Tax tips and honest notes on building Starlog. Written by the person building it.
I kept watching smart, busy people lose Sunday afternoons to a shoebox of crumpled paper. That is the problem.Company
The receipts problem is small enough that most builders skip it and big enough that everyone who runs a one-person business loses an afternoon to it every month. Here's why I'm spending years on it.
The spreadsheet works for about three weeks, then quietly rots. Why it always fails — capture friction, no image, drift — and how to track expenses without one.
A deliberately fair roundup — Expensify, Zoho, Wave, Ramp, Starlog and the receipt-only veterans — judged on capture, data ownership, team pricing, and export. Including our own honest catch.
Expensify bills per active user, so an occasional contractor costs a full seat. When the platform is genuinely worth it, when it's three sizes too big, and what a small team actually needs.
Every field a professional invoice needs to get paid without questions — numbering, terms, line items, tax — plus a free, no-sign-up generator in six currencies.
The seven columns that matter, a template you can copy in five minutes, and an honest note on the exact moment a spreadsheet stops being enough.
Two businesses, one shoebox, and a weekend that disappears every April.Customer stories
No stock-photo testimonial — just an honest picture of the owner-operator Starlog is built for. Two businesses, one shoebox, and the weekend that disappears every April.
The business rate is up again for 2026. What's inside that 72.5 cents, standard mileage versus actual expenses, who can claim it — and the log the IRS expects you to already have.
After fifteen years stuck at 45p, the approved mileage rate finally moved. How the two bands work, what happens when your employer pays less (or more), and the record HMRC expects.
There is no official rate — there is your employer's policy, and there is your logbook.Tax tips
There's no IRS-style per-kilometre figure here — just your employer's policy, Section 10(14), and a logbook requirement most people discover at the wrong time. How the system actually works.
Soft-copy receipts are accepted for GST — within limits. What India's retention rules require, what counts as a valid record, and how to store receipts in Google Drive so they hold up.
Google Drive can scan and store receipts for free — and sometimes that's all you need. Where its built-in scanner stops, and what to add without giving up your own Drive.
A folder structure and naming convention that make receipts in Google Drive actually findable at tax time — plus the point where manual filing stops scaling.
If you stopped paying tomorrow, what would you actually keep?Company
When a receipts app holds your data, you're renting access to your own records. Why business receipts should live in your own Google Drive — and outlive any app.
No employer is withholding your taxes anymore — that's the 1099 surprise. The 2026 due dates, the safe-harbor rule that ends the guesswork, and how much to set aside.
“We export to CSV” sounds like a feature. For whoever has to load it into Tally, it's a starting line. The hidden cost of a raw CSV versus a Tally-ready voucher export.
The standard mileage rate is 72.5¢ for 2026 — but “just use mileage, it's easier” costs some people real money. How to choose between mileage and actual expenses, and the lock-in nobody mentions.
The home office deduction isn't an audit magnet — that's an outdated myth. Who qualifies, simplified ($5/sq ft, max $1,500) vs the regular method, and the documentation that settles it.
You don't need per-seat software for a three-person setup. How to run expense reports for a small team — and let contractors submit receipts without seeing your books.
The shoebox of receipts is the most expensive thing you hand your accountant. How to organise a year of receipts end to end — so filing is faster and cheaper.
A little, done regularly — not a lot, done in a panic.Tax tips
Ask any accountant and the wishlist is the same every year. The handful of things to do before tax season that make your return cheaper, faster, and less stressful.
Most expense apps charge per seat, which taxes you for adding the people you most want submitting receipts. Why Starlog is free for your team and charges for multiple businesses instead.
“Just snap it and we'll read everything” is a half-truth. What receipt OCR still gets wrong — faded thermal, handwriting, odd layouts — and how we handle it without silently guessing.
Searching “Google Drive receipt scanner” returns Google's own tool plus a dozen apps that aren't the same thing. The criteria that separate them — and the one question most people forget to ask.
Two businesses in one bank account and one folder is a tax-season trap. Why GST and income tax force you to keep them separate — and a system that keeps them one tap apart.
Not every bill earns you input tax credit. What GST actually requires before you can claim ITC, the two deadlines that quietly kill it, the receipts that are worthless for it, and how long to keep the rest.
Getting expenses into Tally is rarely the import button — it's the field mapping and the ledger names. Here's what Tally actually needs per voucher, the three ways people do it, and a workflow that skips the month-end retyping.
What Indian freelancers actually need to track in 2026 — a practical system for income, expenses, and GST, without the panic of keeping everything. How much you track turns on one decision.
Presumptive tax promises you can declare 50% and skip the books. Where that's genuinely true, who actually qualifies, and the four places it quietly bites.
What the IRS genuinely requires, what's overkill, and what the freelancers I've watched do today — shoebox, Excel, half-installed apps. A grounded guide for the 1099 and small-LLC crowd.
The IRS's 'ordinary and necessary' test, applied to the expenses freelancers actually have: coffee meetings, new laptops, Uber to a client, gym memberships, home offices. Where the line is sharp, and where it's fuzzy.
What the IRS actually requires you to retain, for how long, and in what form. Digital vs. paper. The honest list — without the paranoia of 'keep everything forever.'
OCR does the typing for you — but only if the photo gives it something to work with. Seven habits that turn a blurry, half-lit slip into a clean, correct capture.
What Starlog can and can't see in your Drive, how to connect it in under a minute, and how to fix the most common snag — signing in with Apple and wondering where Drive went.
