Tax Exports: A Package Your Accountant Can Open

What comes out

Three formats, for three different readers. CSV and XLSX for the data, so a bookkeeper can sort, filter and total it. PDF for the evidence, with the receipt images attached to the rows they belong to.

The spreadsheet exports carry the fields that reconciliation and review actually need: merchant, date, subtotal, tax amount, tax breakdown, total, currency, category, GL account, job code, business or personal, deductible, tax type, payment account, payment method, card last four, reimbursable, billable, client, tags, receipt number and notes.

Shaped like the form you file

Categories map to the lines of the return rather than to names invented for the app. For a US sole proprietor that is Schedule C Part II — advertising, car and truck, office expense, supplies, travel, meals, utilities and the rest. For a German freelancer the same receipts group under Anlage EÜR categories instead.

The tax package adds the pieces that substantiation asks for: a receipt ledger, a contemporaneous mileage log, category totals, and a column recording whether a receipt image is attached or missing.

Retention, and why exports matter

The IRS expects most records to be kept three years from filing, six if income was under-reported by more than 25%, seven for a worthless securities or bad debt claim, and four for employment tax records. Property records run until the limitation period expires for the year you dispose of the asset.

Few apps survive that span unchanged. Exporting on a schedule is what turns "my receipts are in an app" into "my receipts are mine".