Business Expense Tracker

What this tool does

CM8-16 is a business expense ledger for freelancers, sole traders and small companies anywhere in the world. You record what you bought, who you bought it from, what it cost and how it should be treated; the tool totals the period, splits it by category and by month, extracts the input tax you have flagged as reclaimable, tracks what you can rebill to clients, and compares actual spend against any budgets you set. It then prints a report you can hand to an accountant.

It deliberately knows nothing about any particular country's tax code. Every rate, every flag and every exchange rate is yours to enter, because the rules that decide them differ by country, by trade and often by the specific facts of a purchase. What the tool guarantees is arithmetic, consistency and a legible record.

Everything runs inside this single HTML file. No installation, no account, no network requests — your financial data never leaves your computer.

Why recording expenses promptly matters

The single biggest cause of lost deductions is not aggressive tax rules; it is memory. A card statement three months later shows an amount and a merchant name, not what the purchase was for, which job it belonged to, or whether it was business at all. By then the paper receipt is in a coat pocket and the reason is gone.

Recording on the day of purchase — or at worst weekly — takes seconds per line and keeps three things intact: the purpose (which is what makes an expense a business expense in most systems), the evidence (the receipt reference), and the allocation (client, project, category). A ledger kept promptly also stops the year-end panic where a fortnight is spent reconstructing twelve months of spend, and it gives you something a lender, a grant body or a buyer can actually read.

Business versus personal, and why mixing is expensive

Most tax systems allow a deduction only for costs incurred for the business, and most require you to be able to demonstrate it. Paying for personal items from a business account does not make them business costs, and paying for business items personally does not stop them being business costs — but both make the record harder to defend, and in many jurisdictions drawing money out for private use has its own consequences.

The practical advice is boringly consistent everywhere: keep a separate business bank account and card, put business spend through it, and record personal spend nowhere in this ledger. Where a cost is genuinely mixed — a phone line, a car, a room at home — most systems expect a reasonable, documented apportionment. Record only the business share in the amount field and note the basis of the split (for example “40% business use, mileage log”) in the notes. If a purchase is entirely personal but landed on the business card, record it with the deductible flag turned off so the ledger reconciles to the bank while the deductible total stays honest.

What “tax-deductible” generally means

Broadly — and this is a generalisation, not a rule for your country — an expense reduces taxable profit when it is incurred wholly and genuinely for the purposes of the business, and when it is a running cost rather than the purchase of a long-lived asset. Categories that are commonly restricted or treated specially include entertaining clients, fines and penalties, personal clothing, commuting, and gifts. Larger items such as computers, vehicles or machinery are frequently not deducted in full in the year of purchase; they are written down over several years under a capital-allowance or depreciation regime.

This tool takes no view. The deductible flag is your assertion about a line, and the “Deductible total” tile simply adds up the lines you flagged. If you are unsure about a line, record it, flag it as you believe correct, write your reasoning in the notes, and let your accountant adjust it — an unrecorded expense cannot be corrected, but a wrongly flagged one can.

That distinction matters: you should not claim relief on a tax amount you are also recovering separately. The tool applies it automatically from the two flags on each line.

Reclaimable input tax, explained simply

Many countries run a value-added tax system — VAT, GST, HST, IVA, BTW and others. Under such a system a registered business charges tax on its sales (output tax) and can usually recover the equivalent tax it paid on its business purchases (input tax), paying over only the difference. If your business is registered for such a tax, the tax portion of a qualifying purchase is not really a cost to you: it is money you get back.

Enter the amount you actually paid, including tax, plus the tax rate that applied. The tool works the tax out of the gross figure:

Tick reclaimable only where your business is registered, the purchase qualifies, and you hold a valid tax invoice. If you are not registered, or the supplier charged no such tax, leave the rate at zero — the full amount is then your cost. Common blocks on recovery in various countries include entertaining, cars, and purchases without a compliant invoice, so do not assume a rate simply because one is printed on a till receipt from another country.

Handling foreign-currency purchases

Buying software, advertising or travel in another currency is normal now. Record the expense in the currency you were charged, then supply the exchange rate you want used to convert it into your reporting currency: the rate is expressed as “1 unit of the expense currency = ? units of your reporting currency”.

If you change the reporting currency later, previously entered rates do not update themselves. The tool flags any expense sitting in a foreign currency with a rate of exactly 1.00, which is almost always a forgotten conversion.

Rebilling expenses to clients

Costs you incur on a client's behalf — travel to their site, a stock photo licence, a courier — are usually recorded as your expense and then recharged on your invoice. Tick rebillable and name the client and project; tick invoiced once it has actually gone on an invoice. The “Rebillable unbilled” tile is then a live list of money you are owed but have not asked for, which is one of the most common quiet leaks in a small business.

Be aware that recharging a cost normally makes it part of your own sale rather than a neutral pass-through, which can affect how tax applies to the recharge. Agree the treatment with your accountant once and apply it consistently.

Categories, budgets and recurring costs

The category list ships with generic defaults that suit most trades; rename, add or delete freely on the Setup tab, and existing expenses follow a rename automatically. Keep the list short enough that you pick the same category for the same kind of purchase every time — consistency is worth more than granularity.

Budgets are optional and set per category as a monthly or annual figure. Whatever period you filter to, the tool scales the budget to that many months, compares it with actual spend and flags anything over budget in words as well as colour. Subscriptions are handled by the recurring options: set the frequency and an end date, and the entries are generated across the range in one go, so a monthly tool is entered once a year rather than twelve times.

Keeping receipts, and for how long

This tool stores a receipt reference, not a file — an invoice number, a folder name, a photo filename. Keep the underlying documents somewhere durable and name them so the reference finds them. Most countries require business records to be kept for several years after the filing deadline (five, six and seven years are all common), and many now accept legible digital copies. Check your own country's retention period and back up accordingly; a folder of photographs on a phone that is later lost is not a record.

Working with your accountant

Give your accountant the printed report plus the CSV export: the report gives them the shape of the year and your notes, the CSV gives them lines they can re-sort. Flag anything you were unsure about in the closing notes rather than burying it. Ask three questions at least once a year — which categories are restricted in your country, how assets should be treated, and whether your input-tax position is correct — and record the answers in the notes field so next year starts from a settled position.

Saving your work

• Autosave: expenses, categories, budgets, filters and settings are written to this browser's local storage as you work, and restored next time you open the file.
• Save: writes immediately and flashes “Saved ✓” with the time.
• Export .json: the complete state as a file you can archive, back up or move to another computer; Import .json restores it.
• CSV exports: the filtered expense list in accountant-friendly column order, and the category summary with budget variance.
• Print Report: rebuilds a formatted report — summary tiles, charts, category, monthly, budget and supplier tables, full expense detail and your notes — then opens the print dialog. Saving as PDF works the same way.
• Reset: two-step — press once to arm, again to confirm. It erases everything, including every key this tool has written to your browser. Export first if you want a copy.

Important limits — this is not tax advice