How AllExpensesPaid Works: The 10-Minute Monthly Expense Routine
You’ve heard us say it takes 10 minutes a month. Here’s exactly what those 10 minutes look like.
This is the full monthly workflow, from receipts and bank statements to a finished report your accountant can use. No shortcuts, no “it depends.” Just the actual steps.
During the Month: Snap Your Receipts (30 Seconds Each)
When you get a receipt that matters, take a photo. That’s it.
Open AllExpensesPaid on your phone, tap “Add Expense,” and aim your camera at the receipt. The AI reads the receipt and extracts:
- Vendor name
- Date
- Line items and total amount
- Tax (GST, HST, PST, whatever applies)
- Tip (if it’s a restaurant)
- Currency (if it’s foreign)
It then suggests a category based on your history. If you’ve categorized a restaurant receipt before, it knows this one is probably “Dining Out” too.
The receipt image auto-attaches to the transaction. Auto-cropped to the receipt edges, auto-rotated if you held the phone at an angle.
Total time: about 30 seconds per receipt. You don’t need to do this for every purchase. Only for expenses where you want a receipt on file, either for CRA compliance (anything over $30 for ITC claims), client reimbursement, or your own records.
Everything else comes from your bank statement at the end of the month.
End of Month, Step 1: Download and Upload Your Bank CSV (1 Minute)
Log into your bank’s online portal. Download your credit card statement as a CSV file. Every major bank offers this: TD, RBC, Scotiabank, BMO, CIBC, or whatever you use. It’s usually under “Download transactions” or “Export.”
In AllExpensesPaid, go to Import, select your bank’s template (you set this up once, first time only), and upload the CSV file.
The system parses every transaction. Thirty, fifty, a hundred lines, it doesn’t matter. They all appear in a preview list.
Duplicates are handled automatically. If you imported last month’s statement and there’s overlap in dates, the system detects duplicates by hash and skips them. If the same charge appears twice in the CSV (two coffees at the same place on the same day), those get flagged as potential legitimate duplicates. Check the ones that are real, and they’re imported with unique hashes.
Confirm the import. Done. All your transactions are now in the system.
Step 2: AI Categorizes Everything (2-3 Minutes to Review)
This is where it gets good.
After import, the AI goes to work. Two layers:
Pattern matching checks every transaction against your history. It doesn’t just look at the vendor name. It considers the amount (a $12 charge at Walmart is probably groceries, a $400 charge is probably something else), whether it’s a recurring subscription, how recently you categorized something similar, and whether it’s a debit or credit. This handles 80% or more of your transactions, instantly, at no cost.
GPT-4o-mini handles the rest. New vendors the system hasn’t seen before get analyzed by AI against your category list. Only the transaction description is sent, never personal information.
The result: most of your transactions are already categorized as Business, Personal, or Other when you look at them.
Your job: scroll through the list. Check that the AI got things right. It usually does. If something is wrong, click the category badge and pick the right one from the dropdown. One click. The system learns from the correction.
Maybe you adjust 2 or 3 out of 50. Maybe none. It depends on how many new vendors showed up this month.
Total review time: 2-3 minutes.
Step 3: The System Catches Receipt Duplicates (1 Minute)
Remember those receipts you snapped during the month? Those were created as manual entries. Now the same transactions have appeared in your bank CSV import.
AllExpensesPaid detects the overlap. An amber banner appears: “3 potential matches found between your manual entries and imported transactions.”
Click Review. You see side-by-side comparisons: the receipt you scanned on the left, the CSV import on the right. Amount, date, vendor, all lined up.
For each pair: - Merge: Keeps your manual entry (with the receipt, category, and any notes you added), applies the bank account name from the import, and hides the duplicate. One click. - Keep Both: If they’re genuinely different transactions.
Three matches, three clicks. Done.
Step 4: Handle Any Splits (1-2 Minutes, If Needed)
Some months you’ll have a transaction that crosses categories. A hotel bill that’s 3 nights business travel and 1 night personal vacation. An office supply invoice with printer paper and client materials.
Click the split icon on the transaction. The modal opens with a default 50/50 split. Adjust the amounts or percentages. Choose a category for each line. The balance indicator turns green when the numbers match.
Each child transaction gets its own category, its own tax calculation, and can be assigned to different projects. The original transaction is preserved for duplicate detection but hidden from your reports.
Most months you might not split anything. Some months you’ll split one or two. Either way, it takes a minute.
Step 5: Generate Your Report (1 Minute)
This is the payoff. Everything is categorized. Business is separated from personal. Tax is tracked per transaction. Receipts are attached where they belong.
Go to Reports. Select your date range (this month, this quarter, whatever your accountant wants). Filter to “Business” category type.
Click Generate.
You get a PDF (or Excel) report with: - Summary statistics: total debits, credits, and tax - Category breakdown with hierarchical subtotals (Office > Supplies, Travel > Flights, etc.) - Full transaction detail table - Tax/ITC recovery summary
Hand the PDF to your accountant. Or download the Excel and drop it in your accounting folder. Done.
The Math
| Step | Time |
|---|---|
| Snap receipts during the month | ~30 sec each, maybe 5-10 per month = 3-5 min |
| Download and upload bank CSV | 1 min |
| Review AI categorization | 2-3 min |
| Merge receipt duplicates | 1 min |
| Split transactions (if any) | 0-2 min |
| Generate report | 1 min |
| Total | ~10 minutes |
Compare that to the old way: downloading a statement, opening a spreadsheet, going line by line, trying to remember what each charge was for, manually calculating tax, formatting it for your accountant. Two days. Minimum.
The First Month Takes a Little Longer
We’ll be honest: the very first time you use AllExpensesPaid, you’ll spend an extra 15-20 minutes on setup:
- Create your import template (5 minutes). You map your bank’s CSV columns to the fields the system expects. Date goes here, description goes here, amount goes here. Save the template. You’ll never do this again for this bank.
- Review your categories (5 minutes). Load the default set or customize. Set your tax rate and province. Mark which categories are taxable.
- Train the AI (5-10 minutes). Your first import has no history to match against, so you’ll manually categorize more transactions than usual. By the second month, pattern matching takes over and your intervention drops dramatically.
After that first month, it’s 10 minutes. Every month.
Try It
If you’re still doing the quarterly statement marathon, or if your “system” is a spreadsheet and good intentions, give it a try. Sign up takes a minute. First import takes about five. And you might just get your weekends back.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.