Logging receipts on a project

From the dashboard, Snap a receipt (first in the quick-action bar) does the whole thing without opening the project: pick the job, then snap a photo, upload a screenshot or PDF, record a voice note, or type a memo — same place the expense lands. A job card under Pick up where you left off also has a Receipt button once the job is signed, or paid and underway, so you can log one in a tap. On a phone, only the first job shows as a full card; the second and third are short rows with no Receipt button, so use Snap a receipt for those. Snapping a receipt counts as one of Today's habits on the Guild card.

Receipts live on Money, alongside the job's invoices and its running profit — one page for every dollar in and out. It's where you dump every expense the job throws at you — the morning Home Depot run, the porta-john rental, the dump trip, the subcontractor invoice — so when the job's done you actually know what it cost. The AI does most of the work for you.

From the field (crew)

If you're a crew member at the hardware store with a stack of receipts and your phone, the fastest path is the big + Add receipt button on your home screen. Tap it, pick the project, then snap / record / type. You'll land directly in the project's Receipts section with the upload buttons right there. No menu hunting. (You can also open the job and tap 🧾 Receipts — see Opening a project as crew.)

Crew see the receipts they logged themselves, and don't see the predicted-vs-actual cost panel — that's the office's view of the job.

Four ways to log an expense

Different situations call for different inputs. BidCraft gives you all of them in the same section.

Photo

Snap a picture of a paper receipt — the one that's already curling in your truck cup holder. The AI reads vendor, date, subtotal, tax, total, a suggested category, and even line items off the receipt in about 5–15 seconds.

This works on hardware-store receipts, lumber yards, tile suppliers, subcontractor invoices on letterhead, permit paperwork, dump tickets — anything with printed numbers.

[!tip] On your phone, the Photo button opens the back camera directly. You can knock out a stack of receipts at the end of the day without leaving the project page.

Upload — screenshots, saved photos and PDFs

Not every receipt is paper. Tap Upload to pick something that's already on your phone or computer:

• a screenshot of an online order or an emailed receipt,
• a photo someone texted you or one already in your camera roll,
• a PDF — a supplier invoice, an order confirmation, a sub's bill.

The AI reads it exactly like a photo: vendor, date, totals, category and line items. Tap the receipt afterwards to open the original PDF any time. Files can be up to 20MB, and full-size phone photos are fine — no need to shrink or screenshot them first.

Voice note

Talking is faster than typing on a phone. Hit the voice button, say something like "Bought eight bags of thinset and two boxes of grout at Lowe's, came to $217 with tax, materials" and the AI pulls out vendor, total, and category. The full transcript is also saved underneath the extracted fields, so you've got the original context even if the AI misses a detail.

Use voice when you're between trips, walking back to the truck, or driving home and need to capture an expense before you forget.

Text memo

For expenses you don't have a receipt for — cash to a helper, your own labor estimate, a quick mental note — type vendor, date, amount, category, and notes directly. No AI round-trip, fastest entry path.

Categories

Every expense gets tagged with one of six categories:

The AI picks a category for you when it scans a photo or voice note. You can change it with one tap if it guessed wrong.

Tools vs. materials

The line is simple: if you keep it and use it on the next job, it's a tool. If it gets used up on this job, it's materials.

A wet saw, a mixing drill, a laser level, a day's rental on a floor grinder — those are tools. So are the wear parts that go with them: diamond blades, drill bits, polishing pads. Sponges, tape, buckets, and cleaners get consumed here, so they stay materials.

This matters more than it sounds. A $1,000 saw bought during a bathroom remodel isn't that bathroom's material cost — it's a purchase that serves every job after it too. Booking it as materials makes one job look wildly over budget on materials and quietly drags down the margin you think you earned. Its own category keeps that honest.

[!note] Tools still count toward the job's total cost — you did spend the money on this job. The category separates the reporting so you can see it on its own line instead of hunting for it inside your material spend.

Editing what the AI filled in

The AI is fast but it's not perfect. Maybe it read $32.41 as $32.11 because the receipt was crinkled. Tap the receipt row, the detail panel slides open, and you edit any field directly.

Your hand-edits stick. If you re-scan the receipt later (because you want the AI to pick up something it missed the first time), it will not overwrite the fields you already corrected. The system tracks which fields you touched and respects those choices.

[!note] If you want the AI to take another shot at a field you previously edited, hit the "reset" button on that field first. That clears the hand-edit flag and the next re-scan is authoritative again.

What each receipt teaches BidCraft

Open a receipt and you'll see small chips under the line items. They're not decoration — they're a readout of what that receipt taught the system:

• The supplier gets recognized, and their own item numbers get remembered, so the next receipt from that store matches its lines on its own.
• Each matched line becomes a dated price for that material. Over a few jobs that's a real cost history, and your materials library starts nudging you when your stored cost has drifted from what you're actually paying.
• Leftovers land in stock. A line that bought more than the job used shows a "+N to inventory" chip, with an undo right there if you'd rather not carry it.
• A line that didn't match anything gets an add to library button — one tap and it's a material you own, priced from the receipt.

The whole loop is explained in Tracking inventory and material prices.

Next steps

Once you've got a few receipts logged, head to Predicted vs actual cost analysis to see how your real spend compares to what the proposal expected.

If you're buying materials in bulk for multiple jobs (10 sheets of waterproofing for two showers), How receipt allocation works explains how BidCraft splits the cost across projects so you don't double-count.