How to mark business and personal items on the same receipt
Short answer: every line item in Receipt Rabbit has its own business tag, so one receipt can hold both business and personal lines. Untagged lines default to personal. Tagged lines carry a business category mapped to a Schedule C line, and every output, including the CSV, the accountant spreadsheet, and the QuickBooks Online split, uses that same per-line tag. Tagging is free.
On this page
- Where is the business tag, and what does it start as?
- Does the app guess which lines are business?
- What does a tagged receipt produce in each export?
- Where do coupons, tax and tips go?
- Do personal lines disappear from the exports?
- How is a line tag different from a percentage?
- What to check in any app that offers business tagging
- A tax note
- Sources
You walk out of the store with one paper receipt in your hand, and it has both a box of printer paper for your office and a box of cereal for your kitchen. The register puts them on the same slip, even when only one of them was for your business.
Receipt Rabbit puts the business decision right where the item lives: on the line item itself. Each line has its own business tag. Flip it on for the printer paper and leave it off for the cereal, and the app splits the receipt along that exact line. The IRS asks that your expense records show the specific item purchased [1]. Keeping the tag on the line item keeps the item description attached to your business decision.
Where is the business tag, and what does it start as?
When you open a scanned receipt, you might want to mark one item on the fly or tag half the basket at once. The business tag sits on each individual line item, and you can turn it on in four places:
- On a single line, from that line’s detail screen.
- From the row inside the receipt view.
- On several lines at once, by selecting multiple rows.
- On the whole receipt, from the receipt screen itself.
Tagged lines get a small badge so you can spot them at a glance.
The default setting is the most important part of this setup: an untagged line is always personal. We never assume a freelancer’s receipts are business expenses until proven otherwise, because guessing wrong in that direction means booking your groceries as a tax deduction.
Each tagged line also carries a business category that maps to a Schedule C expense line (the tax form where sole proprietors report business income and expenses), such as Line 8 Advertising, Line 18 Office expense, or Line 22 Supplies [2]. You can change the category on any line whenever you need to.
Does the app guess which lines are business?
When you scan a stack of receipts, tagging every line by hand gets old fast. The app only tags items automatically if you ask it to, and only for a narrow set of categories.
If you indicate in your Tax Profile that you run a business, Receipt Rabbit automatically tags lines that fall into a few clear business categories, such as office supplies, software, and shipping.
We never try to guess business tags from how you plan to use an item. The app can read what an item is from the receipt, while the reason you bought it lives in your head. Every other category stays untagged until you mark it yourself, and you can untag any automatic line whenever you like.
What does a tagged receipt produce in each export?
Say you come back from an office and home store with a $93.40 receipt that mixes office and shipping supplies with a few things for the house:
| Line | Amount | Tagged |
|---|---|---|
| Printer paper, 5 reams | $34.50 | business |
| Padded mailers | $18.90 | business |
| Coffee beans | $16.00 | no |
| Dish towels | $24.00 | no |
Your business spend on this receipt is $53.40, and your personal spend is $40.00. Those two numbers flow straight into your exports:
| Output | What it shows for this receipt |
|---|---|
| Receipt list | A business badge on the receipt |
| CSV | Business set to yes or no on each line, plus a Business Category column |
| Accountant spreadsheet | $53.40 added to the matching Schedule C lines |
| QuickBooks Online | One $93.40 expense with paper and mailers on their business categories, and $40.00 on your non-business account |
| Lunch Money | A split by category, where a split piece gets a Business tag only when every line inside it is tagged |
Where do coupons, tax and tips go?
The bottom of a mixed receipt often has sales tax, a store coupon, a fee, or a tip. In Receipt Rabbit, we treat these rows as adjustments, and they follow their own rule. If you tag the entire receipt as business, all the adjustments come along with it. If you tag only a few lines, the app divides each adjustment between the business and personal sides based on their share of the purchases. For example, when your business lines make up 75% of the item purchases, 75% of the sales tax lands on the business side and 25% lands on the personal side.
Your business totals in the app, the accountant export, and the QuickBooks Online sync all use this exact same split. A store coupon lowers your business spend in direct proportion to the business share of the items you bought.
Now, because a paper receipt prints sales tax as a single number at the bottom, any split is an estimate of which specific items were taxed. The split can be off by a small amount on a receipt where only some of the items were taxable. Still, the receipt total stays accurate as a whole, and the only question is how much of the tax sits on each side. Our post on why coupons and taxes are not spending categories walks through the reasoning behind this choice.
Do personal lines disappear from the exports?
No, personal lines stay in the record so the totals add up. A $93.40 bank charge with only $53.40 on the books would leave the other $40.00 unexplained.
The CSV export lists every line item and sets the Business column to no for personal rows. The accountant spreadsheet sums only the business lines for its Schedule C totals, while the per-line rows still show personal items as personal. The QuickBooks Online sync books personal items to your non-business account and drops nothing, so the posted lines match the receipt total to the cent.
Keeping the full receipt intact helps if your accountant ever asks what the rest of a split receipt was for. The answer is right there in the file.
How is a line tag different from a percentage?
When you look at a receipt six months later, you cannot verify a rough percentage split against the paper slip, whereas you can verify a line-level split because the individual items and prices are printed right on the page. Our guide on how to split a Costco receipt between business and personal walks through how this works in QuickBooks Online.
What to check in any app that offers business tagging
- Is the business tag set per line, per receipt, or only as a rough percentage?
- What is the default setting for an untagged line?
- Does the app try to guess your business purpose for you?
- Does every export format read from the exact same tag?
- How does the app divide coupons and sales tax on a partly tagged receipt?
A tax note
Whether a given purchase is deductible depends on your tax situation and your jurisdiction. Receipt Rabbit records what you tagged. Whether a deduction holds up, along with anything beyond the Schedule C category mapping, is a decision between you and your accountant.
Sources
- IRS, “What kind of records should I keep.” https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/what-kind-of-records-should-i-keep
- IRS, “Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040) (2025),” Part II expense lines. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040sc
Last checked 2026-10-01.
Related: How to split a Costco receipt between business and personal in QuickBooks Online.
Receipt Rabbit is on the App Store. Download it here.