How to Track Estate Income and Expenses

A lot of money moves through an estate, and it adds up to a long list of transactions and receipts. Estate Steps gives you one place to record all of it and keep it organized. This guide walks through how the app helps you track income and expenses from start to finish.

Record income and expenses

Add a transaction and choose whether it's income or an expense. Enter the amount, the date, a category, and who the money came from or went to. You can add a note to any transaction for extra context, so months later you still know what it was for.

Attach a receipt to every transaction

Snap a photo or upload a PDF and attach it right to the transaction. The receipt stays with the entry it belongs to, so when you want to find the proof for a payment later, it's already there — no separate folder of loose receipts to dig through.

Log executor time and mileage

Estate Steps lets you track the hours you spend and the miles you drive on estate work, not just the money. Set your hourly rate and mileage rate once, and the app calculates the amount for each entry and keeps a running total of your reimbursement — no spreadsheets or manual math.

Import your bank statements

Rather than typing every line in by hand, export a statement from your bank as a CSV, OFX, or QFX file and upload it. Estate Steps drafts a transaction for each line and suggests a category. You review, edit, and confirm before anything is saved.

Reconcile as you go

Mark each transaction pending, cleared, or disputed so you can see at a glance what's settled and what's still in motion. Search and filter by type, category, date, amount, or status to find any entry in seconds.

See your totals at a glance

Estate Steps keeps a running summary as you work — total income, total expenses, and net balance, plus a breakdown of expenses by category and the executor reimbursement recorded so far. If you want to set aside a portion for taxes, you can enter a holdback percentage and the app shows the remaining amount separately.

Close the books each month

When a month is done, you can lock its transactions into a snapshot. Locked entries can't be changed by accident, and the snapshot gives you a tidy record of the month you can save or share.

Generate the final accounting

When you're ready to wrap up, Estate Steps turns everything you've tracked into a single PDF — income, expenses, executor reimbursement, and distributions — summarized in one document you can download. If you'd like a broader picture of the whole process, see the executor checklist.