One tap gives you a single ZIP: a spreadsheet plus every receipt image. Here's exactly what your accountant receives, and how to hand it over so they don't bill you to sort it.
Tax season wants your year sliced by month. But you think in trips, projects, and clients — and so does your profit. How to group receipts the way the work actually happens.
Photograph a receipt and the numbers type themselves — most people never ask how. The plain-English version: the two jobs hiding behind one tap, and where each one stumbles.
A growing share of receipts arrive as PDFs and email attachments, never as paper. How receipt OCR handles a digital receipt, why a PDF isn't automatically 'done', and a workflow that files it in your own Drive.
Use one bucket and tax season tells you nothing; use forty and you stall at the counter. The default set to start from, when a custom category earns its place, and how to keep the list small enough to be automatic.
Most receipts aren't printed with ink — they're heat-printed on thermal paper that fades to blank, sometimes in months. Why a faded slip is OCR's worst case, how to rescue one, and the timing habit that beats every trick.
A conference in another country, a SaaS bill in dollars, a client trip abroad — the receipts that cost you the deduction are the ones in the wrong currency. What OCR can and can't do with them, and the three things to keep so your accountant can do the rest.
OCR is built for print, and handwriting is the case it reads worst. A market vendor's scrawl, a tip on a restaurant bill, a handwritten kacha bill — here's how to keep them as real records anyway.
You don't start receipt tracking on day one — you start it with a drawer full of paper. A sane, two-pass method for digitising a backlog with OCR, and an honest note on when to stop.
The everyday receipt OCR struggles with most — two slips, a tip written in by hand, and a fistful of numbers that all look like the total. How to capture a meal receipt so the amount that lands in your books is the one that left your account.
The warehouse run where you also grabbed groceries, the office-supply trip with a birthday card in the basket — one long slip, business and personal mixed. What OCR reads off it, what it can't, and how to claim only your share.
The parking stub and the toll slip are the least glamorous receipts you'll ever file — tiny, faint, and increasingly not printed at all. How to capture them, what to do when there's no paper, and why they're worth more at tax time than their size suggests.
The receipt that rode home balled up in a pocket isn't unreadable — it's just warped. Why creases and shadows trip OCR more than you'd think, the ten seconds of flattening that fixes most of it, and why you capture it either way.
The most reliably deductible expenses you have are the ones you never record, because autopay makes them invisible. How to scan a recurring bill, why a statement is OCR's trickiest layout, and the one number you have to pick yourself.
The airfare receipt is one every travelling freelancer collects and few capture cleanly: the fare is buried among taxes, seat and bag fees, and a booking total that isn't always what your card paid. How receipt OCR handles a flight receipt, and how to land the real number in your books.
Printed clean on fresh paper, one store, one total — the office-supply receipt is the one receipt OCR reads almost perfectly. The catch isn't the scan. It's what else was in the basket.
The receipt your vehicle deduction actually rests on if you claim real costs — labour, parts, and tax. How OCR handles a repair invoice, the total to set yourself, and what the slip has to prove in the US and India.
Snap a receipt and the store and amount fill themselves in — but the date waits for you. Why the date is OCR's most ambiguous field, especially across the US and India, and how to set it in two seconds.
Store name, date, total — the total is the number your books actually run on, and it's the hardest one for OCR to pick out of the crowd. Here's why, and the two-second habit that catches every miss.
A gas or petrol slip puts two prices side by side — the rate per gallon and the sale total — and OCR can't always tell which you meant. How to capture a fuel receipt so the number in your books is the one you actually paid, and where fuel quietly collides with your mileage deduction.
The folio you get at checkout is the longest receipt of the whole trip — three nights, taxes, parking, a minibar you'd rather forget — and every line looks like it could be the total. What receipt OCR can draft off a lodging bill, what it can't, and how to capture one so the figure in your books is the one your card was actually charged.
A ride to a client is paid the moment the trip ends, and the receipt lands somewhere you never look. Why rideshare receipts are the easiest expense to lose, what OCR reads off one, and a workflow that files every ride before it slips away.
Every card purchase has a second copy on your statement. A cash purchase has one record — the slip in your hand — and when it's gone, so is the expense. Why cash receipts are the ones you can't afford to lose, and how to capture them so they file themselves.
Every receipt scanner has to read your slip somewhere — and where it happens decides whether it works without a signal and whether your receipt is shipped off to be read. Why Starlog does the reading on your phone, and what that actually buys you.
The receipt that piles up fastest for anyone who mails things — and one of the trickiest to scan, not because it's faint but because it itemises. Postage, surcharge, insurance, packaging, a total: how to capture a courier slip so the right number lands in your books.
One card for groceries and for the business is a decision to redraw the line in April, from a year-old statement. A small, boring system that keeps the two apart as you spend — and what to do with the one receipt that's genuinely both.
Nobody worries about the store name — OCR reads it fine. But the label on the paper often isn't the merchant you think, and that quietly breaks your search, your totals, and the suggestions meant to save you taps.
Side-by-side reads on the receipt and expense apps people compare us to — written honestly, including where another tool is the right call.
AP-team T&E platform with corporate cards and policy engine.
Compare Zoho Expense alternativesBroad SMB T&E suite, India-friendly, predictable per-seat pricing.
Compare Ramp alternativesFree, card-led spend management for US small businesses.
Compare Wave alternativesFree accounting suite with bundled receipt scanning.
Compare Fyle alternativesIndia-localized expense management with real-time card feeds.
Compare
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