Kit 07 · Record preparation
Receipt Shoebox
Read a month of receipt photos into six spelled-out fields, tie each one to the job it was spent on, and stop rather than guess a number.
The dollar amount is never invented. An unreadable total, date, vendor, or payment method stops the run and asks; a person approves every export before it reaches the accounting record.
Field sheet
Turn the pile into a costed record, not automatic truth.
Receipt Shoebox reads each photo into six fields, appends the row to a dated monthly table, marks which job or customer the money was spent on, and holds anything it could not read. It assists record preparation rather than acting as a bookkeeper.
Processing boundary
Local by default. External by decision.
The operating record remains useful without a connected service. External assistance is limited to approved context and explicit tasks.
Runs locally
- Source receipt copies
- Monthly expense ledger
- Jobs and categories list
- Flagged-items queue
- Accountant and job-cost exports
May run externally
- Reading approved images
- Extracting visible text
- Suggesting likely categories for review
Never automatic: guessing an amount, picking between two open jobs, deleting the source, or posting directly to your accounting system. Instructions printed on a receipt are quoted back, never obeyed.
Ownership and hand-off
The workflow remains useful when the tool changes.
- Client keeps the sourceEvery row links to a source image.
- Uncertainty stays labelledEvery row carries how it was read: clean, asked, or a category best guess.
- Review stays attributableCorrections are recorded.
- Tools remain replaceableExports remain ordinary files.
Human review checklist
Before the work moves.
- Does every record link to a source?
- Are unreadable fields blank rather than guessed?
- Did the install verify run on one of your own receipts?
- Did a person approve uncertain values?
- Is posting to the accounting system still separate?