Expense Tag Support

What expense tags are

Expense tags are short, custom labels you attach to a receipt or expense line in SlipSheet. A tag is anything that helps you slice a report later: a project name, a client code, a job site, a department, or a tax category. Common examples include "client-acme," "q3-events," "1099-contractor," "vehicle-mileage," or "home-office."

SlipSheet treats tags as first-class metadata on every expense. You can add one tag or several, and you can filter, group, and export by tag without changing the underlying receipt data. Tags stay editable, so a label that looked right in January can be cleaned up before year-end reporting.

How to use tags step by step

1. Scan or import a receipt. Drop a receipt photo into SlipSheet or email one in. The receipt parses into merchant, date, total, and tax.
2. Open the expense detail view. Click any row in the expense table to open its full detail panel.
3. Type a tag into the tag field. Tags autocomplete from your history, so the second time you type "client-acme" it appears as a suggestion. Press Enter to add it.
4. Add as many tags as you need. Repeat for project codes, tax categories, or reimbursable flags. Each tag shows as a removable chip.
5. Filter the expense list by tag. Click any tag chip in the table to filter the view. Click again to clear.
6. Export grouped by tag. When you export to CSV or Google Sheets, choose "Group by tag" to get one row per tag, or include the tag column as a regular field for a flat export.

Technical notes

Tags are stored as plain text, lowercase by default, with hyphens or underscores as separators. There is no fixed tag taxonomy; you define the vocabulary that fits your business. SlipSheet keeps a per-user tag history so repeated labels are fast to add and easy to standardize across a team.

Tags live alongside structured fields like merchant, date, total, tax, category, and payment method. They never overwrite those fields; they are additive metadata. If you change a tag later, every report, filter, and export reflects the new value without re-scanning the original receipt.

Exports preserve tags as a semicolon-separated string in the tag column, or as one row per tag when grouped. QuickBooks IIF, CSV, and Google Sheets exports all carry tag data without a custom mapping step.

Common use cases

Freelancers billing by client. Tag every expense with the client code it relates to. At month-end, filter by tag and export one CSV per client to attach to invoices or reimbursement requests.

Contractors splitting personal and business. Use tags like "business," "personal," and "mixed" to keep a clean separation. Mixed expenses get a follow-up tag for the specific project.

Bookkeepers organizing by tax line. Apply IRS Schedule C line tags such as "line-24a-supplies" or "line-9-car-expenses." Year-end tax prep becomes a filtered export instead of a manual sort.

Small teams tracking reimbursements. Tag expenses with employee initials or a "reimbursable" flag. Payroll runs pull only the tagged rows so nothing slips through.

Event or project accounting. Tag every receipt tied to an event with the event code. After the event wraps, one filtered export shows the full cost picture.

Spousal or shared business expenses. Use a "shared" tag to mark expenses that need splitting. At quarter-end, export the shared-tag rows and divide them by your agreed ratio.

Getting started

Open any expense in SlipSheet and add one tag today, even if you are not sure of your final vocabulary. Two weeks of organic tagging reveals your real categories: the labels you actually use, not the ones you planned in advance. Once a pattern emerges, standardize your spelling and naming so reports stay clean across months.

When you export, choose the grouping that matches your workflow. Flat exports with a tag column work well for spreadsheets. Grouped-by-tag exports work well for invoice backup, tax prep, and client billing summaries. SlipSheet exports the same way whether you have five tags or fifty, so the system grows with you.

Try SlipSheet free for 14 days and start tagging your receipts at slipsheet.app.