The short answer
If you want the money side of solo support work handled in one place, the app I would actually set a new worker up with is Sparks Scribe, for one plain reason: the expense line, the receipt behind it and the kilometres you drove all live in the same app you invoice from, so the claim and its evidence never drift apart. You can add an Add Expense line and travel kilometres to the invoice from the $15 a month Essentials plan (GST included), and the $20 Vault plan adds a Receipt Vault and a kilometre log. Full disclosure: I make it. Of the alternatives, ShiftCare logs mileage and receipt photos but starts at five licences, Bugal lists expense tracking with no travel log on its public pages, EasyAs can bill travel kilometres but does not store the expenses, Astalty is built for coordinators, and Visualcare is an agency platform with no self-serve price.
I run a support provider, and every fortnight I sign off invoices that support workers have sent in. The lines that give me a headache are almost never the hours. They are the bits around the edges: the petrol to reach a shift on the far side of town, the movie tickets from a community-access afternoon, the box of gloves someone bought because we ran out. Those are real costs. If they are not written down at the time, with a receipt and the kilometres, they quietly vanish. On the worker's side that is money out of their own pocket. On mine it is a claim I cannot stand behind if a plan manager asks a question.
So when a support worker who has just gone out on their own asks me what to use for the money side of the job, I do not hand them a feature list. I tell them what I would reach for and why. This is that answer, written for a solo, independent NDIS support worker who wants to stay on top of expenses, receipts and travel without it turning into a second unpaid job.
One thing before I name anything. I make one of the apps below. Sparks Scribe is my product, built by Sparks Support Pty Ltd, so read my verdict on it with that firmly in mind, and check every competitor claim against the vendor's own current pages. Everything I say about the other five comes from their public websites and help pages in July 2026. Where I could not confirm something, I say so rather than fill the gap with a guess.
What am I actually trying to track?
Strip it back and there are only three things to stay on top of. The expense itself, so it lands on the right invoice and you are paid back for it. The receipt behind it, so you can prove the spend later. And the travel, the kilometres in your own car, which is the expense every support worker has and the one most easily forgotten. Everything else is detail. An app that helps with all three, without making you hop between four screens to do it, is doing the job. An app that does two of the three leaves you keeping the rest somewhere on the side, which is exactly where things go missing.
Where should the receipt and the kilometres live?
My honest opinion, after years of chasing paperwork, is that the evidence belongs next to the claim. A receipt buried in your camera roll and a trip you meant to write down later are the first two things to disappear. When the expense line, the receipt and the kilometres all sit in the same place you build the invoice, there is nothing left to reconcile at the end of the month, and nothing to reconstruct if someone queries a claim six months on. That is the one feature I would weight above any particular bell or whistle. It is boring, and it is the difference between getting paid back cleanly and eating the cost.
A quick honesty note that applies to every tool here, mine included. None of these apps decides for you what the NDIS allows you to claim. Travel rules, kilometre rates and caps change, and you set your own rates, so whatever app you pick, the responsibility to check the current NDIS pricing arrangements stays with you.
So which apps would I actually reach for?
I looked at six Australian tools a support worker might plausibly use for this: Sparks Scribe, ShiftCare, Bugal, EasyAs, Astalty and Visualcare. I asked each the same plain questions. Can you put an expense on the invoice? Where do the receipts go? Is there a way to log kilometres? And what does one person actually pay, rather than the headline per-seat rate? Here is where each landed.
Sparks Scribe: everything in the one app you already invoice from
Take the praise here with the appropriate pinch of salt, because this is my app. The reason it sits at the top of my own list for this particular job is the principle above: everything lives in one place. The invoice builder has an Add Expense line for a cafe bill or a set of tickets from a community-access shift, and an Add Travel option that puts a travel code and the distance in kilometres on the invoice for you. Both are inside the NDIS-coded invoicing on the $15 Essentials plan, so billing your travel does not cost you extra.
The evidence sits one plan up. The $20 Vault plan adds a Receipt Vault for the photos, a kilometre log for the trips, plus tax tools, a document vault, automatic service agreements and Xero sync. That is the combination that earns it first place for me: the expense, the receipt and the kilometres all in the same place, ready at tax time or the moment a plan manager asks.
One limit I will name plainly, because I would rather you hear it from me. You set your own rates, and Scribe applies the right code for the day and time worked, but it does not apply NDIS price-guide caps on your behalf, so you still check the current pricing arrangements yourself. For the record: a 5.0 rating on the Australian App Store, more than 90,000 shifts booked through the platform, data stored in Australia, and a 14-day trial with every feature unlocked and no card required.
My verdict: if you want the expense, the receipt and the kilometres to travel with the invoice instead of scattered across your phone, this is the one I would start a new worker on. It is built for one person, so it deliberately leaves out team rostering and payroll. If you need those, read on.
