Expense & Tax Estimator FAQ

No. Your ledger, your tax settings, and the live tax estimate are all calculated entirely in your browser tab. Nothing is sent anywhere while you log expenses or watch the estimate update. The only network requests this page ever makes go to Stripe, if you choose to subscribe, and — the one exception — to a CDN the first time you use "Scan a receipt", to download the OCR engine. See the next question for what that involves; the receipt photo itself is never uploaded either way.

"Scan a receipt" reads the photo using Tesseract.js, an OCR engine that runs in your browser tab (a Web Worker + WebAssembly, not a server) — the photo itself is never uploaded anywhere. The one honest exception to this app's usual zero-network-requests behavior: the first time you scan, your browser downloads the OCR engine and an English text-recognition model (around 15MB) from a couple of public CDNs, cached afterward so it only happens once. Recognition is best-effort, not guaranteed correct, so a scan always lands in a review step — date, category, description, and amount, all editable — before anything is added to your ledger; nothing is added automatically.

An estimate only, not advice. It applies simplified HMRC-style Income Tax and Class 4 National Insurance formulas to whatever figures you enter, but it doesn't know your full tax position — other income, pensions, Gift Aid, student loans, marriage allowance, or Scottish Income Tax rates (it only implements rest-of-UK rates). Always confirm against gov.uk or an accountant before relying on this for your actual Self Assessment.

In your browser's localStorage, on your device only — not on a server, not in an account. That also means it doesn't follow you between browsers or devices, and clearing your browser's site data for this domain deletes it permanently — unless you've downloaded a backup first (see "Can I back up my ledger" below). The CSV export is also free and unlimited, but it's a one-way record for your own use, not something you can re-import back into the tool.

Yes — the "Backup & restore" panel downloads your ledger and tax settings as a single .json file. Re-import that file on this browser or any other browser/device to restore them exactly. It never includes your subscription status or free-export count, so a backup file can't be used to unlock paid features without actually paying.

It follows HMRC's simplified-expenses mileage rates: for a car or van, 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year and 25p per mile after that, tracked as a running total in the order your rows appear in the ledger; motorcycles are a flat 24p per mile and bicycles a flat 20p per mile. You enter miles, not an amount — the pound figure is calculated for you.

HMRC's simplified-expenses flat rate for working from home, based on hours worked from home in a month: £10 for 25–50 hours, £18 for 51–100 hours, £26 for 101+ hours, and £0 below 25 hours. Enter your hours for that month and the amount is calculated automatically.

Yes — every threshold, rate, and mileage figure in the "Tax settings & rates" panel is an editable input, not a hidden constant. They default to published 2026/27 figures, but Personal Allowance/Income Tax thresholds and National Insurance rates aren't guaranteed to stay the same forever (NI in particular has changed in recent Budgets), so this is there to keep the tool accurate if HMRC's numbers change. A "Reset to 2026/27 defaults" button undoes any changes.

No hard limit on rows. Descriptions are capped at 300 characters in the ledger itself, and the exported PDF trims any single description further (to keep a very long, unbroken line of text from blowing up the PDF into dozens of pages) — the CSV export always keeps the full text you entered.

No sign-up or account with us — but exporting a formatted PDF tax summary now requires an active free trial, subscription, or lifetime purchase, so you'll go through Stripe Checkout first, which does ask for a card. Logging, the live estimate, and CSV export stay free with no card needed at all. That's the only information you'd ever give us, and it goes straight to Stripe, not to us.

Logging expenses (including scanning receipts), the live tax estimate, and CSV export are free and unlimited, forever — there's no limit or paywall on the core tool. Exporting a formatted PDF tax summary requires a subscription: start with a 7-day free trial (card required, nothing charged until day 8), then it's £5/month for unlimited PDF exports. Cancel anytime during the trial and you won't be charged at all. Prefer not to have a recurring charge? A one-time £25 lifetime purchase unlocks the same unlimited access, paid once, no trial needed, no recurring charges.

No. Stripe holds your card details but doesn't charge anything until the trial ends on day 8. Cancel any time before then from "Manage or cancel subscription" (shown once your trial is active) and you'll never be charged. We ask for a card up front because that's what makes the trial a real one — rather than a resettable browser counter, which is how the old one-free-export model worked.

Click "Manage or cancel subscription" — it appears next to the subscribed badge once unlocked in that browser. It opens Stripe's own billing portal, where you can see your next renewal date and cancel in a couple of clicks, no email needed. It only works in the same browser you subscribed in, since there's no account here — if that's not available, email pdftoolkit@icloud.com and we'll cancel it for you.

Your ledger rows, tax settings, and free-export count all reset — there's no account to recover them from, since nothing is stored anywhere except that browser. Download a .json backup from the "Backup & restore" panel beforehand and you can restore your ledger and settings exactly afterward; a plain CSV export is useful as a record but can't be re-imported.

They're sibling products from the same maker, sharing a visual style and the "nothing uploaded" approach, but they're entirely separate: separate page, separate subscription, separate trial. PDF Toolkit merges, compresses, resizes, and rotates existing PDFs; the Invoice Generator creates invoices, quotes, and expense reports for clients; this tool is specifically for tracking your own business expenses and estimating your own tax bill.

No — it's built for sole traders and side-hustlers who just want a simple running log and a rough idea of what to set aside, without a full accounting subscription. It doesn't file your Self Assessment, sync with a bank, handle VAT, or account for anything outside your entered income and expenses. Treat the estimate as a starting point, not a substitute for professional advice.

It should — the layout adapts down to a single column on a small screen — though the ledger table is easier to use on a wider screen, and it hasn't been formally tested across a wide range of mobile hardware yet.