Right, let's talk about expenses.

You're pulling in good money as a sole trader — builder, plumber, electrician, landscaper — but the thing that niggles especially at tax time is keeping track of your expenses.

Materials from the builders provider, diesel to get to the sites, lunch at the café, tools when they wear out — all of these costs are happening constantly. You need to know what's claimable and keep a record of it somehow. Because Revenue will want to see if they decide to take a look.

Managing your expenses as a sole trader shouldn't be this hard. But none of the current tools were designed for people like you.

Why Expense Management Is Such a Pain for Contractors

There's Excel spreadsheets — great if you enjoy spreadsheets, which I'll bet is none of you. Good luck entering 150 odd receipts into a spreadsheet while sitting in a van between two jobs.

Then there's accounting software. QuickBooks, Xero, Sage. If you're in a proper office with a decent laptop and an hour to spare, maybe they're fine. But when you've been lugging a bag of receipts from a builders supplier all day, the idea of loading up a desktop app and uploading receipts just isn't realistic.

There should be a better way. Because if you spend more time managing your accounts than actually earning the money, you're doing it wrong.

What Counts as a Business Expense as a Sole Trader

The main what:

  • Materials and supplies. Lumber, plumbing fittings, electrical wire from your builders provider. All fully claimable.
  • Vehicle costs. Diesel is probably your most frequent expense. Claim the fuel portion — but only with proper fuel receipts from the pumps. No receipts, no claim.
  • Phone, meals, tools, insurance. All of these add up to thousands of euros in claimable expenses for an Irish sole trader. Miss a handful of receipts and you're leaving money on the table.

How You Actually Go About Tracking All This

The manual way. Keep a notebook in your van, scribble down what you've spent, try to remember which receipts are where. This sounds mad because it is mad. How many lads actually stick to it day in, day out? Nobody does.

The spreadsheet way. Write dates and amounts, take photos of receipts on your phone, then nobody follows through. The photo pile grows. You tell yourself you'll deal with it later. Then it's June and you've got a thousand photos you never got around to sorting.

The accountant way. Hire an accountant and give them all your receipts. It's what most people do eventually, but accountants charge for this work, and sending them a shoebox of papers four times a year is a pain.

The app way. Download an expense-tracking app, take a photo, wait for it to load. But these were designed for office workers. They force you to create an account, download the app, go through their interface. All a barrier when you just want to log something in five seconds.

What Actually Works

There's a better way — and it doesn't involve buying a new app or changing how you've done things for years. Use WhatsApp.

You've already got WhatsApp on your phone. You're using it every day to message your mates in work or send a text to your partner. Nobody's going to make you switch to a new app when you've already got one everywhere.

How Graft Handles Your Expenses for You

Graft does exactly what I'm describing. It sits on WhatsApp and lets you track your expenses the way you already do — by taking a picture of a receipt and sending it as a message on WhatsApp.

No app to download, no account to create, no complicated interface. You text a photo of your receipt to Graft and it records the date, the amount, the VAT, and the category — everything your accountant will need at tax time. You can also use WhatsApp voice notes if you'd rather just speak what you've spent.

Graft keeps all your expenses sorted all year, so when tax season hits, you've got everything already done. Just point your accountant or a ROS account at the exports and let them sort the rest.

A lot of lads in our group — builders, plumbers, electricians, the whole lot — use Graft now. And the thing nobody expects when they first try it is that it actually works. Not "works if you can be bothered" works, just "works" works.

If managing your expenses as a sole trader is one of those things you keep telling yourself you'll deal with later, deal with it now. And if the way you're going about it feels like too much hassle, Graft might be worth the five seconds it takes to give us a message on WhatsApp.