BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Organization Organizing your Receipts / Bills

I found a really good reason to hold on to receipts. I made a purchase in another city and upon arriving home found that the clerk did not remove the security clip. What a pain. My daughter suggested I take the item and the receipt to another store and ask that they remove the clip. What a nuisance.

It's funny, I just a few days ago sorted my tax files into by-year groups and have them all in individual plastic bins in the attic, labeled, so it is SUPER easy to grab the "7 years old" one and shred them at the end of each year. I just put my 2007 files up there, so I have my 2008 files in my desk and my 2009 files fresh and ready to go.

I mention it because it's all organized as small and compact as it can be - and it is still voluminous in terms of your RV. It's fine to have those boxes in the attic for me - they're completely out of the way - but your RV has no attic.

In terms of the previous years which you legally must store but physically will rarely need to touch (if ever) - can you rent a really cheap storage unit somewhere? You can stick things like this in it and only have to visit once a year to shred the oldest set. You could even rent a basement corner from a friend I imagine.

It might be worth it in general to invest in a form-feed scanner - I.e. one you can feed things into one after another and have them all scan (without lifting / resetting items on a tray). Scan everything you can and only keep the things you absolutely need the original of. You might be able to reduce every year's file to one single file folder and tuck them into a back corner somewhere.

Even for the "current year" you could still scan the receipts and everything, recycle all the paper and only keep the scanned images. Just make sure you keep an off-site backup.

We keep the receipts for *everything* and it has come in handy tons of times. There are just all sorts of reasons we have needed those receipts later on.

DLT - We do actually use separate credit cards and at least split purchases into "business" and "personal" at stores. That way they are on 100% separate cards and the receipts are separate. I think if you at least take that step you should be OK.

Thanks for the thoughtful answer, Lisa. I think a form feed scanner sounds perfect! I will have to add that to my list to look into.

We do have a storage and that is where I did shove my previous years' receipts. It's not as organized as yours sounds, alas. but it's all there if needed. I'd love to scan the whole batch and dump them. it would be a big project that I am not sure is worth it. thoughts?

I do need a plan for this year's receipts, the ones that will be traveling with me. The scanner idea is appealing. Right now i am sticking them in one of those zippered plastic pencil cases in an expenses binder.

my plan is to use a composition book as a log for all expenses having to do with the RV. Since this is our home and office, all the info will be in one place, along with notes of what each receipt is for.

I suppose I can make a log for non-rv expenses as well?

So far I have three logs going - RV mileage log, RV expenses/repair log, and campground log. Should I create others for various business expenses? What do you guys think?

I find scanning a pretty mindless activity so if you can set it up while you watch TV or something you can get through a LOT of scanning very quickly. Alternatively, if you have a digital camera that has close-up focus, give that a try. That way you can just take pictures of everything, toss the receipt and then dump the pictures into an area of your hard drive once a week. That might be even more quick for you than scanning and has the same results.

Hmm. I don't know if the camera can do that but it's a fine idea and will give it a try.

Definitely try that! I take photos of receipts with my camera, and it's not a fancy one. See if you have a close focus mode.