"Expense tracker" covers two different products, and most lists mix them up. One kind is a receipt scanner: it reads the paper and files it for taxes. The other is a job cost tracker: it files the receipt against a job, so that on Friday you know what Westlake has cost. A contractor needs the second kind, and the first kind only if it feeds the second.
Disclosure first: we make Obra, it's on this list, and the list says where it loses. Prices are list prices published on September 4, 2026, before promotions, rounded; they change.
The short version
| App | Kind | Best for | Starts at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Obra | Job cost tracker | Receipts from a crew, over WhatsApp, email or photo, in English or Spanish | Free for one active project; $12 per user a month |
| RenoJira | Job cost tracker | A solo contractor on a phone who wants free | Free |
| Ontraq | Receipt capture feeding QuickBooks Online | An owner with a bookkeeper in QuickBooks | About $30 a month for two users |
| QuickBooks Online receipt capture | Receipt scanner inside your accounting | Low volume, one QuickBooks user snapping receipts | Included in the plan you have |
| Expensify | Receipt scanner and expense reports | Employees on cards, reimbursements, reports | Free tier; about $5 per member a month |
| Dext | Receipt capture for accountants | A bookkeeper who wants every document coded before it hits the books | About $25 a month for 250 documents |
| Joist | Estimates and invoices with expense logging | A service trade that quotes and invoices from a phone | About $8 a month; expense tracking on paid plans |
| Spreadsheet plus camera | The baseline | One or two jobs, one person, weekly discipline | Free |
What we compared
- Capture. How a receipt gets in: app photo, email forward, WhatsApp, card feed. The channel the crew already uses beats the one with the best scanner.
- Who can capture. A paid seat per person who buys materials, or a role for people who only submit.
- From scan to confirmed. Whether a person checks what the scanner read before it becomes a record. Unchecked OCR is how a $1,840 lumber receipt becomes $184.
- Job tagging. Whether the receipt lands on a job and a category, or in a pile for later.
- The accountant handoff. Exports or sync, and whether they create double entry.
- Price for a three-person crew.
Obra
Capture. WhatsApp, email forward, or a photo in the app. Each becomes a draft with amount, date, vendor and a suggested category already filled in, waiting for a person to confirm it to a job.
Who can capture. Anyone you invite as a submitter, from their own phone, without seeing the project's finances. A reviewer approves entries into the ledger.
Job tagging. Every entry belongs to a project and a category from the moment it's confirmed, and the project's numbers move the same minute: recorded cost, cash collected, forecast.
Where it loses. No corporate cards, no reimbursement runs, no mileage. It tracks a job's money, not an employee's expense report. The accountant gets CSV exports and a full organization export, not a live QuickBooks sync.
Price. Free for one active project; Pro is $12 per user a month, $36 for a crew of three.
RenoJira
Capture. Photo in the iOS or Android app, with the total, tax and date read automatically. Works offline.
Who can capture. Whoever has the phone. There's no submitter role and no web app.
Job tagging. Expenses log against a project with a category and a deductible flag, and the app shows spend against the quote.
Where it loses. Single-operator. If a second person buys materials, their receipts still travel by text. No forecast of the finish; no committed costs.
Price. Free.
Ontraq
Capture. Photo and email, with AI coding of the vendor and category, synced to QuickBooks Online.
Who can capture. Plan seats: two on the starter plan, about $9 each beyond that.
Job tagging. Job-based expense tracking on every plan; budget versus actual and profitability on the top plan at about $80 a month.
Where it loses. The job view is the expensive part; the cheap part is a coded-receipt feeder for QuickBooks. Fine if that's what you want.
Price. About $30 a month for two users.
QuickBooks Online receipt capture
Capture. Snap in the QuickBooks mobile app or forward to a receipts address; the receipt lands in a review pile where someone assigns payee, category and project.
Who can capture. QuickBooks users on a paid seat. Plus includes five; giving your framer a login to the accounting file is a strange trade for a photo.
Job tagging. Only once someone works the review pile, and only on plans with Projects.
