The photo is saved with the entry
Total, date, merchant, sales tax and tip sit beside the photograph they came from. A total the scan cannot find is left empty, not guessed.
iPhone. The calculator is free today.
A write off you cannot back up is not a write off, it is a risk
Most trackers store a number. This one stores the number and the photograph of the paper it came from, and prints both when you export.
79.99 a year or 12.99 a week. No free trial. The app is not on the App Store yet, so there is nothing to download here.
The missing piece
The number is the easy half
Adding up what you spent takes an afternoon. Producing the paper behind one of those lines, two years later, is the part that falls apart.
A spreadsheet row is only a claim. It says you spent 84.30 at a hardware store in March, and it proves nothing, because you typed it.
The IRS is plain about this. Its guidance on what kind of records you should keep asks for the supporting documents behind what you record, and the recordkeeping pages ask you to hold them as long as they matter to a return.
So a tracker has one job a spreadsheet cannot do
Hold the image next to the amount from the moment you record it. Here the photograph is part of the entry, not an attachment you might add later. The home page shows the loop.
The export carries the images
Pick a quarter, a year or any two dates. The PDF prints the receipt photographs under the category totals, and the CSV carries the same rows.
Every category shows its Schedule C line
Advertising line 8, Supplies line 22, Meals line 24b, Utilities line 25, straight out of the Schedule C instructions and unpacked on the Schedule C expenses page.
The arithmetic
What a recorded dollar actually moves
A business expense does not come off your tax bill dollar for dollar. It comes off the profit figure two separate taxes are built on.
Employees hear write off and picture a discount. On a Schedule C it works in two places at once.
- Self-employment tax. The rate is 15.3%, made of 12.4% for social security and 2.9% for Medicare, and it applies to 92.35% of your net earnings, not all of them. An expense lowers the profit that share is taken from.
- Income tax. The same lower profit reaches your 1040 as less income to be taxed, after the standard deduction of 16,100 for a single filer in 2026 or 32,200 filing jointly.
The second depends on a bracket you will not know until the year closes, which is why no page can print one percentage and call it your saving. Payment dates: quarterly taxes.
| Figure | 2026 value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Self-employment tax rate | 15.3% | Self-employment tax |
| Share of net earnings it applies to | 92.35% | Form 1040-ES, 2026 |
| Net earnings that mean a Schedule SE | 400 | Self-employment tax |
| Standard deduction, single and joint | 16,100 and 32,200 | Form 1040-ES, 2026 |
Put your own numbers in it
It takes your net profit for 2026, works out the self-employment tax, splits it into four estimated payments and shows how the total moves when profit changes.
Paper
Thermal receipts do not last as long as the record you keep them for
The gas pump, the diner, the hardware store. Most of what you are handed prints with heat instead of ink, and heat is what erases it.
Thermal paper darkens where a print head warms it, and the chemistry that made the letters stays on the surface, waiting for more heat. A windshield in the sun, a shoebox in July. The print goes gray, then blank.
It does not fade on a schedule you can plan around. Some slips last years, some are gone before the quarter closes, and you find out at the moment somebody asks.
A photograph taken today does not get any worse
Scanning is preservation, not a filing preference. The image is captured while the paper can still be read, and for the backlog batch import runs a whole camera roll in one pass. If some slips are past saving, read what to do about lost receipts.
The reading happens on the phone
Apple's Vision framework reads the text on your iPhone. No image is uploaded anywhere, and a scan works in airplane mode.
You confirm before anything is stored
Five fields, all editable, beside the photograph they came from. The receipt scanner page covers the camera side.
No bank login. No GPS.
No Plaid, no transaction import, no account, no mileage tracking in the background. The expense tracker page covers the day to day.
The end of the year
All of it exists for one file
The habit pays off on a single day, and only if it comes out as a document that matches the form you file.
- CSV, one row per receipt: date, merchant, total, sales tax, tip, category and the Schedule C line number.
- PDF, the totals per category with the receipt photographs printed under the category they were filed in, so number and paper arrive together.
Nothing is renamed to something friendlier: line 24b says Meals because the form says Meals. If part of your year is already gone, read what an audit looks like with no receipts.
Questions
The five that come up every time
Short answers, with the parts we cannot answer for you marked as such.
Do I still need the paper receipt after I photograph it?
The IRS recordkeeping pages say what a record has to show, not which drawer it lives in. Ask your tax professional what to keep and for how long. The app keeps the image with the entry and exports it inside the PDF.
What is a write off actually worth in dollars?
It depends on your profit, filing status and bracket, so any single percentage is a guess about a stranger. The shape is fixed: 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings, plus income tax on the same profit. The calculator uses your numbers.
Does it connect to my bank and find write offs for me?
No. No bank connection, no Plaid, no transaction import, on purpose. A bank line says 84.30 at a hardware store. It does not say what was in the bag, and the paper does.
Can it handle a shoebox from last year?
That is what batch import is for. Point it at your camera roll, it runs the selection in one pass and queues the results for confirmation. Faded paper is the limit, so do the oldest first.
Is the app out yet, and what does it cost?
Not yet. It is an iPhone app for iOS 17 or later, not on the App Store today. When it opens the price is 79.99 a year, which is 1.53 a week, or 12.99 a week, with no free trial.
One email, the day it opens
No newsletter, no drip sequence, no discount codes. One message when DeductHound is on the App Store, and that is the end of it.
DeductHound is not tax advice. It records and totals what you enter and keeps the image beside it. What you can claim and what you owe are questions for a tax professional. See the Terms of Use.
Sources
Every IRS page cited above
Checked one by one on August 25, 2026.
- Supporting documents behind a recorded purchase IRS, What kind of records should I keep
- How long business records matter IRS, Recordkeeping
- The 15.3% rate, its halves, and the 400 threshold IRS, Self-employment tax, social security and Medicare taxes
- The 92.35% share and the 2026 standard deduction IRS, Form 1040-ES, 2026, catalog 11340T
- The line number on every category IRS, Instructions for Schedule C, Form 1040