Self Assessment, Without the Weekend of Receipt Hunting

How we can help with your Self Assessment

That's going to depend on which situation you're in. If your only income is a salary taxed through PAYE and you have nothing to claim, you probably do not need to file a Self Assessment return at all (HMRC has a checker), and an app in the middle would not add much.

It's a different story once you are running business and personal spending through the same account, or several accounts, all year. For example:

• a sole trader buying stock, tools, fuel and materials
• a CIS subcontractor with tools, protective gear and travel between sites
• a contractor or freelancer with software subscriptions, a home office and a car
• a landlord with letting fees, repairs, insurance and mortgage interest
• anyone with a side hustle earning more than the £1,000 trading allowance alongside a regular job

They will have allowable expenses that are real and worth claiming, buried under hundreds or thousands of transactions and mixed in with the groceries and the Friday night takeaway, plus the odd occasion where a business cost goes through the personal account by mistake. In this situation there is a lot to sort through, and Where Does My Money Go can really help.

The hardest part of Self Assessment is gathering everything and not missing anything. A much easier way to do it is to put every transaction into a cash flow table and give each one a decision: it is an allowable expense or it is not. If it is, it goes in the claim pile with its receipt. If it is clearly personal, like Tuesday's groceries or a Friday night out, you leave it alone. The doubtful ones are the conversation with your accountant.

What a Self Assessment tax return actually is

For most employees, income tax is taken through PAYE before the money lands. Self Assessment is how HMRC reconciles the rest: self-employment profit, rental income, savings and dividends above the allowances, and the expenses and reliefs that reduce the bill. Your return is the yearly true-up between what was paid and what was actually owed.

If you have underpaid, you pay the balance by 31 January. If you have overpaid, HMRC refunds the difference. Because tax deducted at source is worked out before your expenses are known, a correct return often results in a refund, which is exactly why it is worth getting the expenses right rather than rounding them down.

To make the return as accurate as possible you need to find every allowable expense you have. An accountant who knows your trade and your circumstances can walk you through what you can and cannot claim, so the return is complete and done correctly. What this app does is make sure that when you sit down with them, every transaction is already in front of you with its receipt attached.

What can you claim? Allowable expenses by situation

The test HMRC applies is that a cost has to be incurred wholly and exclusively for the business. Where something is part business and part private, like a phone or a car, you claim the business proportion. The gov.uk guide to expenses if you're self-employed is the authoritative list; the categories below are the common ones by situation.

Allowable expenses for a sole trader

• Stock and raw materials, and direct costs of producing what you sell
• Tools and equipment (smaller items as expenses, larger ones usually as capital allowances)
• Travel, fuel, parking, train and bus fares, and vehicle running costs for business journeys
• A share of home costs if you work from home, or rent, rates, power and insurance on a business premises
• Uniforms, protective clothing and safety gear (not everyday clothes you could wear anywhere)
• Phone, broadband and software subscriptions used for the business
• Staff wages, subcontractor costs and employer National Insurance
• Advertising, website and marketing costs
• Accountant and other professional fees, bank charges and business insurance
• Training that updates skills for your existing trade

Allowable expenses for a landlord

The gov.uk guidance on working out rental income sets out what a landlord can deduct:

• Letting agent and property management fees
• Repairs and maintenance that restore the property (not improvements, which are capital)
• Landlord insurance
• Ground rent, service charges and, where you pay them, council tax and utilities
• Accountant fees and the cost of drawing up tenancy agreements
• Replacing domestic items like a sofa, bed or white goods (replacement of domestic items relief)

The one that catches people out: mortgage interest is no longer deducted from rental income. From 6 April 2020 it is given as a basic-rate (20%) reduction of your tax bill instead, so it needs recording separately from your other costs.

Allowable expenses for a CIS subcontractor

• Materials you buy for a job
• Tools, equipment and their repair or replacement
• Protective clothing, boots and safety equipment
• Travel and mileage between sites (not ordinary commuting)
• Public liability insurance and trade subscriptions
• Accountant fees for preparing your return

Contractors deduct 20% (or 30% if you are not registered) from your payments before you are paid. Those CIS deductions are advance payments towards your tax, so your Self Assessment return sets them against what you actually owe, and once your expenses are in, the result is usually a refund.

What you can't claim

• Everyday clothing, even if you only wear it for work
• Client entertaining and hospitality
• Ordinary commuting between home and a regular place of work
• Fines and penalties, including parking fines
• The private-use share of anything used for both business and personal life
• Repaying the capital on a loan (the interest can be allowable, the repayment is not)
• Your own wages or drawings, and personal tax or National Insurance

Simplified expenses or actual costs?

For a few categories HMRC lets you use a flat rate instead of working out the real figure, under its simplified expenses rules:

• Vehicles: 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year, then 25p (up from 45p before 6 April 2026), instead of claiming a share of running costs and capital allowances
• Working from home: £10 to £26 a month depending on the hours you work from home, instead of apportioning your actual household bills
• Living at your business premises: a flat adjustment for private use

Flat rates are simpler but not always bigger. If you drive a lot of miles in an expensive vehicle, or a real chunk of your home is a dedicated office, the actual-cost method usually wins. Having every transaction in the cash flow table means you can total the real figure and compare, rather than defaulting to the flat rate because the paperwork is easier.

