Ditch the Spreadsheet and the Shoebox of Receipts
You’re running a grooming business, not an accounting firm. But every month there are supplies to track, rent to log, insurance to record, and a growing pile of receipts stuffed in a drawer — or worse, lost in your car. Then tax season arrives and you’re scrambling to reconstruct twelve months of spending from bank statements and memory.
Expense Tracking Shouldn't Take More Time Than the Grooming
Most groomers start the same way: a spreadsheet. Maybe a Google Sheet with twelve tabs, one per month. For a while it works. Then you forget to update it for three weeks. Then you switch shampoo suppliers and the old recurring amount is wrong but you don't notice until April. Then your accountant asks for expenses broken down by Schedule C category and you spend an entire weekend re-sorting everything.
Some salon owners try generic expense apps, but those don't understand how a grooming business works. They don't know that your shampoo cost varies month to month while your rent stays fixed. They don't pre-build the expense categories you actually need. They definitely don't generate a report your accountant can hand straight to the IRS.
Meanwhile, every receipt you lose is a deduction you miss. Every hour you spend on bookkeeping is an hour you're not grooming dogs or growing your business.
BarkBook Tracks Your Expenses the Way Your Business Actually Works
A Monthly Checklist That Fills Itself In
At the start of each month, BarkBook auto-populates your expense tracker from your recurring templates. Rent is $1,800 again? One click to confirm. Shampoo delivery varies? BarkBook shows you the three-month rolling average so you know if this month's number looks right, then you enter the actual amount.
Need to skip something? Skip it. Need to undo? Undo it. Add one-time expenses as they come up. A progress tracker shows what you've confirmed and what's still outstanding, with a running total so you always know where you stand.
Set It and Forget It with Recurring Templates
Create a template for every regular expense — fixed or variable, with the day of the month it typically hits. Each template maps to an IRS Schedule C category right from the start, so you're not re-categorizing at tax time.
When your rent goes up in January, update the rate with an effective date and BarkBook keeps the full history. Activate or deactivate templates as your business changes. Your expense checklist next month automatically reflects what's current.
A Full-Year View When You Need the Big Picture
The yearly view groups expenses by month in collapsible sections, so you can drill into June without wading through January. Filter by category, type (fixed, variable, or one-time), or receipt status. Search for a specific vendor or description.
Edit any entry inline without leaving the page. Upload receipt images — JPG, PNG, or PDF, up to 10 MB each — directly to any expense. The totals update dynamically as you filter, so you can instantly see "how much did I spend on supplies this year" without exporting anything.
Tax Reports Your Accountant Will Actually Thank You For
When tax season comes, BarkBook generates reports organized by IRS Schedule C line items with quarterly breakdowns. Thirteen pre-built expense categories are seeded automatically when you start, matching the categories your accountant expects.
View monthly, quarterly, or yearly summaries. Run a receipt audit that flags expenses above a configurable threshold ($25 to $500 — you set it) that are missing receipt documentation, so you can fill gaps before your accountant finds them.
Export and Share Your Data
Need to share the data? BarkBook gives you two export paths:
- Groomer-friendly CSV or PDF — clear and readable, designed for you to review your own numbers.
- Accountant-ready CSV or PDF — full Schedule C line-item mapping, ready to hand off without a conversation about what goes where.
No More Tax Season Panic
Salon owners who track expenses in BarkBook month by month arrive at tax season with everything already categorized, receipts already attached, and reports already formatted. No weekend-long spreadsheet marathons. No guessing which charge at PetEdge was supplies versus equipment. No missing deductions because a receipt fell behind the dryer.
The thirteen pre-built categories cover the expenses grooming businesses actually have, so you're not starting from a blank screen wondering what to call things. And because every recurring expense is already mapped to a Schedule C category, your year-end reports practically build themselves.
Start Your 14-Day Free Trial
Your time is worth more than data entry. Let BarkBook handle the expense tracking so tax season is just another week — not a crisis. No credit card required.