Expense tracking that reads your inbox and posts to the ledger

Guliel is accounting and finance-operations software that runs invoicing, expenses, purchasing, payroll, reporting and a double-entry general ledger on one engine. Its expense tracking reads receipts and bills from phone scans and from a connected Gmail, Outlook, IMAP or POP3 inbox, extracts the vendor, document number, date, amounts, tax and currency, and assigns a category from your own list. Each captured expense waits for a person to approve it. Once approved, it posts to the general ledger with no re-keying.

An expense in Guliel is the same document object as an invoice, with the direction set to incoming. So one bill links to its supplier, the purchase order it answers, the ledger and an employee's reimbursement without a connector between apps. You can start capturing expenses in Guliel while your current accounting tool stays in place, and export the ledger as CSV for your accountant.

Three ways in, one record

Connect an inbox. Gmail and Outlook connect by signing in; any IMAP or POP3 mailbox connects with a password that is stored encrypted. Watch the whole inbox or one folder or label. Fetch on demand, or turn on automatic fetching and set the number of days between runs. Each email is classified first, so promotions and newsletters stop there. Attachments go through OCR, and details written in the email body are read from the body. Every processed email gets a recorded outcome (created, duplicate, not an expense, no usable data, failed), and failed ones are retried on the next fetch.

Scan or upload. Take a photo in the app or upload a PDF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, AVIF or HEIC file (iPhone photos are converted to JPEG), up to 10 MB.

Type it in. Manual entries are not metered on any plan.

What the scan reads

• Document type: invoice, receipt, invoice-receipt, payment request, credit or debit memo, fine notice, card-charge confirmation or statement
• Vendor name, the issuer's invoice or receipt number, and references such as order numbers and transaction IDs
• Document date, subtotal, tax amount, tax rate, total and currency
• Payment method and itemised lines (SKU, quantity, unit price) when printed
• Whether it is a charge or a refund (a refund is recorded as a received credit memo)
• A category from your organisation's list (13 defaults, editable)

The OCR provider is set up for English, Hebrew, Arabic, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese. Slash dates such as 10/03 are read by the vendor's country. The scan does not read the vendor's address or tax ID, a due date, project codes or cost centres.

Approval before the ledger

Nothing a scan or an inbox produces reaches the ledger until a person approves it. This is the accountant in the loop, enforced by the software:

• Scanned and inbox-captured expenses land in review. Approving or rejecting them needs the manager role.
• A contributor can approve an expense they typed in themselves, never one someone else entered.
• Only an invoice, receipt, invoice-receipt, credit memo or debit memo can be approved, and only with the issuer's document number and the source document kept. A payment request, fine notice, card-charge confirmation or statement is stored as evidence and never posted.
• An approval dated inside a locked period is refused. A manager sets the books lock date.

What approval does in the ledger

Each approved expense posts as a balanced double entry, dated at the document date, on Guliel's fixed chart of accounts.

Event	Debit	Credit
Expense approved (net amount)	Expense	Accounts payable
Expense approved (tax amount)	Tax receivable	Accounts payable
Payment recorded against it	Accounts payable	Cash & bank
Refund (received credit memo) approved	Reverses the pair above
Paid out of pocket by an employee	Expense, Tax receivable	Due to employees
Expense with a service period approved (net amount)	Prepaid expenses	Accounts payable
Across that service period, pro rata by day	Expense	Prepaid expenses

Give an annual subscription or an insurance policy a service period and the ledger spreads its cost across those dates with no extra journal entries. Categories drive expense reports; in the ledger every category posts to one Expense account. Custom accounts in the chart of accounts are planned.

Employee expenses

Attribute an expense to an employee and mark it as paid out of their own pocket. The payable then belongs to the employee, not the vendor. An approved claim can be repaid in the same payment as the employee's net pay in a payroll run, without changing gross pay or statutory contributions such as Singapore CPF.

Suppliers and purchase orders

Every expense is tied to a supplier record. Guliel looks for an exact, case-insensitive name match in your suppliers, then for a name that contains the other ("Acme" finds "Acme Ltd"). A new vendor is added as a supplier record, so the next bill matches.

If that supplier has exactly one open purchase order within 5% of the amount (allowing for tax) and 7 days of the date, the bill links to it. An invoice moves the order to invoiced; a receipt moves it to paid. When two or more orders fit, nothing links automatically and you choose.

When a supplier with its own Guliel organisation invoices your purchase order inside Guliel, your order moves to invoiced and you are notified. Their invoice does not yet arrive in your expenses by itself; native document exchange between Guliel businesses is planned. Matching an invoice to the receipt that later settles it is built and not yet switched on.

Reports, exports and automations

Approved expenses feed the expense register, expense summary, expenses by category, expenses by vendor and supplier spend reports, and through the ledger the income statement and trial balance. Export expenses as CSV, or download the source documents as a ZIP in monthly folders with a CSV manifest.

Automations fire on "expense created", "expense approved" or a monthly schedule and run any API operation or post to a webhook; an email action is planned. Expense operations are in the REST API and the MCP server, so an AI client you connect (Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot) works within your role and scopes under the same approval rules. A sign-off queue where an accountant approves AI work is planned.

Plan limits

Plan (published price)	Expense scans per month
Free ($0)	100
Standard ($20 per organisation per month)	1,000
Premium ($99 per organisation per month)	10,000

Billing is not live: Standard and Premium are published prices and not on sale yet. A scan is one file through OCR, however many pages. Failed and duplicate scans are not counted. Invoices and scans are separate allowances. Full plans on /pricing.

What it does not do yet

• No bank or card feeds, and no bank reconciliation.
• One category per expense. To split a receipt, record one expense per part.
• No mileage or per-diem calculation.
• For Israel, Guliel does not check the allocation number (מספר הקצאה) on supplier invoices you receive.
• Guliel does not file VAT or GST returns. GST and VAT return preparation is planned.

FAQ

How accurate is the extraction?

Typed PDFs and printed receipts come out cleanly. Photos taken at an angle, faded thermal paper and handwritten amounts are where errors appear. Every captured expense waits in review, so you correct a field before approving it.

Does an expense go into the ledger as soon as it is scanned?

No. A scanned or inbox-captured expense posts only after a manager approves it. Approval books the net amount to Expense and the tax to Tax receivable against Accounts payable; a recorded payment then clears the payable against Cash & bank.

What happens if the same receipt arrives twice?

The same email is processed once per connected mailbox, keyed on its Message-ID. A second document with the same vendor and document number is caught as a duplicate across scans and email, and a duplicate scan does not count against your plan. A scan that turns out to be an invoice you issued is not filed as an expense.

Does the OCR work in languages other than English?

Yes. The OCR provider is set up for English, Hebrew, Arabic, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese. When a field is missed, the document is still saved and you fill the field on review.

Can I split a receipt across categories?

Not yet. An expense carries one category today. To split one, record a separate expense for each part.

Can employees claim expenses they paid themselves?

Yes. Attribute the expense to the employee and mark it as paid out of pocket. The amount is owed to the employee, and an approved claim can be repaid in the same payment as their net pay.

Start free on /pricing: the Free plan includes 100 expense scans a month.