The paperwork nobody started a business to do
Working for yourself adds three small jobs to every week: send the invoice, keep the receipt, record the time or the miles. None of them is hard, and all of them are easy to postpone until a year of them arrives at once. The apps below do one of those jobs each, and the mistake almost everyone makes is to collect four of them that each hold a different quarter of the same year.
What the year actually has to show
| What you need at the end of the year | Where it comes from | How it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Every invoice you sent, numbered in order | An invoicing app, or one spreadsheet | Two apps, each with half the numbers |
| A readable copy of every receipt | A scanner app, filed the day it happens | A glovebox of faded till rolls |
| What was paid, and when | The payment app or the bank statement | Invoices marked paid nowhere |
| Hours or miles, if you bill for them | A timer or a mileage log | Reconstructed from memory in April |
| The same figures as your bank | Reconciling once a month | Discovering a gap you cannot explain |
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The apps worth a place on the phone
Invoicing with a genuinely usable free tier for a small number of customers a month. Numbering, reminders and a paid or unpaid list, which is most of the job.
The full ledger from the same account, for when invoices alone stop being enough and you want the bank feed and the reports in one place.
The receipt half. Photograph it, let it read the total, and it lands in a report rather than a folder.
Invoicing with time tracking attached, which suits anyone who bills by the hour and hates doing both separately.
Invoice Simple. The fastest route from a finished job to a sent invoice, with templates that look like a business rather than a form.
Template led and quick to set up. Worth a look if the others feel like accounting software when you only want to be paid.
Quotes and estimates first, then the invoice from the same document, which is the shape of most trade work.
Built to work on site with a poor connection, so an invoice written in a basement still exists when you reach the van.
Taking a card in person with a reader, and the record of that payment ends up in the same place as the rest.
The alternative card reader, now part of the PayPal side of the house. Worth comparing on the per transaction fee rather than the app.
Business invoicing and payment in one, which is often already set up before anyone decides on a system.
If you sell online, this is the one to check on a phone. Payments, refunds and failed charges without opening a laptop.
Receipt scanning with mileage and a report at the end of it. Designed for expenses claims, and perfectly good for your own records.
The free way to turn a receipt into a straight, cropped PDF. No subscription, no limit worth worrying about.
The better known scanner, with batch mode for a pile of paper. Check what the free tier still includes before you rely on it.
The quieter alternative, with less pressure to subscribe and output that is good enough for anything a tax office will read.
Billable time with one tap, and a weekly total you can actually invoice from. The report view is the part that earns its place.
A plain timesheet for hours, days and breaks, which is the better fit for shift style work than a project timer.
Included deliberately. For a very small business one spreadsheet, kept honestly, beats an app you stop opening in March.
For the jobs themselves rather than the money. A board of quoted, booked, done and invoiced stops work falling through the gap.
Ten minutes a week, and an hour a month
- Photograph the receipt at the counter Not that evening. The receipt you meant to scan later is the one that goes through the wash.
- Send the invoice the day the work finishes Payment terms start when the invoice arrives, so a week of delay is a week of your own money.
- Mark invoices paid as the money lands A list that is accurate is a list you will chase from. A list that is stale gets ignored.
- Once a month, reconcile against the bank This is the hour that finds the invoice nobody paid and the subscription you forgot about.
- Export a copy somewhere that is not the app A PDF folder in cloud storage per quarter. Accounts you lose access to have taken whole years with them.
- An invoicing plan once you send more than a handful a month
- Receipt capture that reads totals reliably
- A card reader if you are ever paid in person
- An accountant, for the first year at least
- A second app that does what the first one does
- An annual plan bought in week one
- Scanner features you only needed once
- Anything promising to handle your tax return for you
What none of these apps can do
Tax rules differ by country and by the kind of work you do, and no app on this list knows which ones apply to you. Treat all of them as a tidy way to keep records, and check what your own tax authority expects those records to look like, particularly around how long you have to keep them and whether a photograph of a receipt counts.
They also cannot tell you whether you are charging enough. That stays a conversation with other people doing the same work.
One place for invoices, one for receipts, scanned the day they happen. Reconcile monthly, export quarterly, and leave tax questions to someone qualified.
Frequently asked questions
Is a spreadsheet really enough?
For a few invoices a month, yes, as long as the numbering is sequential and you keep the receipts somewhere matching. The point at which it stops being enough is usually VAT registration or a second person.
Does a photograph of a receipt count as a record?
In many countries it does, provided it is legible and kept for the required period. Because that varies, check your own tax authority's guidance rather than an app's marketing page.
Which app should I install first?
One invoicing app and one scanner. Time tracking and mileage only matter if you bill for them, and accounting software can wait until the invoices alone are no longer enough.
What happens if the app shuts down?
You lose access to the history unless you exported it. Check the export option on day one, use it quarterly, and keep the copy outside the service.
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