BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Organization Organizing your Receipts / Bills

I save literally every bill and receipt, all year long, for tax reasons. I spend HOURS organizing them all into folders - credit card bills by date, all wine receipts together, all origami paper receipts together, you name it. It takes me a ton of time to keep all of these paper piles in my office sorted properly.

Then at the end of the year, I put them all into folders and move those into a drawer. Then they literally SIT there for 7 years after which I recycle or shred them.

I was looking at the piles of paper which literally cover pretty much every square inch of my office and thinking ...

WHY???

Shouldn't I just dump all 2007 items into a big "2007 file" and **IF** I get audited I can then pull them out and sort them? Why am I sorting them so laboriously now? It's not like I really go through them. I have everything in QuickBooks. I use the QuickBooks values for submitting for taxes. I would never go receipt by receipt through these things to verify the entries.

What do you do? Am I wasting hours of time here?

It sure seems like it to me - I watch NEAT and clean sweep on Discovery home and they declutter everything.

I use a five column pad with 50 sheets and these are the pages I have inside:

Money Log -

Store/date/amt/how paid/coupon,sale, savings/cash advance

When I come home from the store(s) I place the receipts on my computer table and then fill them out and if it is a rite aid receipt I go to their site and input the receipt or keep in a pile and do once or twice a week. I check the circular for walgreens to see if it is something to fill out for a rebate and if the receipt is for something I may return I place in another bin.

I just tossed out three large plastic bags of receipts from past several years and it was kind of scarey doing that, but I dont think I need to return anything. the major purchases I keep with the manual for the item and place that in an accordian file.

I went to rite aid today with a print out from my capital one rewards card since the refund did not show up today, went to post office to return to QVC the blood pressure kit I did not like and could not use the cuff for, and called vitacost.com to find out where my $27 refund thru paypal is for a package I refused and waiting on credit.

I also keep dr visits and Pharmacy receipts and those that I use for health items like asthma spray in another section to see if I have enough to do deductions for income tax. I just tossed most of those out from 2007 since there was not enough to do.

The other pages in my columnar pad are:

GAS -

Date/amt

RX -
name of med/ date/amt

check cashing fees (when I am lazy and not going to bank)

Date/Amt

INK - (I wanted to see how much more ink I am using now that we are homeschooling

Date/black/color/cost/store

Amazon is cheapest, but have to pay shipping and black is $3 less than color.

DR VISITS

Date/Dr/AMT

ACE LOANS

DAte/AMT/Fee

I used to also keep a notebook listing all the times I went to do recycling and place those amounts and add up for month and year and then do the same thing for the coin star and make note of how much I saved in nickels and pennies, minus the cost.

I used to love doing all these lists, but now with homeschooling it just seems to be so much work and no longer a fun thing. I use to do the same thing with refunds/rebates.

When I joined wish upon a hero last summer I kept a notebook of all the people I helped and their addresses and sent cards, etc and followed up, but the same people kept wanting help and never got out of their neediness and I got turned off.

The other day I had some money in paypal and did a search and could not find anyone who seemed to really be in dire need.

I send box tops to a group from cafemom for different schools each month and I am in about three different coupon trains.

maybe we should do a BellaOnline coupon train to share the coupons?

Lisa, I'd suggest keeping your files "semi-sorted" as a compromise between your current,laborious receipt organizing method and just having a "2007 box." Have a file for each category, as you do now, but after an item is recorded in Quickbooks, just drop it in the appropriate category file. Stop organizing by date, and try to file as you go. It will cut your labor in half, at least. Besides, even if you are audited and for some reason don't have a chance to organize those files, the presence of the receipts is going to matter a lot more than if the auditor sees July before he sees January.

Invest in eight files boxes of whatever type you prefer. Put your old files in them, one year per box. Have a storage area outside of your office for them, or find a way to make them visually pleasing. (Stack 'em up and throw a tablecloth over them for instant extra desk space, if you choose!) At the end of '08, file your taxes and drop the year's files in a box. At whatever your annual purge time is for old files (spring for many people), shred the contents of the box that has passed the seven year line. The now-empty box is ready for '09.

You might even want to keep the current files in their box. At the end of the year, all you have do is put the lid on it! But unless you purge old files on or about New Year's Eve, you'd have to have a 9th box to do it this way (or live with file folder piles in the gap between the turn of the year and purge day). That might be more trouble than it's worth.

I hope this helps relieve your filing stress.

For my old years, I am set - I have a file cabinet upstairs that holds them. So I don't have any problems storing the older years. Which I know is lucky! Lots of people don't have the room to store those old files.

Here we are in April 2008 and my "current year" box is still full of all 2007 stuff So I need to sit down and dump that out into the file cabinet, and start everything fresh with 2008 files. Right now all my 2008 receipts and statements are mixed together in one big bin

I should get the final tax files from my tax person shortly and when I do that will be my impetus to sit down, shred, and move things

I keep all my receipts in envelopes by store. But I'm saving them for returns/proof of purchase--not for tax purposes, so I'm not sure if that would work for you.

I can use mine for returns and proof of purchase too - but by store would never work for me. I would have to remember which specific store I bought something from! My memory isn't that good. If I have a cholesterol tester I do know it was for the low carb site though.

Since I finally got a business checking account i worry less about the receipts. Everything i buy through that account is already stored and automatically recorded nicely by my online files at Well Fargo. So this is for 08 and I can just chuck all my reciepts into a file for 'work' and one for 'family'.

As fas as 07, it's all a big sodden mess that i have packaged up and ready to mail to my friend who i hired to do my 07 taxes. I am nervous about sending her this heap, but will be paying for her time. It needs to be done and the effort it would take for me would drive me to my cache of Atavan. For my mental health, it's not worth it.

Oh, and Lisa, i think maybe your system might be a tad too anal. I mean this in a friendly way. Save yourself the extra effort and if you do get audited you can pull out all the stops then. IMO.

I actually do end up using my files because if we have to return something, I know I can just dig through the small "low carb" folder and find it. Or if I need to re-order something it's easy to find the receipt that way. So it's come in very handy. All the USPS receipts get tossed into a USPS folder.

I have a LOT of receipts so it's really easy to put them into their main category as they go, and everything is right there and easy to find.

For banking etc records, those are all in my desk drawers now (hanging drawers). So I have a folder for each bank account for their statements, and then a folder for each credit card for their statements. Again, it's easy to toss things in when they come in and it makes it SO easy to track down something if I need to! Which I like

I actually need some new advice. I am moving into my RV this spring. Any ideas for handling files in a space like that? I need to strip everything to the bare minimum and have things also be somehow handy.

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.