Paper Trail support

Last updated 15 September 2026.

Paper Trail reads the facts off receipts, warranties, policies and manuals, and tells you before the cover ends, the return window shuts, or the policy renews and charges you.

Why a document is under "Needs a look"

Because the reader was not confident enough about the date, and below that confidence the app asks you instead of alerting you.

The reason is an asymmetry. One confidently wrong reminder saying your warranty expires Friday costs more trust than ten useful ones earn, because afterwards you cannot tell a guessed date from a real one and learn to ignore both. Asking costs one tap.

Questions sit above the things being watched, on purpose: an app that buries "I could not read this date" under forty confident rows has stopped being trustworthy while still looking busy. Confirming a date earns the alert, and schedules it.

Why the reminder came when it did

How far ahead you hear depends on what the date means, because lead time is a property of the thing expiring rather than of the app.

• A policy renewal gets the longest warning: it is the one with a real decision attached, and two weeks is not enough to get a competing quote back.
• A warranty lapsing gets a long warning too, because acting on it means finding a receipt and making a claim.
• A return window gets a short, sharp one. They run in days, and an early reminder gets dismissed and forgotten.

You can change the warning for warranties and policies on the account screen; return windows stay short whatever you pick.

Lapse, renewal and return are not the same date

Every date carries what it means, because a warranty that simply ends, a policy that renews automatically and charges you, and a return window that closes all arrive on a date and all need a different sentence. One phrase for all three is what makes a list ignorable. Where a document does not clearly say, the app gives no alert rather than a guessed one.

Why I got two reminders

There are two channels, deliberately not deduplicated against each other: an email, and a notification on the device.

Neither is sufficient alone. Email alone means nothing arrives on the phone holding the app. Notifications alone means nothing fires after a reinstall or a new phone, which is exactly the long gap this app is for. Two nudges is a mild annoyance; none is the app failing at its only job. You choose the hour on the account screen, matched to your own local time.

Why an alert is a nudge and not a verdict

Paper Trail reads dates off your documents, and it can misread one, or the document can mean something other than the app assumed. Every reminder shows the scan it came from, and the record carries the reader's own account of how it reached the date. Treat it as a nudge to check the document, not a replacement for reading it.

Capturing, and searching later

Capture is one tap to the camera and no form. You never type a vendor, a date or a category, because the moment you do, the app is asking you to do the job you installed it to avoid. The drawer searches the facts read out of your documents rather than the images, which is the whole difference from a photo roll: a roll stores these already and cannot tell you what you paid for the dishwasher.

What Paper Trail does not do

• It gives no legal, insurance or tax advice, makes no claim and cancels nothing on your behalf.
• It decides nothing about your cover. It records what a document says and when to look at it again.
• There is no shared or household view.
• A scan cannot be replaced. Swapping the image under a record that already alerted on it would leave the app asserting a date it can no longer show you.

An internet connection is required.

Subscriptions

Paper Trail is sold as a subscription through your Apple ID. The current price and billing period are shown on the purchase screen inside the app, which reads them from the App Store for your country rather than repeating a figure here. If a subscription lapses you still see every document and every date; what stops is the part that reaches out to you.

Manage it at Settings › your name › Subscriptions. Cancelling stops the renewal and leaves the current period running to its end; we cannot cancel it for you. After a reinstall or a new device use Restore Purchases, and if it finds nothing, check you are signed in with the Apple ID that bought it. Apple is the merchant of record, so refunds are requested at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Your documents

There is no password; you sign in with a code sent to your email address. Scans go to private storage only your account can read, and every table checks your account against the owner of the row.

Because the app takes whatever paperwork you have, a document can carry more than you meant to send: a policy number, an address, the last four digits of a card. Photograph the document you want tracked, and cover anything you would rather not send.

Deleting your account removes the profile, every image, every record and every alert, immediately and unrecoverably. If a document is your only copy, save it elsewhere first. The full policy is at carrierpress.com/papertrail/privacy.

Contact

support@carrierpress.com

One person reads that, so a reply may take a few days.

Paper Trail is published by Jeffrey L Carrier.