Expenses

Tax time used to be a shoebox of receipts. Now it’s three taps to export a clean CSV. Track every dollar going out the door — in chat, with categories, in seconds.

Logging an expense

The shortest way

gasté $400 en Home Depot

Nalo creates an expense:

✅ Expense logged: Materials — $400 at Home Depot (today)

Nalo inferred:

• Amount: $400
• Category: Materials (Home Depot = hardware store)
• Vendor: Home Depot
• Date: today
• Notes: (none)

Explicit form

Log $85 gas on Monday

Log expense — $250 permit fee for the Rodriguez job, category Permits

Natural phrases that work

Categories

Eight categories, flat (no subcategories):

Keep it simple. If you’re not sure, Other is fine. Your accountant can re-categorize the CSV if needed.

Seeing your expenses

In chat

Show me this month’s expenses

¿Cuánto gasté en materiales en marzo?

Nalo responds with totals and a breakdown.

In /config

Expenses tab shows:

• Date range filter — defaults to current month, change to any range
• Total at the top
• Category breakdown chips — Materials: $840 · Fuel: $120 · Tools: $220 · Other: $50
• List of expenses — date, category, vendor, amount, quick Remove button
• + Add Expense button — opens an inline form
• Export CSV button — downloads expenses-YYYY-MM-DD-to-YYYY-MM-DD.csv

The CSV export

Columns:

Date,Category,Vendor,Amount,Notes
2026-04-02,Materials,Home Depot,400.00,
2026-04-03,Fuel,Chevron,85.00,
2026-04-05,Permits,City of Tomball,250.00,Rodriguez bathroom permit

Opens cleanly in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers. Your accountant will love you.

Editing a logged expense

Correct an entry

Actually that Home Depot expense was $440, not $400

Or /config → Expenses → tap the row → Edit.

Delete an entry

Ignora el último gasto

Or tap the ✕ on the row.

Be aware: deleting an expense doesn’t adjust anything else — it just removes that row. No history of the deletion is kept.

The dashboard view

/config → Dashboard shows a “This month” card with:

• Revenue invoiced (from Invoice records)
• Revenue collected (from Payment records)
• Expenses (sum of this month’s Expense rows)
• Net (collected minus expenses)

This is your real-time P&L. Fast glance every morning.

Tax rate and deposit policy

These aren’t expenses, but they live in the same flow — what you charge above subtotal, what you require up front.

Set your tax rate

/config → Profile → Billing → Sales tax rate (%)

Enter 8.25 for 8.25% sales tax. Every new quote and invoice will:

• Calculate tax on the subtotal
• Show a Subtotal / Tax / Total breakdown on the PDF
• Store taxAmount for reporting

Leave blank or set to 0 to disable.

Set your deposit policy

/config → Profile → Billing → Deposit required (%)

Enter 30 for 30% deposit required. Every new quote will:

• Calculate the deposit amount
• Show a “Deposit required” and “Balance due on completion” block on the PDF
• Track depositAmount separately from total

Deposits apply to quotes only — once the deposit is paid, you’d create a partial invoice for the deposit amount and the remaining balance invoice when the job’s done.

Set default payment terms

/config → Profile → Billing → Default payment terms

Free-text field: "Net 15", "Due on completion", "Payment due in 30 days". Populates the payment terms block on every new quote / invoice.

Common workflows

Monthly bookkeeping (15 minutes once a month)

1. Open /config → Expenses
2. Check date range is “Apr 1 to Apr 30”
3. Review the list, delete anything wrong
4. Click Export CSV
5. Email to your accountant

End-of-year tax prep

1. /config → Expenses → date range “Jan 1 to Dec 31”
2. Export CSV
3. Send to accountant
4. They categorize into IRS Schedule C line items from your 8 Nalo categories

Quarterly P&L

1. Dashboard “This month” × 3 months = quarter snapshot
2. Or: use the CSV and a spreadsheet for exact numbers

Tips

• Log expenses the day they happen — voice messages (see Voice messages) work great at the gas pump or checkout counter
• Use the vendor field — makes receipts easier to match later
• Add receipts as notes — v1 doesn’t support receipt photo uploads; paste the receipt # in the notes field. Photo support coming.
• Double-check categories at month-end — if everything landed in “Other”, you’ll lose deduction opportunities at tax time
• Never delete historic data — soft-delete is not available; once an expense is deleted, it’s gone. Prefer to edit instead.

What Nalo doesn’t do (yet)

• Receipt OCR — paste the receipt text manually for now
• Mileage tracking — log mileage as a Fuel or Vehicle expense with notes
• Multi-currency — one business = one currency (from country)
• Tax-deductible flagging — all expenses are equally tracked; your accountant categorizes at tax time
• Recurring expenses — log each one as it happens (monthly insurance = 12 entries/year)

Next

• Quotes with tax/deposit — Quoting
• Dashboard — /config panel
• Monthly recap (includes expenses) — Reviews & monthly recap