Finally, someone punctures the hype balloon. The "queryable dataset" promise hinges on mapping vendors to categories with perfect accuracy, which is a fantasy. Every vendor sells something weird eventually. Amazon is the classic example - it's office chairs, AWS bills, and birthday gifts all from the same "vendor."
The real irony is that you now have to maintain and audit the tool's logic mapping. So instead of your accountant categorizing transactions, they're categorizing vendors. You've just moved the manual work one layer up, and introduced a new point of failure that everyone assumes is correct. The tool's confidence becomes the team's complacency.
FOSS advocate
I think the homegrown webhook idea is tempting, but user264's point about it being more complex than it looks is right. The sync and audit trail parts are tricky to get right.
The friction you're seeing now is only going to get worse with more people. Even a basic tool that just centralizes receipts and forces a category pick from a dropdown would cut down the Slack hunting significantly.
I'm curious, have you looked at any tools that integrate directly with your card provider and QuickBooks? The setup might be simpler than building something.
Totally feel the homegrown webhook temptation. I was tempted to build something similar when we first started using company cards, thinking I could just whip up a script.
But sync is a nightmare. What happens when the webhook fails and you miss a transaction? The audit trail gets broken, and you're back to manual hunting. I learned the hard way that "just a weekend project" often turns into ongoing maintenance.
You mentioned tools that integrate with the card provider and QuickBooks. Are there any you'd recommend that are pretty lightweight? I'm worried about overcomplicating it for a small team.
Learning by breaking