It's rarely a dramatic loss — a receipt left in a pocket that went through the wash, a thermal slip faded to a blank strip in a hot van, a scrap of paper binned by mistake while clearing the cab. However it happens, the reaction is usually the same mild panic: was that cost even claimable now, without the paper to prove it?

First: work out whether you actually need the original

The cost itself isn't in question — the money was spent, the job happened. What's genuinely at risk is being able to prove it if the claim is ever checked. For most day-to-day job costing, that's not an immediate crisis; it only becomes one if the specific expense is ever queried by an accountant, a client asking to see receipts, or a tax authority review.

What can reasonably stand in for a lost receipt

  • A bank or card statement line — shows the amount, date and vendor, though not what was actually bought.
  • A supplier's own transaction history — many merchants can reprint or email a copy of a past receipt if you ask, particularly for anything bought on an account or loyalty card.
  • A photo of the item or delivery note — weaker on its own, but useful alongside other evidence to show the purchase was genuine and job-related.
  • A clear note of what happened — written at the time you realise it's missing, not months later trying to remember — showing the amount, what it was for, and which job it belongs to.

Why "I'll remember it" doesn't hold up

Memory is the weakest form of evidence available, and it's the one most people reach for first because it costs nothing in the moment. The problem isn't honesty — it's that a reconstructed memory, especially months later, is genuinely unreliable on details like the exact amount or date, and looks that way to anyone reviewing it. A note written the day you notice the receipt is gone is far more credible than the same story told from memory a year on.

Ask the supplier before assuming it's unrecoverable

It's worth trying before writing a receipt off entirely — many builders' merchants, hardware stores and suppliers can look up a transaction by date, card, or account and reissue a copy, especially for anything bought on a trade account. It costs nothing to ask, and it's the closest thing to recovering the original.

How Site Wallet reduces this happening in the first place

Once a receipt is scanned, the risk of losing it disappears — the photo and the extracted data both live in the cloud, not in a pocket or a glovebox. The habit that actually prevents this problem is scanning the moment a receipt is handed over, before there's any chance of it fading, getting lost, or going through the wash — rather than relying on the paper surviving until it's convenient to log it.

FAQ

Is a bank statement line enough on its own?

It's supporting evidence, not a full replacement — it proves money left your account but not what was bought or that it was genuinely for the business. It's much stronger combined with a note or a supplier reprint than relied on alone.

Does it matter how big the missing receipt is?

The effort to reconstruct it should roughly match the size of the cost — a small missing receipt for a few pounds' worth of fixings isn't worth chasing a supplier over, but a large materials or subcontractor invoice is worth the ten minutes it takes to ask for a reprint.

What's the single best fix going forward?

Scan every receipt the moment it's handed over, not at the end of the day or the end of the week. The gap between getting a receipt and it being lost is exactly the window a same-day scanning habit closes.