Tracking business expenses as a freelancer or online seller in the Philippines

This is general information, not tax or accounting advice — talk to a CPA about your specific situation, and check current rules on the BIR website.

Short answer: the record-keeping problem and the tax-filing problem are separate, and you can solve the first one yourself with nothing more than your phone. Capture every business receipt the day you get it, keep it organized by category, and export it in a format your accountant can use — that's most of what "clean books" means at freelancer or small-online-seller scale.

Why this matters more here than for a regular employee

If you're self-employed, a freelancer, a professional, or run an online store, you're generally required to keep books of accounts and the receipts and invoices behind them — unlike someone earning purely compensation income, whose employer keeps the payroll records. If you haven't registered yet, see registering as self-employed with the BIR first; see how long to keep receipts for BIR taxes for the retention side of this. This post is about the day-to-day habit that makes retention possible in the first place.

Two things make the stakes higher than "personal budgeting, but for a business":

1. A missing receipt is a bigger tax bill, not just a smaller expense record. An expense without a proper invoice generally can't be deducted — so a lost receipt isn't neutral, it costs you.
2. Your quarterly numbers are only as good as your worst month of record-keeping. If March was disorganized, the whole quarter's filing inherits that.

What actually counts as a business record

• Sales invoices from your suppliers and vendors — the primary proof for an expense since the 2024 Ease of Paying Taxes reforms folded most of what used to require a separate official receipt into the invoice.
• Registered receipts or invoices you issue to your own clients or customers, if you're required to issue them.
• Certificates of withholding — Form 2307 if clients withhold tax on what they pay you, which is common for professionals and freelancers working with registered businesses.
• Proof of any expense you plan to deduct — subscriptions, materials, transportation, a co-working membership, internet and phone (apportioned if also personal use).

A sari-sari store or an informal vendor often won't issue a proper invoice unless you ask, and sometimes not even then. If it's a business expense you intend to deduct, ask for a registered invoice with the seller's name and TIN — a handwritten slip won't support it later. See official receipt vs. sales invoice if you're not sure which document you should be asking for.

A category set that lines up with your filing

Rather than inventing categories as receipts come in, start from what a bookkeeper's template usually wants: Office Supplies, Transportation, Internet & Phone, Professional Fees / Subcontractors, Materials or Inventory (for sellers), Software & Subscriptions, and a catch-all Other. See categorizing expenses for how to set these up once and have Resiboo apply them automatically after that — a merchant you've corrected once (your usual hardware supplier, your courier) gets remembered.

If you also have personal spending running through the same phone, keep it in the same app but tag or filter by category rather than maintaining two separate systems — the discipline of a second app is exactly the kind of friction that causes people to stop scanning altogether.

Getting it to your accountant

Whatever cadence you file on — monthly percentage tax, quarterly income tax, or annual — the actual deliverable is usually "send me a spreadsheet of your expenses for the period." That's a filtered CSV export: date range set to the period, columns matching whatever your bookkeeper's template wants, and a New since last export filter once you've sent one before so you're never re-sending the same receipts.

Save that configuration as a profile once — "For my accountant" — and every future quarter is the same few taps instead of rebuilding a spreadsheet from scratch.

What this doesn't replace

Scanning and categorizing receipts gets your records in order; it doesn't compute your tax due, decide between the graduated rates and the 8% optional rate, or track your VAT threshold. That's what an accountant or a proper bookkeeping setup is for once your volume justifies it. What this workflow does is make sure that conversation starts from a complete, organized set of receipts instead of a shoebox — which is usually the difference between a CPA spending an hour on your books versus a full day.

Resiboo reads the merchant, date, category, and total off every receipt on-device — free and unlimited, no account — and exports a clean CSV whenever your bookkeeper or a filing deadline asks for one.