ShiftCare: mileage and receipts on the page, priced for a team
ShiftCare's help pages describe logging mileage in the mobile app with GPS tracking, adding expenses, and attaching time and date stamped photos of receipts and odometer readings, then invoicing hours, mileage and expenses as separate lines. On paper, the tools to capture the money side are listed.
The question for a solo worker is who it is built for. ShiftCare is an agency platform and prices per licence, with a minimum of five on every plan, whether or not anyone else is on the account. The published rate starts at $9 a licence a month, but you only get invoicing on the Professional plan, and for a single worker that lands at $65 to $75 a month excluding GST depending on how you are billed. You carry the cost of a five-person team to use mileage and receipt tools on your own.
My verdict: the mileage and receipt tools are listed, but the pricing is set for an agency: five licences minimum, invoicing on Professional. For a solo worker it is an expensive way to be one person. I keep a fuller Sparks Scribe vs ShiftCare comparison if you want the detail.
Bugal: expense tracking on the page, no travel log I could find
Bugal is built for Australian independents, and it names expenses directly. Its public pages list expense tracking across every tier, and the dashboard is described as giving a live view of income and expenses with an estimate of what to set aside for tax. For a sole trader, that income-and-expense view is the part that lines up with this job.
What I could not confirm from its public pages is the travel and receipt side. There is no mention of a kilometre or mileage log, and no detail on where receipts are stored. On price, it is a free plan capped at two invoices a month, then Solo at $35 a month, which is more than double the $15 entry plan I would put beside it. The pages do not state whether prices include GST, and Bugal describes itself as web-based, with no App Store or Google Play listing I could find as of July 2026.
My verdict: a solo-focused tool that lists expense tracking and a tax set-aside view, but with no travel log and no receipt-storage detail on its public pages, at a $35 solo price.
EasyAs: can bill travel kilometres, but does not keep the expenses
EasyAs, from EasyAs Provider Invoicing Pty Ltd, does one job: NDIS invoicing. That matters here in one narrow way. Because every NDIS item number is pre-loaded and kept up to date, the supports include travel and travel kilometres, so you can put a travel-kilometre line on an invoice, and it syncs invoice data with Xero and MYOB.
Where it stops is the capture behind the invoice. Across its website and both app-store listings I found no receipt store, no receipt vault, and no separate kilometre log to record trips as you go. You can bill the travel, but the receipt and the running record of where the money went have to live somewhere else. The pages do not state whether prices include GST, and EasyAs's privacy policy states that personal information may be transferred to countries outside Australia, including the United States and European Union.
My verdict: an invoicing tool, travel kilometres included, but not an expense or receipt tracker. You would still need a second place to keep the evidence.
Astalty: travel inside case notes, pricing built for coordinators
Astalty is a platform for NDIS support coordinators and providers, and on travel its own material describes adding travel and kilometres inside the case-noting flow rather than through a standalone log. So travel does get captured, just tied to a case note. For expenses and receipts specifically, I could not verify a dedicated capture flow or a receipt store on its public pages in July 2026, so I am not going to claim one.
The bigger issue for one worker is the maths. A standard seat is $64 per user a month, and the cut-down support-worker profile is $30. That price buys a coordinator and provider feature set, so if your week is just shifts, expenses and travel, most of what you pay for goes untouched.
My verdict: captures travel inside case notes, but with no separate kilometre log or receipt store I could verify, and pricing aimed at coordinators. See my Sparks Scribe vs Astalty comparison.
Visualcare: an agency platform, not a solo worker's tool
Visualcare is a care-management platform for organisations, not sole traders. Its material talks about rostering, worker compliance, payroll and claims for care teams. Whether it handles a solo worker's expenses, receipts or a kilometre log I could not verify from its public pages in July 2026, and it is not built around that job in any case. Pricing is by request-a-demo, with no published rate and nothing a sole trader could sign up to on their own.
I am including it because it turns up in NDIS software searches, not because it is a realistic fit for one person tracking their own spending. On the specific job of one independent worker capturing expenses, receipts and travel, there is nothing self-serve to point you at.
My verdict: an agency platform with no self-serve price and nothing aimed at a solo worker's expenses or receipts. Not the tool for this job.
