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Export expense records and receipts

When it's time for monthly bookkeeping, tax records, or handing things off to your accountant, you can download all of your expenses in one file. Churchday builds a ZIP that holds a spreadsheet of every expense plus all the matching receipt images, so nothing lives only inside the app.

Before you begin

  • You need access to the Expenses tab. Admins have it, and anyone you grant the Expenses tab to can reach the export too.
  • A ZIP file is just a single compressed folder. Your computer opens it with a double-click, and inside you'll find the spreadsheet and the receipts.

Step-by-step

  1. Go to the Expenses tab. Open Expenses in your dashboard, then open Expense settings (the settings gear on the Expenses page).
  2. Find the Export records section. Scroll to the bottom of Expense settings, to the Export records area.
  3. Click Download records. This opens a small pop-up window where you choose what to include.
  4. Pick a date range under Include. Choose All time, Specific month, Specific year, or Custom range. The range filters by each expense's purchase date, so a month or year covers what was actually spent in that period, not when it was submitted.
  5. Click Download. Churchday gathers the matching expenses and their receipts, then your browser saves the ZIP to your Downloads folder. The file is named with your church and the date range, like expenses-yourchurch-2026-06-01_to_2026-06-30.zip.
  6. Open the ZIP. Double-click it to see expenses.csv (the spreadsheet) and a receipts/ folder holding every receipt file.

What's in the spreadsheet

Each row is one expense. The columns cover what a bookkeeper needs: Reference (the expense number, like #14), Date, Amount, Merchant, Department, Category, and Status. The Paid by column tells you whether it was a Church card purchase (just logged) or a Member (reimbursement) you paid back.

You also get Submitter, Approved by, Purpose, and the payment details a member entered (payment method, their handle, and any note). The last column, Receipt file, lists the exact filename of that expense's receipt inside the receipts/ folder, so you can match every row to its image or PDF.

Good to know

  • One export covers up to 200 expenses. If a range has more than that, only the 200 most recent (by purchase date) are included. Pick a narrower range, such as one month at a time, to be sure you capture everything.
  • Every status is included. Pending, approved, paid, and rejected expenses all come through. You can sort or filter by the Status column in your spreadsheet program.
  • Receipts are named to match. Each file in receipts/ is named with the date, merchant, and a short code, and that same name appears in the row's Receipt file column, so reconciling them is straightforward.
  • Run it as often as you like. A common rhythm is to export each month after you've paid everyone, then file the ZIP with your accounting records.

What's next?

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