Attention business owners: Don’t you just hate accounting? As an owner of two small businesses myself, the one thing I dread the most are the accounting tasks. Not because they are hard, but simply because they are so time consuming. I consider them a distraction from the real work.

The Chase Jot app = time saver

Will this nifty little app solve all your accounting headaches? Definitely not. However, what it will do is save you an immense amount of time when it comes to categorizing your credit card spending. Here’s how…

Step One: You a receive real-time alert for your purchase

Whenever you or an employee make a purchase using your Chase Ink business account, you will receive an instant notification on your smartphone (currently Android and iPhone are supported). It will look like this:

Step Two: You categorize the purchase

Just click “View” and you can categorize that purchase instantly. The example below shows a few different construction projects and this Home Depot purchase is being tagged/categorized under the first project “Rang Ext. Window”:

Step Three: You access your categorized expense reports online

You login to your Chase credit card account and from there, you click “Tag Your Purchases With Jot.” This will take you to all your purchases, both those that have already been tagged and those that haven’t.

You can generate custom expense reports using dates, categories, amount, or by account if you have multiple Ink cards. Now here’s the best part… You can download/export these reports to your Excel or QuickBooks!

What you will like best about this

Think about it… the big benefit here is that Jot from Chase allows you to always be up-to-date on your expense management. Since you are only categorizing one purchase at a time, it only takes a few seconds to do and isn’t tedious or time-consuming. In the amount of time it takes to walk from the store or restaurant to your car, you will have already had a chance to categorize that transaction you just made.

This is much better than doing the ol’ business as usual, where we go about making our purchases and then have to set aside a chunk of time later to sort them all out. Instead of having to do that once per week or once per month, you can just do it on the go after each and every purchase you make.

Which cards have the Chase Jot app?

You will need to have one of their Ink business cards in order to use this app. The actual app is free of charge and there are a couple free versions of the cards, too. You can compare the Chase Ink card reviews here.