The comparison at a glance
Collected from public pages in July 2026. "Price for 1 person" means the real monthly cost for a sole trader, not the headline per-user rate.
| App | Add expense to invoice | Receipt storage | Kilometre / travel log | Price for 1 person | Built for solo workers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sparks Scribe | Yes, Add Expense line, plus Add Travel (code and km) on the invoice | Yes, Receipt Vault (Vault plan) | Yes, kilometre log (Vault plan) | $15/month incl GST (Essentials); Receipt Vault and km log on $20 Vault | Yes |
| ShiftCare | Yes, expenses and mileage on the shift, invoiced separately | Yes, attach receipt photos to a shift, time and date stamped | Yes, mileage, including GPS tracking | $65 to $75/month ex GST (Professional, minimum 5 licences) | No, built for teams |
| Bugal | Expense tracking listed; invoice-line detail not stated | Not detailed on public pages | Not mentioned on public pages | Free (2 invoices/month) or Solo $35/month (GST treatment not stated) | Yes |
| EasyAs | Travel-kilometre NDIS item can be invoiced; no expense capture | No, invoicing only | No separate log; travel billed via NDIS item numbers | $19.95/month website ($19.99 in-app); GST treatment not stated | Partly, invoicing only |
| Astalty | Travel and km added inside case notes | Not verified on public pages | Travel via case notes; no separate log verified | $30/month support-worker profile ($64 standard seat) | No, built for coordinators |
| Visualcare | Not published for solo use | Not published | Not published for solo use | Pricing on application (demo only) | No, built for agencies |
All details collected from each vendor's public website or help pages in July 2026 and simplified for comparison; prices and features change, so check the vendor's own pages before deciding. "Not verified" or "not published" means I could not confirm the detail from official public pages and chose not to guess.
Frequently asked questions
How should an independent support worker keep track of expenses and receipts?
Keep three things together: the expense itself, the receipt behind it, and the trip. The tidiest way is to record them in the same app you invoice from, so the claim and its evidence never drift apart. In Sparks Scribe, which I make, an Add Expense line and travel kilometres go straight onto the invoice from the $15 a month Essentials plan (GST included), and the $20 a month Vault plan adds a Receipt Vault and a kilometre log. If you would rather keep it manual, a dated folder of receipt photos and a simple list of trips still does the job. The app just saves you the reshuffle at tax time.
Can you add an expense or travel to an NDIS invoice?
In Sparks Scribe, yes. The invoice builder has an Add Expense option for something like a cafe bill on a community-access outing, and an Add Travel option that drops a travel code and the distance in kilometres onto the invoice. Both sit inside the NDIS-coded invoicing on the $15 Essentials plan. EasyAs can also invoice travel kilometres because its NDIS item numbers are pre-loaded, though it is an invoicing tool and does not store the expense or the receipt behind the line. You set your own rates. Sparks Scribe applies the code for the day and time worked but does not apply NDIS price-guide caps for you, so check the current pricing arrangements.
How do I record kilometres for NDIS travel as a support worker?
Log the date, the reason for the trip and the distance, then put the travel on the invoice. Sparks Scribe keeps a kilometre log (on the $20 Vault plan) and adds a travel code with the distance to the invoice when you choose Add Travel. ShiftCare's mobile app records mileage, including GPS tracking and odometer photos. EasyAs can invoice travel kilometres through its pre-loaded item numbers. Astalty captures travel and kilometres inside its case notes. Travel rules and caps change and you set your own rate, so check the current NDIS pricing arrangements for what you can claim.
Do independent support workers really need to keep receipts and a travel log?
Yes. If a plan manager, participant or the NDIA queries an invoice, the receipt and the trip record are your evidence, and they are exactly what your accountant wants at tax time. As someone who signs off invoices on the provider side, the claims I never have to chase are the ones where the receipt and the kilometres are already attached. Keep the date, the purpose, the distance and the receipt, and keep them somewhere you can still find months later.
What is the cheapest app for a sole trader to track expenses and travel?
The published entry prices I could verify in July 2026 are Sparks Scribe at $15 a month including GST (Add Expense and travel kilometres on the invoice, with a Receipt Vault and kilometre log on the $20 Vault plan), EasyAs at $19.95 a month on their website ($19.99 via in-app purchase, invoicing only), Astalty at $30 a month for its support-worker profile ($64 for a standard seat), Bugal Solo at $35 a month, and ShiftCare at $65 to $75 a month excluding GST because of its five-licence minimum. Bugal also lists a free plan capped at two invoices a month, and Visualcare does not publish a price.
Does ShiftCare handle mileage and receipts?
Yes. ShiftCare's help pages describe logging mileage in the mobile app, including GPS tracking, attaching time and date stamped photos of receipts and odometer readings, and invoicing hours, mileage and expenses as separate lines. The snag for a solo worker is the price floor: every ShiftCare plan has a minimum of five licences, and invoicing sits on the Professional plan, which works out at $65 to $75 a month excluding GST for one person, depending on billing. You pay for a team of five to use tools built for one.
Where is my financial data stored with these apps?
It varies, so check each vendor's privacy policy before you enter client or financial details. Sparks Scribe stores its data in Australia. EasyAs's privacy policy states that personal information may be transferred to countries outside Australia, including the United States and European Union. I have not verified where ShiftCare, Bugal, Astalty or Visualcare host their data, so ask before you commit.
Once your money side is sorted, the other half of the paperwork is the notes. Here is my guide on how to write NDIS shift notes, with examples, and my wider comparison of apps for independent support workers.