Terms
The rules for using Expense
Expense is a free expense tracker run by one person. Use it for your own receipts, keep them out of other people's accounts, and check what it fills in before you file: the reading is good, not infallible.
Last updated September 14, 2026.
What this is
Expense is an expense tracker for people filing taxes as individuals, built and run by one person, Assaf Arkin, in Los Angeles. It is free and carries no ads: free until the app reaches 100 users, and free up to 25 invoices a month after that.
Creating an account means you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the app.
Your account
Keep your password to yourself. Everyone you invite with the account's invite code sees the same expenses, so invite deliberately, and remember that you are responsible for what your account's members do.
An assistant you connect over MCP acts with your account's permissions: what it writes lands in your expenses, and it reaches nothing else. Revoke it in Settings whenever you like.
Your data stays yours
You own the receipts, expenses, trips, and notes you put into the app. You give the app permission to store and process them in order to do what you asked: read a receipt, match a statement, answer an Insights question, build a report or an export.
What is stored, where it lives, and which providers see what is spelled out in the privacy policy.
What not to do
Do not upload receipts that are not yours to upload, use the app for anything illegal, poke at accounts that are not yours, scrape or hammer the service, or pass it off as your own.
An account that does gets suspended, which nobody enjoys.
Not tax, legal, or accounting advice
The app applies IRS mileage rates and Schedule C categories, totals what you spent, and reads receipts. That is bookkeeping help, not advice, and the reading is not perfect: OCR and the model misread a merchant, a total, or a date now and then.
Check what it filled in before you file, and take real tax questions to a professional.
Availability
The app comes as it is, with no uptime or availability promise. Features change, break, and sometimes go away, and the free limits can change with them.
Keep your own copy of anything you cannot afford to lose: the ZIP export downloads every expense and its receipts in one file.
Ending it
You can close your account in Settings whenever you like: everything in it is deleted, and the account goes with it when you are its last member. If others are still on the account, only your login leaves and you will need to disconnect any mailbox you connected to it first.
I may suspend an account that abuses the service or breaks these terms.
Liability
The app is free, so the practical limit on what I owe you is nothing. In plain terms: I am not liable for data that is lost or read wrong, for deductions missed, or for anything indirect that follows from using the app.
These terms are governed by the laws of California, in the United States, where I live.
Changes
When these terms change, the date above changes with it, and carrying on using the app means you accept the new version. Questions go to assaf@labnotes.org.