How to Create a Free, Customized Receipt Tracking App in 15 Minutes

Edit: As of Jan 2020, this app seems to have stopped working. My guess is it’s because Google bought Appsheet and made some changes.

I used to hate receipt tracking, because receipt tracking apps suck. They are inevitably a pain to use, expensive, or both. However, a while back, I found Appsheet, a wonderful, powerful FREE tool that allows you to make apps out of Google spreadsheets. After a couple hours of trial and error, I, a non-coder, had made an app that did exactly what I wanted. I’ve been successfully using for about a year and a half now with no issues. Below are instructions for how to make one for yourself. AppSheet works with iPhone and Android.

A few caveats. I am by no means an expert on AppSheet. I probably didn’t do things the best or most efficient way possible. Also, I took these screenshots while trying to recreate the steps from the first app I made; because this test app is technically my second app, you might need to complete some steps that I did the first time but didn’t need to repeat this time around.

1. Create a Google spreadsheet for your data.

Feel free to copy mine (and customize at will). The first tab will be for your actual expenses. If you want any dropdowns in the app, you will create additional tabs for each of them. I have two dropdowns, one for my business names and one for my tax deduction categories.
Tab 1: The Key column is for a unique identifier for each data entry (you must have this). Date, Merchant, and Amount are self-explanatory. Business is because I own multiple businesses; if you don’t, you can leave it off. Category is to sort the expense type.
Tab 2: My list of business names.
Tab 3: My list of tax deduction categories. I took mine from some website like this and left off the ones that didn’t apply to me.

First tab. Actual expense data.

Second tab. Business names.

Third tab. Deduction types.

2. Go to AppSheet.com and make an account. Use your Gmail to sign up since the app will need to plug in to your spreadsheet.

3. Click “New mobile app” in the top right and choose “Start with your own data.”

4. Give your app a name and choose “Other” as the Category. Or whatever you want. Click “Next step: choose your data.”

5. Now you’ll select the Google spreadsheet you’ve already made. Search for it and click on it.

6. CREATE YOUR NEW APP YO.

7. Now you’re in your app dashboard. Under where it says “New App,” click “Edit name.”

8. Give your app its own name, and a description if you want. You can also go back and choose “Edit logo” or “Edit description.” Basically, add some info if you want.

9. On the left toolbar, click “Data.” Then click on the box that shows up (which will be named whatever your spreadsheet is called).

10. Check off “Updates” and “Adds”. This will allow you to add new entries from the app and also update existing ones. You can also allow “Deletes” if you want; I don’t. If you allow deletes, you’ll be able to delete entries in the spreadsheet from the app.

11. At the top, click “Add New Table.”

12. Add your second sheet from the dropdown. Make sure at least “Updates” and “Adds” are allowed. Then repeat for the third sheet. (And so on, if you’re planning to have more than two dropdowns and therefore you have more than two other tabs.)

13. Now you should have all the tabs from your spreadsheet added as tables. Now it’s time to tweak the UX a little. Click on “UX” from the left toolbar.

14. You’ll probably have one view under “Primary Views.” Click on it to expand the box. (If you have multiples, just click on the first one.)

15. Choose the “table” option if it’s not already selected.

16. Scroll down and choose how you want your data to be sorted in the app. I recommend “Date” and “Descending.”

17. Time to set up your dropdowns. Click on “Data” on the left toolbar.

18. Click on the second tab at the top, “Columns.” Then click on “Show All Properties” for your first sheet (the one that’s for your actual expenses).

19. Something scary-looking will pop up. Don’t freak out. Where it says “Key,” choose “DateTime” from the dropdown. “Date” should be autoselected with “Date”; “Merchant” should say “Text”; “Amount” should say “Price” (you can choose your currency also). Change the next two (or however many; these are for your dropdowns) to “Ref”. This is telling the app that it will be referencing a spreadsheet for those columns.

20. To tell the app which spreadsheet to reference for which field, click inside the code box in the column “TYPE QUALIFIER.” That will bring up the below window. Now you click the “ReferencedTableName” dropdown and pick which spreadsheet you want it to reference. Repeat for your other Ref columns.

21. When that’s done, click “Save” and hit the “Regenerate” button. The site will go gray like this and reload all the stuff you just did in your app on the right. You probably only need to click “Regenerate” for the first spreadsheet, but I clicked it for all three, just in case. #n00b

22. When that finishes loading, you’re ready to test. Click the plus button on your app on the right. It should load something that looks like this. Give your app a try! Put some data in there.

23. If everything went according to plan, you should be able to add data to your app. And—ta da!—that data automatically syncs to your Google spreadsheet.

App has data.

Google has data.

24. Now it’s time to get your app on your phone. Click on “Share app” in the left toolbar. You can email it to yourself under “User emails” and/or share it via a link from the “Links” tab. I believe you’ll need to install the AppSheet app on your device (I did, anyway), but it’s pretty painless.

And that’s it. Enjoy!

Notes

1. You can, of course, customize it a lot more — choose an icon, change the colors, etc.
2. The “Key” field in the Google spreadsheet is required. It’s a unique identifier for each entry; “DateTime” is just the easiest way to do that because you literally can’t enter in two things at the exact same time, so “DateTime” will always be unique. There’s a way you can hide the “Key” field from showing up in the app, so it autofills in the spreadsheet but you don’t have to look at it. I did this the first time around, but I don’t remember how I did it. So you’ll have to figure it out on your own, if you care.
3. I created my app with a field for photos. It automatically works with my iPhone camera. That said, the photos themselves do not sync to the Google doc—just a filename. To see the photos of my receipts, I have to go into the app itself, on my phone, and pull them up. There’s probably another way to handle this.