Snap it, send it, get a record you can use
Form 990's program narrative covers the three largest services by expenses, so the amounts need records behind them. Put receipt details beside their grant and budget line while the purchase is still easy to identify. 8
Text it like this
Fictional example.
What it can read
Photos and screenshots: receipts, pantry shelves, sign-in sheets, newcomer cards, handwritten notes, a registration page. Documents with a text layer: most PDFs, Word and Excel files, PowerPoint and similar. That covers award letters, funder guidelines, budgets and reports. A scanned PDF is a picture of a page with no text inside, so Grantkeeper asks for photos of the pages that matter instead.
It treats what it reads as information, never as instructions, so a line in a forwarded document cannot tell it to do something. Anything it is unsure of, a smudged number or a cut-off name, is listed for you rather than guessed.
What it turns it into
Most records end up as a spreadsheet in your files that opens in Excel or Google Sheets: expenses by grant and budget line, attendance by program and date, pantry counts by item. Others become a note or a list, such as the action items from a board meeting. Ask a question later, like "what did we spend on the youth grant this quarter?", and Grantkeeper reads the sheet to answer.
For receipts, the IRS lists what an expense record should show: who was paid, the amount, the date, what was bought and proof of payment. For federal awards, 2 CFR 200.334 asks recipients to keep financial records and supporting documents for three years from the final financial report. Keep the originals; the spreadsheet is a working copy.
Privacy and good habits
Leave card numbers, Social Security numbers, health details and immigration information out of photos whenever you can. Grantkeeper drops card numbers from receipt sheets and keeps sensitive details out of donor records and ad lists. Text messages travel through your messaging app, so very sensitive files are better added on your private page.
For a fillable form made only of text boxes, such as some facility requests, add the PDF to your files and, with Builder on, Grantkeeper fills the fields it can for you to check on your private page. Forms with checkboxes or drop-down lists are not supported yet. It never signs or submits.
A simple weekly habit
Pick one day for paperwork. Send that week’s receipts, sign-in sheets and any notices, and ask for the totals. Ten minutes on a Friday keeps the spreadsheets current, so a report or a board question never starts with a shoebox.
Recipes that use this: grant receipts to an expense sheet, pantry count from shelf photos and paper sign-in sheets to attendance counts.
Sources: S08, IRS: what kind of records should I keep, 2 CFR 200.334: record retention
Start with this week’s pile
How Grantkeeper reads photos, receipts, sign-in sheets and documents and turns them into spreadsheets and records, and where its limits are.
- Photograph one page or receipt per picture, in good light.
- Say what it is and where it belongs.
- Fix anything it marks as unreadable.