# Paper Trail

> Every statement, receipt and tax form, filed with the charge it explains.

Paper Trail keeps the documents behind your money next to the money itself. Ask your assistant what a charge was, whether a statement matches, or which tax forms are still missing, and the answer comes with its source attached.

Page: https://cashflow.tech/paper-trail. How an agent files, finds and checks documents: https://cashflow.tech/docs/llms.txt (the `document` entity of the `admin` tool).

## What you can ask

- "What was this $412 charge?" — The invoice or receipt filed against it, read back to you.
- "Does my Chase statement match my transactions?" — Every line on the statement checked against your transactions, both ways: what the bank printed that's missing here, and what's here that the statement never showed.
- "Which tax forms am I still waiting on?" — A checklist built from your own money (wages mean a W-2, interest a 1099-INT) with the forms you've filed checked off.
- "Which of last month's charges have no receipt?" — Every charge with nothing filed against it, so you know what to chase.
- "Fill in March, before I connected this account" — The transactions read straight off the statement, shown to you first and added only when you say so.
- "Find the policy that mentions water damage" — Search by title, by who sent it, or by the words inside it, and read just the page that matters.

## How documents get in

- **From your assistant.** Ask an assistant that can run commands on your computer, like Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, to file a statement, receipt or tax form, and it files it directly. Any other assistant gives you a one-line command to run. Either way the file goes straight into your archive and never passes through the chat.
- **Attached to what it explains.** You say which charge a receipt is for, or which account a statement belongs to, and it's filed there. Nothing is guessed, and a newer copy of a document replaces the old one instead of piling up beside it.
- **From your bank, where it offers them.** If your bank shares statements through your connection, they arrive on their own and are filed to the right account.

## Statements we can check line by line (8 banks)

- Apple Card: credit card
- Bank of America: credit card, checking & savings
- Chase: credit card, checking & savings
- Chime: checking
- Citi: credit card
- Navy Federal: credit card, checking & savings
- Regions: checking & savings
- Wells Fargo: credit card, checking & savings

Any statement can be filed, searched and read. Checking it line by line needs a layout we know. A statement that isn't one, or a scan with no text in it, is named as such, never given a wrong answer. A statement only counts once its lines add up to the totals the bank printed on it.

## How is this different from a folder?

A folder stores files. Paper Trail stores files attached to your money: a receipt to the charge it explains, a statement to its account and month, a tax form to its year. That's why you can ask "what was this charge?" instead of remembering what you named a file in 2023. A folder has never seen your transactions.

## Questions

### Which assistants can I use?

Any assistant connected to Cashflow can search, read and check what's filed: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and the rest. To add a new document, an assistant that can run commands on your computer files it directly, and any other gives you a one-line command to run.

### Do you read my documents?

Only to do what you ask: search them, read them back to you, and check them against your transactions. They aren't sold, shared with third parties, or used for anything outside your own account. You can delete anything you filed, and the file goes with it.

### Can I get everything out?

Yes, any time, without asking us. Your assistant can export the archive: a list of every document and what it's attached to, with a download link for each original, byte for byte as you filed it.

### What happens if Cashflow shuts down?

Export, and you have your originals: ordinary PDFs and images, exactly the files you filed, readable without our software.

### What about documents from before I started?

We can't fetch what your bank no longer offers, and we won't pretend the archive is complete. File older documents yourself whenever you like; an old statement can even fill in transactions from before you connected the account.