Frequently asked questions

No. Most shoppers never type a shop in manually.

AI Import takes whatever your MSC sent you — paste the assignment email, upload a screenshot of the job board, or pick an Excel or CSV file — and pulls out each shop with its address, fee, bonus, job ID, time window and due date. You review everything on screen before a single shop is added.

You can also add shops by hand whenever it's quicker, and duplicate a stop for repeat visits.

Yes — Settings → Import Past Shops.

Most shoppers never keep a spreadsheet, so the quickest way is to paste a payment statement, an email or a pay history page straight in, or attach a screenshot, and let Claude read it. A CSV still works: paste the rows with the header or choose the file, and you get a screen to confirm which column is the date, the shop, the fee and so on before anything is saved.

That screen accounts for every row — what will be added, what couldn't be read, what was skipped as already in your data and why, and anything marked declined or carrying no pay. Shops already marked paid go into your history; anything still owed lands in Payments awaiting payment. Every new account gets a one-time pool of 1,000 credits just for this, separate from the monthly AI Import allowance.

Re-running the same sheet is safe — anything already in your data is skipped. And if the columns came in wrong, there's an Undo my last import button for 30 days.

Both, and they stay in sync. Shop Tracker runs in any browser at shoptracker.work and as an Android app from Google Play. Sign in with the same account and your assignments, payments, mileage and history follow you between them.

On a phone browser you can add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app.

Keep working. Everything you do is saved on the device first, and syncs when you're back in coverage. You'll see a small indicator telling you something is still waiting to sync, so you know before you drive into a dead zone rather than after.

An assignment is a batch of shops from one company — the work itself, whenever you get around to it.

A day plan is what you're actually doing on a given day, built in Route Planner by picking stops from across your assignments and putting them in order. Dispatch then runs that plan stop by stop.

Assignments stay on the list after their last stop is done, so you can reuse them as next month's template.

Yes. Route Planner sequences your day from your home base or your current location, respecting each stop's time window and any appointment times as hard constraints — a stop that can only be done between 6am and 5pm won't be scheduled at 6pm. You get per-stop arrival estimates and a total drive time and distance.

You can also reorder by hand at any point, and re-optimise mid-route from wherever you actually are.

Yes. An assignment can be a driving route, a set of web shops or a set of phone shops. Web and phone shops hold a website or a phone number instead of an address, and they get their own sections and their own start buttons.

A desk session runs the same stop-by-stop flow with the same timer, minus the mileage tracking and directions that don't apply. Because the timer still runs, Analytics can tell you your hourly rate for web work against driving work — which is usually an eye-opener.

It runs your day one stop at a time: where you're going, what you're being paid, the time window, your notes, a navigate button and a link straight to that company's reporting site.

It times each stop, tracks your mileage in the background, and can detect when you've arrived and when you've left so you're not tapping buttons in a parking lot. It also tells you your earnings per hour as you go.

You set each company's payment schedule once — twice a month, a number of days after completion, or monthly in arrears — and Shop Tracker works out when each completed shop is due.

Anything past its expected date is flagged as overdue, so you find out a company is running late without having to remember what they owe you.

Check the column you mapped as Paid. If every row in your sheet was read as already paid, it all goes into your paid history and nothing is left outstanding.

A common cause is a Status column reading "Completed" on every row — that describes the shop, not the payment. Shop Tracker only treats a row as paid when it has a paid date, a yes, or a clearly payment-related status.

If an import came in wrong, use Undo my last import on the import screen, fix the column mapping, and bring the sheet in again.

Mileage is tracked by GPS while you drive. Tracking with the screen off or the app in the background needs the Android app on a Full Access or Premium plan; on Web Only, and in a browser on any plan, tracking runs while the app is open. It measures from your last confirmed position and ignores the drift a parked phone produces, so sitting at a stop for twenty minutes doesn't invent a mile of driving.

For each trip it records the date, the miles driven and the assignment the trip belongs to, and applies the standard IRS mileage rate in force on that date. For the standard mileage method the IRS asks you to keep a timely record of the date, the miles, where you went and the business purpose — the assignment name is doing the work of the last two, so if your preparer wants destinations spelled out trip by trip, add them in the trip note.

You can edit or delete any trip or enter one by hand from your odometer. Analytics gives you the running deduction total, and there's a year-end export for your preparer. Shop Tracker is a record-keeping tool, not tax advice — what you can deduct is between you and your preparer.

Yes. Required purchases are recorded against the shop that needed them, so a reimbursement isn't mistaken for profit. General business expenses — gas, supplies, parking — get logged separately with a receipt photo if you want one, and both feed the year-end summary.

Nothing. Your data lives in your account, not on the handset. Install the app on the new phone, sign in, and everything is there. You can also sign out of a lost device remotely from Settings.

You. Your data is tied to your account and isn't shared with the mystery shopping companies you work for, or with anyone else. We don't sell it and we don't show ads.

Both, whenever you like. Export your shop history, mileage and expenses as CSV from the app. To delete your account and everything in it, use the request page at shoptracker.work/delete-account.

There's also a "Clear Shop Data" option that wipes your shops, history, mileage and expenses while keeping your companies, vendors, home base and settings — handy for starting a fresh year without setting everything up again.

Web Only is the full app in your browser, on any device.

Full Access adds the Android app, which is what you want in the field: background GPS mileage, offline working and auto-arrive.

Premium is the same as Full Access with a much larger monthly AI Import allowance, for shoppers importing hundreds of shops a month.

Current pricing is on the home page.

One credit per shop extracted, with a three-credit minimum per import. Web Only and Full Access include 250 credits a month; Premium includes 1,000.

Reading a screenshot or a pasted list costs the same whether it holds one shop or forty — the work is in reading it, not in the number of shops. That's why a few at a time stretches so much further, and why pasting a whole assignment email is the cheapest way to work.

If an import finds nothing, you aren't charged. Credits reset at the start of each month and don't roll over.

Yes. Nothing is deleted when a trial ends — your data stays exactly as you left it, and picks up where it was if you subscribe later.

From Settings inside the app, in a couple of taps. No email, no phone call. You keep access to the end of the period you've already paid for.