Where it loses. The review pile ages. The QuickBooks job costing guide covers when that's tolerable and when it isn't.
Price. Included in the plan you have; Projects needs Plus at about $140 a month list.
Expensify
Capture. SmartScan of photos and email forwards, card feeds, mileage. Built for employees filing expense reports and getting reimbursed.
Who can capture. Every member is a paid member on the business plans; the free tier has scan limits.
Job tagging. Tags and categories can stand in for jobs, and the QuickBooks and Xero syncs carry them across. It works, but "job" is a tag, not a ledger with a contract value and a forecast.
Where it loses. It's an expense-report product. Nothing tells you what a job is going to cost at the end, and per-member pricing is aimed at office teams.
Price. Free tier; Collect is about $5 per member a month.
Dext
Capture. Photo, email, and supplier fetch, with extraction accurate enough that accountants built practices on it. Publishes to QuickBooks Online, Xero and thirty other ledgers.
Who can capture. Up to five users on the business plan, with document volume as the meter.
Job tagging. Through the accounting system's project or tracking category, set during review.
Where it loses. It's a bookkeeper's tool. The contractor sees the result in the accounting reports, later, not on the job today.
Price. About $25 a month on annual billing for 250 documents.
Joist
Capture. Photo of the receipt in the app while you're logging an expense against a job.
Who can capture. The plan user; Joist is built around one contractor quoting and invoicing from a phone.
Job tagging. Expenses attach to jobs, and the paid plans report on them; the QuickBooks integration sends invoices and payments across.
Where it loses. Expense tracking is a side feature of an estimating and invoicing app. Good if you want both from one place; thin if job costs are the problem.
Price. About $8 a month on annual billing for the basic plan; expense features on the higher plans.
Spreadsheet plus a phone camera
Capture. Photo in a shared album, one entry in the sheet that evening.
Who can capture. Anyone with the album; the sheet is one person's job.
Where it wins. One or two jobs, a single buyer, weekly discipline. Our receipt tracking guide is the five-second habit that makes it work, and the free template at the bottom is the sheet.
Where it loses. The third job, the second buyer, or the first month you skip the evening.
Which one, by situation
- A crew that texts you receipts, some in Spanish. Obra. The WhatsApp channel and the submitter role are the whole point, and every receipt lands on a job with a forecast, not in a pile.
- Solo, on a phone, free. Obra's free plan, one active project at a time with the same capture as Pro; RenoJira if you want several jobs open for free.
- You have employees on company cards filing reports. Expensify for the reimbursement workflow. It won't tell you what the job is costing; pair it with Obra or accept that gap.
- Your bookkeeper wants every document coded before it hits QuickBooks. Dext, or Ontraq if you also want a job view. Obra's CSV and ZIP exports give the bookkeeper the same coded lines and images, one batch at a time, if a live sync isn't worth a second subscription.
- Low volume, one QuickBooks user. Snap receipts in QuickBooks and work the pile weekly. The first week you skip is when the pile starts winning.
- One or two jobs, one buyer. The spreadsheet, honestly, until the third job or the second buyer; Obra's free plan is the step after that and costs the same.
Questions people ask
What's the difference between a receipt scanner and a job cost tracker? A scanner reads the paper and files it for the books. A job cost tracker files it against a job so you can see the job's margin today. Scanners feed taxes; trackers feed decisions.
Should receipts be checked by a person after scanning? Yes. Scanners misread totals, dates and vendors often enough that an unchecked feed is a liability. The apps above that keep a draft-then-confirm step do it for that reason.
How do I track expenses per job without a paid seat for every worker? Use a tool with a submitter role, or a shared channel like WhatsApp that feeds one. Per-seat products assume the people who spend money are the people who use the software, which isn't true on a job site.
Can I write off expenses I tracked this way? Tracking by job doesn't change what's deductible; it changes whether you can find the receipt. Ask your accountant what they need attached, then pick a tool that exports it.
Get the template
The free job costing spreadsheet below has one sheet per job, costs and payments kept separate, and a category column ready for a short code list. Enter your email and the download starts right away.