake.

I don't think so. You could go buy $1000 worth of gift cards to give to your family on a business credit card versus legitimate business expenses. The receipt shows what you bought, a credit card statement only shows the amount.

thanks

No, the CC company actually has line-item information for almost all purchases (fall-back transaction processing and really old terminals are likely excluded).

Theoretically you can get your hands on that information.

Expensify has a really good scanner and sync-to-CC data system. I have only ever used it as an employee, but my understanding is that it has good backends synchronization with a variety of accounting packages.

I found Abacus much easier to use. Expensify was extremely convoluted, you had to create reports and then submit them, instead of just submitting expenses with a couple clicks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com