Transcript

0:00

Question about organizing our receipts. How many of you have receipts, physical receipts, digital receipts that you need to organize especially for taxes, but just for bookkeeping as well. And, you know, I teach a course called Joyful Productivity. And inside that course, there's a module on digital decluttering. And so that what's where this question comes from?

0:22

And so here's my recommendation. Number 1, if you're collecting receipts with the idea of processing them, you know, tracking them, things like that, you should number 1 have time carved out to process your receipts. I mean, it's that sounds obvious, but for some of us, it might be a revelation. Oh, okay. So whether it's once a week or it's once a month, maybe not more than once a month because you'll forget what these receipts are about.

0:51

But, you know, time out. Maybe it's only maybe only half an hour is needed or maybe an hour once a month could be all unique. But it's like having that time set aside to say, no. I'm gonna do it. It's gonna become a ritual for me.

1:01

I'm gonna try to make it fun. Maybe I'll get some help or whatever. It doesn't matter. So I'm gonna I'm gonna take some time to do that. Number 2 is you need to have a process for for processing your receipt your receipts, what I call a hat manual.

1:16

You've never heard that term from me. It's basically we all wear different hats in our life and in our work. In this case, we're wearing a bookkeeper hat for our business or for our life. And so when it comes to processing your receipts. What's your hat manual?

1:30

What's your process? What's your written out checklist to remind yourself, oh, yeah. Do this. Do this. Do this.

1:35

And in in your hat manual for processing receipts, you should be clear where to find your receipts, which brings us to the 3rd point, is to have 2 physical folders and 2 digital folders for your receipts. So your receipts, some of them come physically, you know, piece of paper or whatever, some of them come digitally. Right? So you you should have 2 receipt, 2 folders from your physical, 2 folders for your digital. What are the 2 folders?

2:00

One is to be processed. K? And one is processed. Now, actually, technically, you might want to have 3 folders for receipts. One is to be processed.

2:13

So you just collect them all in there. Oh, you came back from shopping, you came back from a trip, you came back whatever. You got you got a receipt in the mail. You just put it in the to be processed physical folder. And you should these folders should be mirrored in your digital So when you receive receipts via email, it should go into either to be processed.

2:32

Okay. So what other three goes? To be processed? Tax receipts and process but not tax receipts. Right?

2:40

So to be processed, processed receipts that are tax related and and receipts that are not tax related, but are processed. And what is the process? What do I mean by that? Well, whatever process you have. I don't know what process you have.

2:53

Like, do you need to look at a receipt and go, okay. Let me log that expense, or do you need to I don't know what you do with your receipts. Right? And, basically, most of us just look at the receipt and we log the expense to me, you know, we I spent the money on this, right, things like that. And then we put it in the tax folder or the non tax folder.

3:10

That's it. 3 3 folders, right, physically and 3 folders digitally. So I hope this is helpful and let me know you have any ideas below? Yes. You have another way of processing receipts that you wanna share?

3:23

Comment below or any other questions about I'm not an accountant. I'm not a bookkeeper, but I just I'm an organized person. I'm a I'm a person who's had to become organized over the years, and so I figured out some assistance for that. So for your digital receipts, the ones that come from email, do you need to print them out and store them away? I mean, you could.

3:41

Right? Like like, that's one process. Some people might do is, ah, digital receipt come in. They have easy access to a printer. They don't mind printing.

3:51

This you know, their process is just at the end of the day, whatever email receipts come in or when I'm processing the digital receipts, I just have one folder called to be processed, and I just print and then put it either in the tax folder or the nontax folder. That's optional for you. What I do is I I don't have easy access to a printer. I don't like to print stuff personally. So That's why I just have a folder called tax receipts, and I just receipt comes in and processing my email.

4:15

That's for taxes. I'll put it in there. And then come time for you know, accounting, whatever. I don't think my accountant doesn't ask me for receipts. I don't know if accounts do that anymore.

4:27

Mine doesn't. I've been doing taxes for years and never has seen needed my receipts at all, but it needs to be filed away in case we get audited That's when the receipts need to come out. So you need to, you know, tax receipts 2024. Tax receipts 2023. I mean, those would be separate folders.

4:45

So I hope that's helpful. So so for me, because I don't have easy access to printer, I need separation between physical receipts and digital receipt folder. But for those of you who wanna print stuff out, then you just have one folder, which is your physical receipts. So hope that helps.