AI receipt scan
Snap a receipt and AI fills amount, currency, date, vendor, and a suggested category.
Expenses: log spend, scan receipts and keep budgets in sight
Log every business expense, attach the receipt, sort by category, and watch spend against budgets. Scan receipts with the camera and let AI fill the form for you, set up recurring expenses, route submissions through an approval chain, and produce reports.
- CaptureManual + Scan + Recurring
- ApprovalsConfigurable
- OutputReports + Receipts
app.nautis.io/expenses
What is Expenses?
Nautis Expenses is an expense tracker for startups that don't have a finance team yet. Log spend by hand or scan a bill and let AI fill in the amount, date, vendor and a suggested category, attach the receipt, and set recurring entries for subscriptions. Budgets compare spend with plan by category, admins add approval and policy rules, and a filtered CSV export goes to your accountant.
Early spending tends to scatter. Receipts sit in three inboxes, the card statement arrives at month-end, and nobody can say what the company pays for software until someone sits down with a highlighter. An expense tracker earns its keep by catching each outflow when it happens, with a category and a receipt attached, so month-end is a review instead of an excavation.
Every expense needs an Amount, Currency, Date, Category and Payment Method. Merchant picks from your saved list, while Vendor takes free text for someone you'll never pay again. The sidebar holds the rest: All Expenses, Categories, Merchants, Recurring, Budgets, Approval Rules, Policy Rules, Mileage & Per-Diem and Analytics, where KPI cards sit above charts for the spending trend, categories, status, payment methods and a merchant ranking.
Keep the category list short and stable. Renaming or recolouring a category doesn't change the expenses already in it, but a pile of one-off categories splits your reports into slivers nobody reads. Clean categories also make the burn you enter in Startup Health easier to explain, because you can point at the line that moved.
Built for
- Founders tracking spend with no finance team
- Operators running approval workflows
- Teams sharing reports with accountants
Capabilities
What you can do with Expenses
Everything ships out of the box. No setup, no plugins, no extra tools.
Recurring expenses
Subscriptions and monthly costs log themselves.
Budgets & categories
Track budget vs actual spend by category, with an over-budget alert.
Approval chains
Route higher-value submissions through your approver of record.
Reports for accountants
Export a filtered CSV to share with your accountant.
Use cases
How startups use Expenses
Logging a receipt before you leave the airport
Choose Add Expense and then Scan a Bill, take a photo or upload a PDF, and check the fields AI fills in before you save. Photos in JPG, PNG or HEIC and PDF copies all work. If the receipt closely matches one you already logged, Nautis flags it so you can decide whether both belong.
Finding the subscriptions nobody uses
Add each SaaS bill under Recurring with its frequency, start date and optional end date, and Nautis creates the expense every cycle. A quarter later, the merchant ranking in Analytics shows where the money goes, and the tool nobody has opened since spring is easy to spot.
Putting guardrails on travel without micromanaging
An admin creates an approval rule such as Amount over $500 or Category = Travel and names the approvers. A policy rule like "meals capped at $50 per day" warns or blocks before the submitter even saves. The Approval Chain Status panel then shows whose desk a claim is on.
Reimbursing a week of customer visits
Under Mileage & Per-Diem, add a mileage entry with the distance, rate per unit and date, or a per-diem entry with a daily rate and the trip dates. The reimbursement lands in the expense list with the right category, ready for approval.
Handing month-end to the accountant
Filter All Expenses to the month and click Export. The CSV holds the expense data plus receipt URLs, so your accountant can open any receipt they want to check without you forwarding emails.
Quick start
From zero to using Expenses
- 1
Add an expense
Manually, by receipt scan, or via a recurring template.
- 2
Submit
Goes into your queue or routes through approvals based on the rule.
- 3
Approve & categorize
Approvers review with the receipt attached.
- 4
Export to your accountant
Filter All Expenses and export a CSV.
Where AI helps you track expenses
Scan a Bill runs AI on the image to extract the amount, currency, date, vendor and a category suggestion. Always look over the fields before you save, since a crumpled receipt can still be misread.
