Keeping your project financials honest means logging expenses as they happen — not at the end of the week when you’re reconstructing the job from a pile of crumpled receipts. Eano’s expense tracking is built around that idea: capture what you spent, attach the receipt, and move on.
For the times you’ve got a receipt in hand (or a photo on your phone), the fastest path is to upload it. Eano reads the receipt automatically and fills in what it can, so you’re confirming details rather than typing them from scratch. This article walks through the whole flow — from the field on your phone, from the office on the web, and what your expenses actually do once they’re logged.
Two Ways In: Mobile and Web
How you start an expense depends on where you are when you’re doing it.
In the field (mobile app): Field workers get a floating camera button in the bottom-right corner of the Projects screen. Tap it and a menu comes up with three options — New Daily Log, New Expense, and Quick Capture. Tap New Expense and the camera opens straight away. Take a photo of the receipt, and Eano processes it on the spot — no navigating through tabs first.
In the office (web): Head to the Finance tab of your project, open the Expenses sub-tab, and hit + Add Expense in the top right. The same form opens, with a drag-and-drop upload area at the top instead of a camera. You can drop a photo or a PDF onto it, or browse for a file. This is also where admins go to review, update, and manage everything the field has logged.
Both paths run through the same OCR engine and land in the same Expenses list — the only difference is how you get the receipt in.
Adding an Expense from a Receipt
Whether you snapped a photo on mobile or dropped a file on the web, Eano processes the receipt the same way. A “Receipt Details” panel opens automatically to show what came back: the total amount and the payment date are typically what gets pulled, along with the line-item names on the receipt when they’re legible. Give it a look, adjust anything that landed wrong, and close the panel to carry those values into the form.
On the web, the upload area also accepts PDFs — handy for emailed invoices or supplier statements you’ve downloaded. The file size limit is 10MB.
Filling in the Rest
The receipt handles the mechanical part; a few fields still need you:
Vendor Name — type the vendor or search your existing list. If the name you type doesn’t match anyone on file, Eano automatically adds them as a new vendor when you save.
Expense Owner — optional, but useful if someone on your team paid out of pocket and you’re tracking it for reimbursement. This is the person who spent the money, as opposed to the vendor who received it.
Category — pick from Materials, Labor, Equipment, Supplies, Subcontractor, or Other. The form doesn’t pre-fill this from the receipt, so it’s yours to set.
Payment Method — how it was paid.
Description — optional, but a short note here can save you a lot of head-scratching later when you’re reviewing the books.
You can also connect the expense to a scope item or a subcontract if you want it tied to a specific part of the project’s structure — useful for job costing or tracking what’s been spent against a particular work order.
If the Receipt Doesn’t Scan
If Eano can’t pull details from the image, you’ll see a message: “We can’t identify a receipt here.” That usually means the photo is too blurry, at a tricky angle, or the receipt itself is faded. You can re-upload a clearer shot, or just close the prompt and fill in the fields yourself — the form works the same way with or without a receipt attached.
Adding an Expense Without a Receipt
You don’t need a receipt to log an expense. The same form works fine as a straight manual entry — skip the upload area, fill in the amount, date, vendor, and category yourself, and you’re done. Same result; just no attached image.
If you have a file to attach but it’s not something Eano should try to read — a contract PDF, a vendor quote, a photo of the finished work — use the Attachments section near the bottom of the form. Those files are stored with the expense for reference without triggering the OCR flow.
Saving Your Expense
When everything’s filled in, you have two ways to save:
Save and Mark Paid — records the expense and marks it as settled right away. Use this when the money has already gone out.
Save — logs the expense as open. Use this when you’ve got the receipt but haven’t processed the payment yet, or when you want to capture it now and reconcile later.
You can update the status later from the expense list if anything changes.
What Happens After You Save
Your expense shows up immediately in the Expenses tab, with the vendor, category, amount, and payment method all visible at a glance. The project’s financial summary at the top of the Finance tab also updates — the Actual Paid Out figure reflects everything that’s been logged, so your estimated vs. actual expenses are always in step with what you’ve actually recorded.
Deleting an Expense
Sometimes an expense just shouldn’t be there — a double entry, a charge that turned out to belong on another job, a record you created while you were still getting your settings right. Only Owners and Admins can delete one.