The £1,000 trading allowance

If your total self-employed or casual income for the year is under £1,000 you do not have to report it or track any expenses. Over £1,000, the trading allowance lets you choose each year between deducting the flat £1,000 or claiming your actual allowable expenses, whichever is higher. Tracking your spending is what tells you which one that is, and once your real expenses clear £1,000 the allowance stops being the better deal.

If claiming everything you are entitled to still feels a bit aggressive, it is not, and paying the right amount is not the same as paying the maximum.

Keeping records: what HMRC actually wants

There is no £300-style allowance for claiming without evidence. HMRC expects you to be able to back up every figure on your return. A valid record shows the amount, the date, the supplier and what the cost was for, and a clear photo or PDF is fine, you do not have to keep the paper.

You need to keep those records for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline for that tax year. So records for the 2024 to 2025 return, due 31 January 2026, should be kept until at least 31 January 2031, and longer if you filed late or HMRC opens a check.

If HMRC does open a compliance check, the burden is on you to produce the evidence. Where you can't, they can disallow the expense, estimate your figures, and add a penalty for an inaccurate return, between 0% and 30% of the extra tax for a careless mistake and 20% to 70% if HMRC treats it as deliberate. A receipt matched to its transaction is what turns that from a problem into a non-event.

It is also about to stop being optional. Under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, self-employed people and landlords with income over £50,000 must keep digital records and send HMRC quarterly updates from 6 April 2026, with the threshold dropping to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. Digital record keeping is becoming the baseline, not the upgrade.

VAT, if you're registered

Most sole traders are under the £90,000 VAT registration threshold and can ignore this. If you are registered, the receipt scanner pulls the VAT amount off each receipt, and the cash flow table lets you switch between the gross figure, the net figure and the VAT, so you have a clear record of the input VAT you have paid and can reclaim on your return.

A worked example

Take a self-employed plumber with about 1,800 transactions across a business debit card and a personal current account. Uploading both years of statements and answering a couple of dozen questions about the recurring ones sorts the merchants: the builders' merchant, the fuel stops, the tool shop, the van insurance, the accountant, all land in their own categories, and the supermarket and the pub fall out as personal.

What's left is a category-by-category total of allowable expenses to take to the accountant, with a receipt attached to each line and a short list of the handful that still need one. No shoebox, no scrolling the statement trying to remember what a £180 payment in March was.

Here is the path through it, using the parts of the app in the order you would actually use them.

1. Export a transaction file from your online banking and upload them (Lloyds and Barclays formats are read directly; an AI loader handles the rest, and everything is in pounds with UK dates).
2. The app walks you through your most frequent uncategorised transactions one at a time, and each answer you give becomes a rule that sorts every matching transaction from then on.
3. The cash flow table lays the sorted transactions out by category and by month, with each income source and its expenses in their own row.
4. Expand a category and every transaction shows whether a receipt is attached, so the claims still missing evidence are the ones without.
5. Upload receipts, PDFs, photos or screenshots and the receipt scanner reads each one and matches it to the outgoing transaction.
6. Screenshots with several purchases, bills paid late and mismatched supplier names are all handled, with the amount and closest date doing the matching and the merchant text keeping it honest.
7. If you are VAT registered, the scanner captures the gross, net and VAT on each receipt, and the table's net and VAT views give you a clear record of the input VAT you can reclaim.
8. Accountant access lets your accountant see your categorised cash flow and receipts directly, with you controlling exactly what they can see.

What is left is the part only you can do

With the year sorted and the evidence attached, the decisions are quick:

• Definitely personal? Leave it alone.
• A genuine business or rental cost? It is already in the claim pile with its receipt.
• Not sure? That is the conversation with your accountant, and now you have the transaction and the receipt in one place instead of a vague memory of "something from May".

You spend your time deciding what to claim, not hunting for the paperwork that lets you claim it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Claim an Expense Without a Receipt?

There is no set allowance for it in the UK. If you cannot evidence a cost, HMRC can refuse it in a check. Bank and card statements help show a payment was made, but a receipt or invoice is what shows what it was for, so keep them.

Can I Claim for Working From Home?

Yes, either a flat monthly amount under simplified expenses or a fair share of your actual household bills based on the rooms used and time spent working.

What Can't I Claim?

Everyday clothing, client entertaining, ordinary commuting, fines, the private use share of mixed costs, and loan capital repayments.

Do I Still Need an Accountant?

For anything beyond the straightforward, yes. This app gets your records in order so the accountant's time goes on advice and the return itself, not on sorting your statements.

Not tax filing software

This does not file your return with HMRC. It gets your records in order so that submitting it, or handing it to an accountant, is quick and complete. We are not financial or tax advisers.