Sole traders + Limited companies · HMRC enquiry window: 5–6 years

We find the missing receipts in your inbox.

Trace connects to your FreeAgent or Xero account and your Gmail inbox (read-only), matches every bank transaction to its receipt, and gives you a list of what is missing. Built for UK sole traders, contractors and small limited companies.

FreeAgent and Gmail first, IMAP for any other inbox. Xero, QuickBooks and Sage to follow. You will shape the order.

Private beta · A few quick questions · We email you when a spot opens

Trace Report#00472
13 May 2026
Period
03 May → 13 May 2026
[✓]Amazon Web Services£42.50
[✓]Adobe Creative£8.95
[ ]Bunnings Hardware£127.00
[✓]Zoom Pro£15.50
[ ]Apple Store£89.99
[✓]Notion£24.00
[ ]Trainline£12.50
[✓]Slack£7.99
[ ]Vodafone Business£28.00
Matched31 of 47
Missing16 of 47

Sample report · yours is built from your own data

§ 01—Method

Three steps. Then we take over.

  1. 01

    Connect FreeAgent or Xero

    Connect whichever accounting platform you use. We pull your transactions from the last 90 days. Read-only. No changes are made to your data.

  2. 02

    Connect your Gmail inbox

    We scan for receipts, invoices and order confirmations, reading only what we need to find a match. You will be able to add as many inboxes as you like — Gmail first, with IMAP for any other provider in the same first build: Outlook, Apple Mail, Fastmail, ProtonMail, the lot.

  3. 03

    Get your receipt report

    You get a full breakdown: every transaction, what we matched in your inbox, and a list of what is still missing.

§ 02—Background

One enquiry. Three years of unmatched expenses. Disallowed.

An HMRC officer can ask for any receipt up to six years old. Whatever you cannot produce gets reclassified as taxable income or a disallowed business expense. On £8,000 of unproven expenses at 40% plus a 30% careless-records penalty, you owe roughly £4,160 you were not expecting.

The legal basis sits in two paragraphs of statute. Schedule 36 of the Finance Act 2008 lets an officer require any document needed to verify your return. Schedule 24 of the Finance Act 2007 sets the penalty regime: 30% (careless), 70% (deliberate), 100% (deliberate and concealed) of the tax due. Sole traders must keep records for five years from the 31 January deadline; limited companies, six.

The receipts are already in your inbox. Most of us mean to keep them in order. Most of us do not. That is the gap we are closing.

§ 03—In numbers

The receipt problem is bigger than your inbox.

£4,160
Typical unexpected bill from a single enquiry, on £8,000 of unproven expenses at 40% plus a 30% careless-records penalty.
Schedule 24, Finance Act 2007
5 / 6 yrs
Minimum HMRC record retention: 5 years for sole traders from the 31 January deadline, 6 years for limited companies from year-end.
gov.uk; Companies Act 2006
780k
UK sole traders and landlords joining Making Tax Digital, Wave 1 — live April 2026.
HMRC policy paper, 2024

Records you do not have today cannot be reconstructed three years from now. The receipts sitting in your inbox will not file themselves.

§ 04—Roadmap

A personal accountant, in stages.

Everything between your bank account and your tax return. We are building it in deliberate steps, starting with the part you actually hate doing today.

Firstbuilding now

Receipts found, transactions matched.

  • ▸FreeAgent, plus Gmail and IMAP for any other inbox
  • ▸Receipt detection in your inbox
  • ▸Match confidence scoring
  • ▸Missing-receipt report
Next

Bookkeeping, on autopilot.

  • ▸Xero, QuickBooks and Sage support
  • ▸Auto-categorisation by expense type
  • ▸VAT reconciliation
  • ▸Direct bank-feed connections
Later

From transaction to filing.

  • ▸Self Assessment + Corporation Tax preparation
  • ▸AI-drafted answers to HMRC enquiries
  • ▸Multi-region (Ireland, Australia next)
§ 05—Questions

The ones we get asked first.

Will Trace read all of my emails?
No. We only search for messages that look like receipts, invoices, or order confirmations matching a transaction we have already seen in your accounting platform. We do not store the contents of your inbox — only the structured fields (date, amount, merchant, file reference) for the messages that match.
Can I revoke access?
Yes, instantly. Revoke Trace from your FreeAgent or Xero connected-apps settings and your Google account permissions at any time. Tokens stop working immediately on the provider's side, and we disconnect on ours.
How is my data secured?
OAuth tokens are encrypted at rest in MongoDB Atlas (EU region). We do not share tokens with anyone outside the small team running Trace. The site itself runs over HTTPS only. We never sell or resell data.
What if some of my receipts are not in Gmail?
You will still get a complete report listing every transaction and which ones we could match. Anything we cannot find is flagged, so you know exactly which receipts you still need to track down by hand. Support for any IMAP inbox (Outlook, Apple Mail, Fastmail, ProtonMail and so on) is part of what we are building first, which effectively means every mainstream email provider.
Which accounting platforms do you support?
Trace is in development — nothing is live yet. FreeAgent is the accounting platform we are building first, alongside Gmail and IMAP for every other inbox. Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and direct bank-feed connections come next, and the order depends on what people signing up tell us. If a specific platform would be a dealbreaker for you, say so — we prioritise on real demand.
Is Trace giving me tax advice?
No. Trace finds receipts and produces reports. We do not interpret your tax position, prepare returns, or advise on what is or is not allowable. Your accountant or tax adviser does that. We make their job easier and shorter.
§06 — The ask

Find your missing receipts.

Trace connects to your books and Gmail (read-only), matches every transaction to its receipt, and shows you what is missing. Join the private beta — early access is free.

Private beta · A few quick questions · We email you when a spot opens