An expense report is just a structured list: what you spent, when, on what, and how much tax was in it. You can build one in any spreadsheet in five minutes, and for a sole trader that's genuinely all you need. Below are the columns that matter, how to use them well, and an honest note on the exact moment a template stops being enough.
The seven columns that matter
Most expense templates are cluttered with fields nobody fills in. Here's the minimal set that survives contact with an accountant, in this order:
- Date — written ISO-style (2026-04-03) so the rows sort correctly.
- Merchant — who you paid.
- Category — the bucket your accountant groups by (Travel, Meals, Supplies, Software…). Keep the list short and reuse it.
- Description — one line of why, so a charge still makes sense in October.
- Amount — the pre-tax figure.
- Tax — split out as its own column. Folding tax into the total is the single most common thing that makes a report useless for reclaiming input tax.
- Total — amount plus tax.
So one row reads: 2026-04-03 · Office Depot · Supplies · Printer paper · 42.00 · tax 3.36 · total 45.36. Add a row per expense, sum the Total column at the bottom, and that's a report your accountant can actually use.
How to use it well
- One report per period or per job. A month, a trip, a client — pick the unit and don't mix them. (More on the trip-versus-calendar split here.)
- Fill it in as you go, not at month-end. The template doesn't fix the real problem — see below — but a row added the day you spent beats ten rows reconstructed from a card statement.
- Keep the receipt image in a folder named to match, because the report is the claim and the image is the proof.
If you'd rather start from a ready-made downloadable, our mileage log template is the same idea built for vehicle trips, with the reimbursement maths already wired in — a useful sibling if travel is a big share of your spend.
Where templates stop scaling
Here's the honest part. A template is fine right up until one of these happens, and then it falls apart fast:
- You get a teammate. The moment someone else needs to submit expenses, a shared spreadsheet becomes a permissions-and-versions mess — who edited what, which copy is current, and now they can see everyone's numbers.
- You want the image attached to the row. A spreadsheet links to a photo at best; it doesn't hold it. Your report and your evidence live in two different places and drift apart.
- You're doing data entry at all. Every row is something you typed from a receipt — which means it only gets done when you make time, which means it rots.
A template moves the work; it doesn't remove it. The removal is what an app does: capture the receipt, let OCR fill the row, attach the image automatically, and let teammates submit from their own phones without seeing the books. (Here's that small-team workflow in full.) With Starlog, the "report" is just a view of receipts you already captured, exportable as a spreadsheet plus every image in one tap.
The takeaway
Copy the seven columns above and you've got a real expense report in five minutes — perfect for a sole trader with a light month. Just know its ceiling: the day you add a teammate, want the image attached, or get tired of typing rows, the template has done its job, and it's time to let the receipts file themselves.