Where the workspace has the Chief of Staff on WhatsApp (it isn't switched on for every workspace yet), a photo of a receipt or bill becomes an expense, and you approve it before anything is saved. Claude or ChatGPT, linked through the Nautis connector, can read expenses too, and when write access is allowed it can log new ones or correct them.
Expense tracker for startups compared with a spreadsheet and with accounting software
| Job | Spreadsheet and a receipts folder | Nautis Expenses | Accounting software |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capturing a receipt | Save the file and rename it | Scan a Bill fills the form and attaches the image | Varies by product |
| Budget vs actual | Formulas you maintain | Progress bars by category, with an over-budget alert | Varies by product |
| Approvals | Email threads | Rules by amount or category, a chain status panel and bulk approve | Varies by product |
| Policy checks before submit | None | Rules that warn or block | Varies by product |
| Paying or reimbursing people | No | No, it records and approves spend | Depends on the product |
| Reconciled books and tax | No | No | Yes |
Plans and limits
- Expenses must be enabled on your plan. Creating expenses needs create permission, and approval rules, policy rules and category management need admin permission.
- Receipts count toward your organization's storage quota, and bulk receipt export depends on your plan. Plans are listed on pricing, and the 14-day trial asks for no card.
What Expenses doesn't do
- It records and approves spending; it doesn't move money. Reimbursements still go out through your bank.
- It isn't a ledger. The CSV export feeds your accountant's system rather than replacing it. Our guide to setting up startup books covers what they need from you.
- Each expense belongs to the person who creates it. Logging on behalf of a teammate only works if your organization has set that up.
- AI scanning saves typing, not checking. Someone still has to confirm the merchant and amount.
Expenses questions
Does an expense tracker for startups replace bookkeeping?+
No. It captures and organizes spending as it happens, which makes bookkeeping faster, but the books still live in accounting software kept by you or an accountant. Nautis Expenses hands that over as a filtered CSV with receipt links.
How many expense categories should a startup have?+
Fewer than you think. Start with the handful that match how you'll report spend, such as software, travel, meals and contractors, and add one only when a cost doesn't fit anywhere. Ask your accountant which lines they'd map to, then mirror those.
Can I set one budget for all spending?+
Yes. When you click Create Budget, choose a single category or set the budget across all categories, then pick a monthly, quarterly or annual period and the amount. The Budgets page shows spend against each budget.
What's the difference between an approval rule and a policy rule?+
An approval rule decides who has to sign off, based on conditions like amount or category. A policy rule checks the expense itself against company policy and warns or blocks the submitter before they save.
Can an approver deal with a batch of claims at once?+
Yes. Tick the expenses in the table and a bulk-action bar appears at the top, with Submit, Approve, Reject and Delete for everything selected.
What happens after I submit an expense for approval?+
It goes to the first approver in the matching rule. They can approve, reject with a reason, or push it back. You'll see the current state in the Approval Chain Status panel on the expense.
Can I create an expense for a teammate?+
Each expense belongs to whoever creates it. Submit your own expenses through your account; managers can add on behalf of someone else only if your organization has set that up.
Does Nautis automatically detect duplicate receipts?+
Yes — if you scan or upload a receipt that closely matches an existing expense, Nautis flags it so you can decide whether to keep both.
Can I export receipts along with the CSV?+
The CSV export contains the expense data with receipt URLs. Use those URLs to download individual receipts; bulk receipt export depends on your plan.
What's the difference between Categories and Merchants?+
Categories describe what you bought (travel, software, meals). Merchants describe who you paid (Uber, Slack, Joe's Coffee). Use both for the cleanest analytics.
Can I set per-category budgets?+
Yes. Create a budget for one category or across all of them, with a monthly, quarterly, or annual period. The Budgets page shows budget vs actual with progress bars.
Can I set up recurring expenses?+
Yes — for subscriptions and known monthly costs, create a recurring template and Nautis logs them automatically.
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