Search "expense tracker app" and you'll find a wall of personal budgeting tools built to categorise a streaming subscription. None of them are built for someone on a roof in July with a receipt going soggy with sweat. Here's what actually matters for a US contractor choosing one.
What a contractor actually needs
Not a personal finance dashboard. A tool that answers one question fast: what has this job cost me so far, and where's the paperwork if the IRS ever asks? Everything else is secondary.
The must-have checklist
- Job tagging on every entry — every receipt and cash entry attached to a specific job, not just a category.
- Fast, accurate receipt scanning — AI that reads vendor, total, date and tax off a photo in seconds, faded receipts included.
- Works one-handed, on-site — usable in work gloves, no signal required at the moment you snap it.
- Cash tracking alongside receipts — petty cash and cash payments to subs in the same feed as card spending.
- 1099-ready subcontractor records — clear totals paid to each sub through the year, ready for year-end 1099-NEC filing.
- Schedule C-ready exports — PDF summaries, CSV for your bookkeeper, and a ZIP of every receipt photo.
- Records that survive a dropped phone — encrypted cloud storage, not just a camera roll.
Spreadsheets, general finance apps, and purpose-built apps
| Spreadsheet | General finance app | Site Wallet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job-level totals | Manual, if kept up | Rarely supported | Automatic, live |
| Receipt scanning | None | Basic, generic | AI trained on real trade receipts |
| Built for on-site use | No | No | Yes |
| Sub payment tracking | Only if built by hand | Rarely | Yes |
| Bookkeeper-ready exports | Manual formatting | Limited | PDF, CSV, photo ZIP |
How Site Wallet stacks up
Every receipt is scanned by AI in seconds, tagged to a job in one tap, and rolled into a live running total for that job. Cash in and out sits alongside receipts in the same feed. Come tax season, export a PDF summary, a CSV for your bookkeeper, or a ZIP of every receipt photo — no digging through the truck required.
Getting started in a day
Download the app, set up your first job, and start snapping receipts as they land. No chart of accounts, no setup wizard — the value comes from the habit: scan it the moment you get it, tag it to the job, let the totals build through the week.
FAQ
Do I need a business bank account before I start?
It helps keep things clean, but it's not a prerequisite. What matters more is consistently logging every job cost — card, cash, or otherwise — the moment it happens.
Can a small crew all use it, not just the owner?
Yes — the whole point of job tagging is that everyone on the crew can log into the same job without duplicate entries or arguments over who spent what.
What if I lose my phone with all my receipts on it?
With cloud-backed storage, your receipt photos and extracted data live online, encrypted — not just on the device. A dropped phone shouldn't mean lost records.