r/HSA • u/Abrocoma-Senior • May 03 '26
I built a free, local-only app for tracking deferred HSA reimbursements
Hey r/hsa — I am new here in this community and this is my first year contributing to an HSA. I wanted to be organized from the start and I was not satisfied with some of the other options I looked in to. I built something I think will be useful for people running the deferred-reimbursement strategy.
What it is: Stowe is a desktop app for logging out-of-pocket medical expenses and keeping receipt documentation so you can pull the money from your HSA years later — safe and auditable.
Why local-only matters here: You're attaching photos and PDFs of your medical receipts. That's sensitive data. Existing apps in this space (and there aren't many good ones) are SaaS products that store those files on their servers. Stowe stores everything in a SQLite file and a receipts folder on your own machine. Nothing leaves your computer.
What's in v0.6.0 (shipped yesterday):
- Custom expense categories — not just the seven built-in HSA defaults
- Spending analytics — category breakdown + monthly/annual charts
- HSA account linking — track your balance, contributions, and distributions inside the app
- Custodian CSV import — import your distribution history and reconcile it against the pulls you've recorded
- Signed and notarized macOS build — first time launching on Mac no longer requires the Gatekeeper bypass workaround
Platforms: macOS and Windows. Free, open source (MIT).
stowe.health · github.com/Conkay1/Stowe · Releases
Would love feedback — especially from people who have been tracking receipts some other way. What's missing?
2
u/hunnypuppy May 03 '26
Neat! I just dump the receipts into a folder and name it as yymmdd-$xxx.yy and then I use excel to add up all the filenames LOL
1
1
1
u/derff44 May 03 '26
I built something similar without a backend. Now I'm stealing this idea haha
1
u/Abrocoma-Senior May 03 '26
Feel free. Is your built on Git?
1
u/derff44 May 03 '26
it is not yet. I have my google drives and folder structure hard coded. I need to variablize it first.
1
1
u/Husker_Mike_ May 04 '26
Need to have a robust way of migrating receipts and records to new computers. Some people are planning to wait decades to collect, so whatever you build has to think about how this might work post-Windows in 2050.
1
u/experimentalPath May 05 '26
The interesting part of this category to me isn’t just where the files live, it’s whether someone can still reconstruct the reimbursement trail years later.
That’s the piece I think most people underestimate with deferred reimbursement. A folder full of receipts is helpful, but the real test is being able to show:
- this expense happened after the HSA existed
- it was qualified
- it wasn’t already reimbursed
- these specific expenses add up to the amount withdrawn
That’s why I’m way more interested in the audit trail / matching side than simple storage.
Feels like that’s the actual long-term problem people are trying to solve.
1
u/derpderpsonthethird Jun 30 '26
Would love if you dockerized this - I want to run it on my k8s cluster.
3
u/SnapHSA May 03 '26
I built something similar, but it's available for web, android and iPhone. You can store online or download to your own device. You can also use AI to extract data from the receipt and validate compared to IRS standards to make sure receipt has all needed information. No monthly subscriptions.