---
title: "Expense reports with receipt photos, built by Claude Code on Elements"
author: "@chris"
author_url: https://elements.dev/u/@chris
published: 2026-09-30T20:20:45.927Z
url: https://elements.dev/demos/expense-reports-with-receipt-photos-built-by-claude-code-on-pp6lom1s
kind: post
format: article
---

# Expense reports with receipt photos, built by Claude Code on Elements

by [@chris](https://elements.dev/u/@chris) · 2026-09-30

## Description

Expenses with receipt photos, reports that approvers approve or send back with a comment, monthly totals, and email, all live.

Slipjar needed expenses with receipt photos, reports that move from draft to approved or sent back, emails at each step, monthly totals and pages that stay current for both employees and approvers. Each of those is a part of Elements, so the agent spent its 22 minutes on the workflow itself.

- **Reports that update in place.** A channel carries each report's new summary whenever it changes. An employee's list, the approver's queue, the report page and the monthly totals all listen, so a decision shows up on every open screen as it happens.
- **Receipt photos from the form.** An employee adds an expense with its receipt photo straight from a form, and the image is stored with the expense in one transaction and shown only to its owner and approvers.
- **An approval workflow.** A draft is submitted, then approved or sent back with a comment. Exactly one approver decides, and each report goes to an approver other than its owner.
- **Background work.** Jobs email the approvers when a report is submitted and the employee when it is decided.
- **Server calls as function calls.** Adding expenses, building reports, submitting, deciding and the monthly totals call server functions straight from the page with `@rpc`. Totals count approved spending by category, with submitted amounts shown as pending.
- **Data and roles from SQL.** Migrations define the workflow and seed two approvers, five employees and reports in every status, with receipts. Sessions and roles keep the queue with the approvers.