Search "expense tracker app" and you'll get a wall of personal finance apps built to categorise your Netflix subscription. None of them were designed for someone stood on a scaffold with a receipt going soft in the rain. Here's what actually matters for a UK tradesman choosing one.
What a tradesman actually needs from an expense tracker
Not a budgeting app. Not a personal finance dashboard. A tradesman needs a tool that answers one question fast: what has this job cost me so far, and where's the paperwork to prove it? Everything else is secondary.
The must-have checklist
- Job tagging on every entry — every receipt and cash entry needs to attach to a specific job, not just a category. Without this, you've got a list of spending, not job costing.
- Fast, accurate receipt scanning — AI that reads vendor, total, date and VAT off a photo in seconds, including crumpled or faded thermal receipts.
- Works one-handed, on-site — big buttons, minimal typing, usable in gloves with one thumb while you're holding a level with the other hand.
- Cash tracking alongside receipts — petty cash, float, and cash payments to labour need to sit in the same feed as card and bank spending.
- CIS and VAT-aware categories — sub-contractor payments and VAT amounts need to be captured cleanly, not bolted on afterwards.
- Accountant-ready exports — PDF summaries, CSV for bookkeeping software, and a ZIP of receipt images, all in one tap.
- Records that actually survive — encrypted cloud storage, not a photo roll that vanishes when your phone gets dropped in a bucket.
Spreadsheets, general finance apps, and purpose-built apps
| Spreadsheet | General finance app | Site Wallet | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job-level totals | Manual, if you keep it up | Rarely supported | Automatic, live |
| Receipt scanning | None | Basic, generic | AI trained on real trade receipts |
| Built for on-site use | No | No | Yes |
| CIS / VAT friendly | Only if built by hand | Rarely | Yes |
| Accountant exports | Manual formatting | Limited | PDF, CSV, photo ZIP |
How Site Wallet stacks up against the checklist
Every receipt is scanned by AI in about two 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, so petty cash and card spending don't need reconciling separately. When it's time to hand things to the accountant, export a PDF summary, a CSV for the books, or a photo ZIP of every receipt — built for HMRC's six-year record-keeping expectations from day one.
Getting started in a day
Download the app, create your first job, and start snapping receipts as they happen — that's it. There's no chart of accounts to set up first. The habit is what matters: scan it the moment you get it, tag it to the job, and let the totals build themselves through the week.
FAQ
Do I need a separate business bank account first?
It helps, but it's not a prerequisite for using an expense tracker. What matters more is consistently logging every job cost — card, cash, or otherwise — the moment it happens.
Can I use it for a small crew, not just myself?
Yes — the point of tagging every entry to a job is that a whole crew can scan into the same job without double entry or confusion over who spent what.
What happens to my receipts if I lose my phone?
With a cloud-backed app, nothing — the photos and extracted data live encrypted online, not just on the device. A dropped phone shouldn't mean lost records.