In this video I show you how I organize all of my receipts in my home office! The process I show you in the video can be used for both business and personal receipts 🙂
Products Used: Rainbow Receipt Organizer
Video Details
Hi everyone. So in this video, I’m going to show you how I store all of my business receipts for my business inside my home office. So the same concept can work for like personal receipts around your house like clothing or groceries or gas or whatever personal receipts you have.
Ways to Organize Receipts
So there are two things I want to show you. I want to show you like a more basic system then a more complex system. So OK, let me show you the basic system first. All right. So, a good place to store receipts is just in a poly envelope just like this. This was $0.99 at Office Depot I bought this – I think I got it last year. But it’s just like right in the check-out isle at Office Depot. It just has a nice tight clasp just like that. It comes in bright colors and you can just put all your receipts in here. If you don’t have a lot of paper receipts and you just need a place to put them, this is the perfect place because it’s simple, it’s just contained and yeah, it’s simple and contained.
Organizing Receipts by Category
If you need a more complex system because you have a lot of receipts and you need to sort them by category, you need to be able to find them down the road when like taxes come and stuff then you can use an accordion organizer just like this. Now, I’ve been using accordion organizers for so long for organizing receipts and this one is by far my favorite because it’s colorful. The quality is nice and yeah, it’s really just colorful so it just makes them more fun. So this is from Container Store. You can find them at Staples or Office Depot. Yeah, any kind of office supplies store sells accordion organizers just like this.
How to Organize Receipts
So what I’ve done here is I have determined all of the categories of receipts that I’m going to have receipts for. So for example for my business, it’s materials and parts, marketing and advertising, computer software, office supplies, professional fees, continued education, travel expenses, meals and entertainment, banking fees, client gifts, hardware and equipment, and then other fees.
Now what you want to do is whatever – however you’re – if you’re organizing your home receipts or your business receipts, determine what categories of receipts you have. So it’s clothing, like kids or groceries or utilities, I can’t remember what those categories are. And label each of the tabs with what that category is.
So in this case, this system actually came with pre-printed stickers that had January through December and it also had one other category. And I just feel like those aren’t the categories I needed. And so, I just took my label maker and I took a half inch label that was clear with black font and just created my own and stuck them on. And actually, something else, if you have another accordion, a lot of them come with little pieces of whitepaper that are perforated and you just stick them inside the little packet. Those always fall out. So every time I have an accordion, I never stick those in because they always fall out. I always use my label maker and it just comes out so much nicer, neater, and it actually stays in place.
Processing Receipts
All right. So label your tabs and then every time you get a receipt for that category, if you need to like mark it in your checkbook or mark it in QuickBooks or mark it on your excel file in your computer, do that and as soon as you do that, put the receipt inside of the appropriate category.
So for instance, what I do is I normally do this on a weekly or monthly basis. So I’ll just gather all the receipts for that week or for that month and I’ll put them in a smaller poly envelope on my desk or somewhere near my desk. And then when it comes time to reconciling, I’ll take all the receipts out of the small poly envelope. I’ll enter them into QuickBooks because that’s what I use for my business and then as soon as they’re entered into QuickBooks, I’ll then take the receipt and I’ll categorize it inside of whatever category it is. So everything that’s inside of this accordion has already been accounted for and now, I’m just saving them for like tax time and if I happen to return the item for whatever reason or something breaks.
And then it has two little pockets right here for your business card or something. The business card fits perfectly so I just went ahead and put my name there because it’s colorful and this is colorful and I don’t know. It just looks nice. OK.
How to Organize Receipts
And then – oh something else cool about this accordion is it extends. So let me show you. It extends just like this and then you can actually just put it on your desk. Hold on. Just like that. So if you are – if you want to just keep it open to put things inside, you can just do that and it stays open then you can just kind of drop things in. I never really do that but I just have a friend who does that and I thought that was kind of cool.
All right. So then it has a nice little string just like that that closes it then I label the outside with the year and then what type of receipts it is. And then at the end of the year, you can either choose to just archive this whole system with your taxes for the year or you can take all the receipts out of here, put them inside of like another poly envelope, put them inside of a plastic bag or something, archive them with your tax return and your tax supporting documentation and then reuse the same accordion for the following year. Then just like take this off and put 2014 for next year or something like that. So you don’t have to go out and buy another one the next year.
So yeah, so that is my system for organizing all my receipts.
Tips for Organizing Receipts
Now, one thing you can do is if you have like a really big receipt or like a really expensive purchase and you really need to make sure the receipt is safe and you don’t lose it then you can scan it, put it on the computer so you can have access to it later or you can make a copy of it, print it, and then keep it with the original receipt in case the receipt fades over time. So yeah, so that’s just another thing you can do.
And then of course, if you prefer to scan your receipts and not have the paper, you can do that and it’s going to take up less space if you just scan them and put them on computer as opposed to in this system. I’m still a paper person. I love paper. And so, I prefer this system.
But yeah, I hope this video was helpful. If you want more organizing videos and more organizing tips, you can visit my website at Alejandra.TV. I will put a link to where you can get this product and where you can get this product in the description of this video. I’ll see you next time. Bye!
