The story behind ReceiptKid

My daughter Emma is sixteen. She's responsible, helpful, and — like most teenagers — she has a very good memory for money. Specifically, for money that people owe her.

One Tuesday morning, she picked up milk on her way home from school. £1.70. She mentioned it. I said I'd sort her out. I forgot. She didn't. By Friday, it had become a thing.

That same week, she'd also returned a parcel for me (£1.70 at the post office), picked up her brother's prescription (free, but she'd had to queue for twenty minutes), and bought a birthday card I'd asked her to get (£2.50). None of it was a big deal individually. But it added up — not just in money, but in the feeling that her contributions weren't being taken seriously.

The spreadsheet phase

I tried a spreadsheet. I genuinely did. I set it up on a Sunday evening, shared it with Emma, and felt very organised. By Wednesday, neither of us had updated it. By the following week, it was forgotten.

I tried WhatsApp. We had a "family money" group. It worked for about three days before it got buried under memes and school photos.

I looked at existing apps. Splitwise is great for splitting dinner with friends — but it's not designed for the parent-child dynamic, and it doesn't handle pocket money or chores. GoHenry and Greenlight are prepaid card products — they require a bank account, a card, and a monthly fee per child. They're solving a different problem.

What I needed was something that could handle all of it — receipts, pocket money, chores — and settle it in one payment. Nothing like that existed. So we built it.

Kid — the ReceiptKid mascot. He's a goat. He's smart. He always remembers what he's owed.

What we built — and why it's different

ReceiptKid is built around one insight: most families don't have a money problem. They have a memory problem. The amounts are small. The intention to pay is genuine. But life gets in the way, and things get forgotten.

The app works like this: you snap a photo of a receipt. The AI reads it — shop name, items, total. You send it to whoever owes you. They approve it. It goes on their running balance. When you're ready to settle up, you see one number and make one payment.

The "netting" part is the bit that makes it genuinely useful. Emma might owe me money for her phone bill. I might owe her for three receipts and two weeks of pocket money. Instead of two separate payments, we settle the difference. One transfer. Done.

We also built in a lending tracker — because "I lent you my charger" is just as real a debt as "I paid for your lunch." And we built chores in from the start, because pocket money that's tied to effort teaches something that a standing order never can.

Why we're not a fintech

ReceiptKid doesn't hold money. It doesn't move money. It doesn't require a bank account or a prepaid card. It's a record-keeping app — a very smart one — that helps families track what they owe each other and settle up in whatever way works for them.

This is a deliberate choice. We don't want to be in the business of holding your money. We don't want to charge you a percentage of every transaction. We want to charge a fair monthly subscription — less than a coffee — and give you a tool that actually works.

It also means we can work for everyone. If your family settles up in cash, ReceiptKid works. If you use bank transfers, it works. If your teenager uses Monzo and you use Barclays, it works. We don't care how you pay each other — we just help you know what to pay.

Who it's for

We built it for families first — because that's where the problem is most acute. But we quickly realised it works for anyone who shares money with people they trust: students splitting a flat, sports clubs tracking shared costs, couples managing joint spending, adult children helping elderly parents.

The common thread is trust. ReceiptKid is for people who aren't trying to cheat each other — they're just trying to keep track. The app assumes good faith and makes it easy to act on it.

What's next

We're a small team. We've built something we're proud of and we're using it ourselves every day. Emma still has a very good memory for money — but now, so does the app.

If you try it, we'd love to hear what you think. We're genuinely building this for families like ours — and the best feedback we get is from people who've had the exact same argument about milk.