There are two places to do it. Open the expense and you’ll find the delete button at the bottom of the form, or hover the row in the Expenses list, click the ••• menu at the end, and choose the delete option there. Either way you’ll get a confirmation step before anything happens, and deleting is permanent — there’s no undo and no trash to fish it back out of.
When the Expense Is Also in QuickBooks
If you’re syncing expenses to QuickBooks and this particular expense has already made it across, one delete button isn’t enough — you need to say whether you mean both systems or just this one. So instead of a single button you’ll see two:
Delete from Eano & QuickBooks — removes the expense here and deletes the matching record in QuickBooks too. This is the one you want when the expense was simply wrong.
Delete from Eano Only — removes it here and leaves QuickBooks completely untouched. This is the one you want when your books are already right and it’s only your Eano list that’s cluttered.
In the ••• menu on the list the same two choices appear in shorter form, as Delete (Eano + QB) and Delete (Eano Only).
An Eano-only delete is a genuine one-way street: nothing about it reaches QuickBooks, and the expense won’t quietly reappear the next time Eano pulls your QuickBooks data in. Eano remembers that the two records were once linked, which is exactly what keeps the import from treating the QuickBooks copy as something new.
Why You Might Only See One Button
If you see a single Delete This Expense button rather than the pair, it means there’s nothing in QuickBooks to decide about. That happens when your team isn’t syncing expenses to QuickBooks at all, or when this expense never made it across — it was logged after you turned sync off, for instance, or it’s still waiting to go. The choice only appears when there’s genuinely a QuickBooks record on the other end of it.
Expenses You Can’t Delete Here
Two kinds of expenses have no delete option in Eano at all:
Expenses that came in from QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the source of truth for these, so they’re deleted in QuickBooks — and that deletion flows through to Eano on its own.
Expenses generated from timesheets. These are driven by the underlying time records, so you adjust or remove the shift in Timesheets rather than the expense.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
Vendor creation is automatic. If you type a vendor name that isn’t already in your list, Eano creates them for you when the expense saves. You don’t need to add them separately first.
PDFs work too. If you get invoices by email or download them from supplier portals, you can drop those PDFs straight into the upload area. Eano will attempt to read them the same way it reads a photo.
Scope and subcontract connections are optional. You can log an expense without tying it to anything — but connecting it to a scope item or subcontract makes it easier to run job cost breakdowns later.
QuickBooks users: if you’re syncing expenses with QuickBooks, manually logged expenses in Eano get pushed across as Purchase Orders, and the receipt you attached goes with them — so the document lands in your accounting too, not just the numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the OCR actually read from a receipt? Typically the total amount, the payment date, and any individual line-item names. Vendor/merchant name and category aren’t filled in automatically — you set those yourself.
Can I add expenses from the Finance tab rather than from inside a project? Yes. The global Finance view (accessible from the main navigation) also has an + Add Expense button that lets you log an expense and assign it to a project from there, without navigating into the project first.
What if I logged an expense and need to update it? Click Update on the expense in the Expenses list. The same form opens in edit mode — change whatever needs changing and save.
Does the expense have to be tied to a project? Yes. Every expense needs a project attached. If you’re adding from the global Finance view rather than from inside a project, you’ll pick the project in the form before anything else appears.
I deleted an expense from Eano only. Will it come back next time QuickBooks syncs? No. Eano keeps track of the fact that the two records were linked, so the import recognises the QuickBooks copy as one it already knows about rather than pulling it in as a new expense. That holds even if your bookkeeper has since converted the record into a bill on the QuickBooks side.
Why do I only see one delete button instead of two? Because there’s no QuickBooks record to make a decision about. The pair of buttons shows up only when your team syncs expenses to QuickBooks and this specific expense has already been pushed across. If either of those isn’t true, a single Delete This Expense button is all you need.
How do I get rid of an expense that came in from QuickBooks? Delete it in QuickBooks. Those expenses are owned by QuickBooks, so Eano doesn’t offer a delete button for them — but once it’s gone there, it comes out of Eano on its own.
What’s the difference between Vendor Name and Expense Owner? Vendor Name is who you bought something from — the lumberyard, the subcontractor, the tool rental shop. Expense Owner is who on your team actually paid — useful when a crew member puts something on their personal card and you need to track the reimbursement.