Claimed

I spent a long time assuming the reason I hated expenses was the paperwork, and built most of the first version around making the paperwork faster. Wrong problem.

The paperwork takes about eleven minutes. What actually ruins it is that a few thousand kronor of your own money is sitting somewhere else and nothing anywhere will tell you whether it is coming back. You emailed someone three weeks ago. They did not reply. Chasing it makes you feel cheap, so you leave it, and then you forget, and the honest answer to "did I ever get that hotel back" is that you have no idea.

Every expense tool I have used is built for someone carrying the company card. They tap it, the charge appears somewhere with their name already attached, and a system chases them for the receipt later. That person's problem is compliance. If you are paying with your own card, your problem is that you are a creditor and nobody is treating you like one.

What it does

You photograph the receipt on your way out. That is the only part you have to remember.

It reads it, converts it into your currency and files it by month. When you want to claim, it assembles everything and sends it with each receipt attached.

Then it keeps the claim open, which is the part I actually built this for. What you are owed sits on your Lock Screen, so the question has an answer without you going to look for one. If a claim has been out too long it will say how long. "Sent 34 days ago" is a far more uncomfortable sentence for the person reading it than anything polite I could write on your behalf.

What I was stubborn about

It works without your employer. Nobody has to connect anything or approve anything. You install it and send a claim to whoever pays you, the same way you would have sent the email. Change jobs on Monday and it still works on Tuesday.

It has to be right about foreign money. Your receipt says 48.50 EUR. Your account lost some quantity of kronor three days later at a rate nobody consulted you about. Claim the first number and you are short on every foreign receipt you ever file. So it converts at the day's real rate, then asks one question, once per card: what does this card actually charge you? The fee barely moves and the last four digits are printed on most receipts, so you answer once and everything after that comes out right without asking again.

Fast enough to use in the street. It opens straight onto the camera. Eight receipts in one sitting at the end of a trip is the case I built around, and anything between the shutter and the next shutter had to go.

The photos stay yours. They are pictures of where you have been and what you bought. They sit on the phone and go nowhere unless a claim is actually going out.

Why I might be wrong

The pain here is real but it is seasonal. You are out of pocket badly a few times a year, around trips, and the rest of the time this app has nothing to do. That is an awkward shape for something you are meant to keep on your phone, and I do not yet know whether the Lock Screen number is enough to make it worth keeping between trips.

I also have not proven the interesting half. Extraction is good on the receipts it has seen, and the receipts it has seen are ones I generated, which is precisely the sample that cannot surprise you.