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2026-04-05

Track receipts, see predicted vs actual costs

Photograph receipts, voice-note expenses, or type quick memos — BidCraft logs them all and shows variance against your proposal.

Track receipts, see predicted vs actual costs

Every proposal you send is a prediction: this job will cost you about $X in materials, $Y in labor, $Z in permits and dump fees. The only way to get better at pricing is to compare predictions to what actually happened. That's now a first-class feature.

What changed

Every project has a new Receipts tab alongside its Proposal and Cost Analysis. From there, you can capture an expense three different ways:

  • Photo of a receipt — snap it with your phone's back camera, the AI reads vendor, date, total, and line items
  • Voice note — hit record, say "spent $340 at Home Depot on thinset and grout for the master bath today," the AI extracts the fields
  • Text memo — type in vendor, amount, date, category. No AI processing — instant.

All three feed the same variance view.

What you'll see

The Receipts tab shows a variance card with five categories: materials, labor, permit, dump, other. For each, you see what you predicted (from the proposal) vs. what you actually spent (from the receipts). Green when you're under budget, coral when you're over.

Tap into any receipt to see what the AI extracted and override anything that looks wrong. Hand-edits stick — if you correct the total or change the category, the AI won't overwrite your edits if you re-process the receipt later.

Coverage-aware allocation

Here's the smart part. If you buy 10 sheets of waterproofing but the proposal only needs 4 sheets, BidCraft figures out that 4 sheets' worth of that receipt belongs to this project and the other 6 are extra. Your variance only shows you the 4 sheets — not the full receipt total. The leftover is visible too, so you can see how much carry-forward inventory you've built up.

If you've ever felt like "I always look over budget because I buy extra," that's the problem this solves. Buying extra for the next job doesn't make this job look like an overrun.

Splitting expenses across projects

If you do a single hardware store run for two projects, save the receipt against one of them and override the line items to allocate only what was actually used. The leftover stays as inventory on that receipt for future allocation.

[!tip] Voice notes are the fastest way to capture an expense in the field. Hit record, talk for 10 seconds, hit stop. The whole thing takes less time than scrolling to find the right project.

Over time, the variance view becomes the most honest mirror your business has. You'll see which line items you systematically under-price and which you nail every time.