Lost a Receipt? What to Do Before Tax Time

A missing receipt is not automatically a lost deduction. It just means you have to prove the expense a different way. Here's what actually works, what does not, and how to reconstruct a record before your accountant asks for it.

First: a missing receipt is not a lost deduction

The rule most people get wrong is that the receipt itself is the deduction. It isn't. The expense is the deduction, and the receipt is simply the most convenient evidence that the expense happened, that it was for business, and that you paid what you say you paid. If the paper is gone, your job is to rebuild that evidence from other sources.

Both the IRS and the CRA expect you to keep books and records that support what you claim. Neither says "paper original or nothing." What they will not accept is a number with nothing behind it. A reconstructed record made in good faith, with a paper trail from your bank and a contemporaneous note of the business purpose, is far stronger than a blank line in a spreadsheet.

Rebuild the record from what you still have

Work through these in order. Most lost receipts get resolved at step one or two.

1. Card or bank statement. This establishes the merchant, date, and amount. It does not establish what you bought, which is why you need one of the next steps too.
2. Email. Search your inbox for the merchant name around that date. Digital receipts, order confirmations, and shipping notices are all usable, and a surprising share of "lost" receipts were emailed to you and never filed.
3. Ask the merchant for a duplicate. Most retailers, hotels, airlines, and restaurants can reissue a receipt if you give them the card's last four digits and the date. Chains with loyalty accounts often have your full purchase history sitting in an app.
4. Merchant order history. Anything bought through a marketplace, ride app, food delivery service, or online store keeps its own invoice archive indefinitely. Download the PDF or take a screenshot.
5. Write a contemporaneous note. If nothing above produces a document, record what you know while you still remember it: date, vendor, amount, what it was for, who was there, and why it was a business expense. Do this now, not next April. A note written close to the event carries real weight; one written a year later, reconstructed from memory, carries very little.

Where the exceptions are, and where they are not

There are narrow situations where documentation rules are relaxed, and it's worth knowing which side of the line you're on before you assume you're covered.

Small cash purchases are the common one. In the US, businesses have historically been allowed to claim certain small expenses without a formal receipt, provided the expense is otherwise ordinary, necessary, and recorded in the books. That leniency has limits and it does not extend to everything. Lodging, for example, is expected to be substantiated regardless of amount.

Mileage and vehicle costs work differently again: what matters most is a mileage log with dates, destinations, and business purpose, not a fuel receipt. Standard mileage rates exist precisely so you are not chasing gas station paper.

The categories where a missing document hurts most are travel, meals, entertainment, and anything the tax authority already treats as high risk for personal use. For those, reconstruct aggressively. And if the amount is large or the pattern is repeated, talk to your accountant rather than guessing. One missing lunch receipt is a footnote. Thirty of them is a pattern, and patterns get questions.

Be honest, and be consistent

Two things turn a minor gap into a real problem. The first is estimating with round numbers. A ledger full of clean fifties and hundreds looks invented, because it usually is. Use the exact figure from your statement. The second is inconsistency: claiming meticulous records for eleven months and a fog for the twelfth invites exactly the question you don't want.

Also resist the urge to backfill. Creating a "receipt" after the fact, or claiming an expense you cannot connect to any payment at all, moves you from a documentation problem to a much worse one. If you genuinely cannot support a line item, drop it. One forfeited deduction costs less than a credibility problem across an entire return.

The permanent fix: capture at the counter

Every lost receipt shares one cause: a delay between getting the paper and recording it. Thermal receipts fade, wallets get emptied, glove boxes get cleaned out. The gap is where records die, so close the gap.

Photograph the receipt before you leave the counter. Expense Rabbit reads the merchant, date, total, tax, and line items from the photo, auto-categorizes the expense and shows you a confidence score so you know which entries deserve a second look. It runs on iPhone and on the web with one synced account, so a receipt captured on your phone at a client lunch is already in your books when you sit down at a desk. Sign in with Apple or Google and export a books-ready CSV when it's time to file.

Once capture takes three seconds and happens at the point of purchase, the shoebox problem simply stops existing. That is a much better use of your time than reconstructing last March from a bank statement.

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