Receipt Tracker

An app that performs simple calculations on aggregated receipt json data.

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Inspiration

My wife travel nurses, which means we have to save receipts and spend a total of 30 days in our 'tax home' according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This node app is an attempt to automate calculations using that receipt data.

What it does

This app has a collection of receipt data in json format. It calculates the total spent from all receipts, and also how many days were spent in each city.

How I built it

I used node.js to run JavaScript in the console. There are functions for the various calculations, and a .json file with the manually inputted receipt data.

Challenges I ran into

My original plan was to use optical character recognition to automatically turn receipt images into json data. This was very complicated and I decided to postpone that feature for a future update. I also had trouble converting html form data to a json format that I was comfortable with, so I decided to make it run via the node console. Finally, I had trouble implementing the 'prompt' npm package (you can see my commented out code in the app.js file). I wanted to give the user a series of prompts to determine what functions to run or also input new receipts, but I was having trouble with the scaffolded prompts and scrapped it last minute. I am also out of state currently, so I have been working in Starbucks and in the car where I can.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

It's Alive! I am proud that it runs and that I was able to participate in this event! This was a very fun and interesting challenge.

What I learned

Utilize my pre-coding planning time better. Prioritize features early, and do more research into modules I will use so that I don't run out of time reading documentation.

What's next for Receipt Tracker

Implement the postponed features and figure out how to use optical character recognition software.

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