Turn a receipt into a useful record
Record the supplier, amount and period once, keeping the original receipt as evidence.
What you need
A known inbox for billing emails, a table or spreadsheet for the records, and a list of recurring suppliers to check against.
The method
Read each new receipt and retain the original email or file. Record its supplier, amount and billing period with a link to the source. Flag a failed charge or unclear amount for a person. Do not infer a payment from an ambiguous message. Compare the records with your recurring supplier list, then total the recorded amounts for the period.
Check the result
Every amount has a source and each exception is visible. An automated reader needs inbox access and a place to write records. It should record facts, not decide what to pay or change a card.
How we use it at Pitch
At Pitch, the board is our shared work log. An assistant is software that follows our instructions with access to agreed tools. A watcher checks for changes and reports them; a worker runs a configured routine. Those roles need explicit instructions, access and permissions. Context and boundaries Receipts are the paperwork nobody misses until the accountant asks for them. There's one decision in them that stays ours: what we pay for, and whether it's still worth paying for. The rest is reading billing emails and copying numbers, which a worker can do every morning without being asked. The setup The same table as everything else, with each receipt written as a record: a fact that is closed the moment it arrives, so it never sits on anyone's to-do list. The worker in the morning run, reading billing emails. A short register of what recurs, kept by hand, that the rows are checked against. And one design choice that keeps it honest: the worker files facts and makes no judgements, so anything that needs one, a failed charge or a vague amount, comes to us as a "needs you" item. Our sequence Every morning the worker reads the new billing emails. Each receipt becomes one row: the supplier, the amount and the period. A failed charge becomes a "needs you" item in that morning's briefing . The month's spend is the sum of the rows. The principle A receipt is a fact, not a task. File it as a row the morning it arrives, and the month's spend adds itself up. What stays with a person We still keep the list of what we pay for, and we still fix a card when it fails. Finding the receipts, reading them and typing them up stopped being ours. What it took us The receipt rows arrived with the rebuild of the morning run in September, and the register was built by hand the same week from the receipts already in the inbox. Moving every supplier's billing to the one inbox the worker reads is still under way, one supplier at a time. How the process began Every so often we'd search the inbox for each supplier's billing email. Open each one and copy out the amount, the period and what it was for. Put them in a spreadsheet, supplier by supplier. Find out about a declined card when a service stopped, or when we next looked. Do it all again at the end of the year for the accountant.