Yesterday, we discussed how to systematically go though your paper piles as part of the The Great Paper Purge: From Piles to *almost* Paperless. I mentioned that during my process of eliminating paper, I trashed and filed some of it. But I also put some categories of paper in another pile!
That may be a big “no no” for some, but as a natural piler and recovering pack-rat, those new stacks of paper kept me organized. Kind of weird, I know, but let me explain.
Receipts are big in my world. I need to keep most of them for tax purposes, but I always procrastinate when it comes to organizing them. Some receipts are online, some are laying around the house, and many are swimming somewhere inside my purse. There’s just too much to track when I don’t have a system in place to organize the receipts!
Ideally, I would like to scan every receipt when it enters my home and be done with it. But when you’re backlogged with receipts, it is too overwhelming, not to mention time consuming, to scan hundreds of receipts.
Manage Receipt Overload with Shoeboxed.com
Instead of individually scanning hundreds of receipts, I took a shortcut and signed up for a free trial at Shoeboxed.com and then canceled it as soon as the trial period was over. Here’s how it worked.
- Shoeboxed.com
sent me two prepaid envelopes.
- I filled them with my receipts and mailed them off.
- Within a few days they sent me an email with a link to where my receipts were stored and mailed the original receipts back to me.
ALL the work was done for me! For FREE!
Even though I canceled the professional free trial and downgraded to the free version, I can still access copes of my receipts any time I want. All the receipts are categorized and organized. I can search my account using the retailer name, price, tax paid, etc. I can even scan receipts myself to send to my account.
Plus, the Shoeboxed.com program can export into Evernote and import expenses from Outright.com, Freshbooks, and many others.
Having someone else scan the receipts for me was a huge time saver and helped tremendously in reducing my paper piles!
Action Items for Today
- Sign up for the free 30 day trial of the mail in plan at Shoeboxed.com
- Put a note on your calender on day 28, 29, and 30 to cancel your membership (just in case :)
- Get your receipts together so you can mail them off as soon as you receive your envelopes.
Let’s hear from you…
So, that’s my shortcut for scanning and tracking a pile of receipts! How do you keep of track receipts?
Sign up for free email updates and join me on Facebook to make sure you don’t miss a single post in this series! You can click here to read more about the Great Paper Challenge: From Piles to *almost* Paperless! Affiliate link included so if you decide a membership is for you I’ll make a few pennies to keep this site going…however, I already mentioned that you can sign up for the free trial and then cancel very easily!
*linked to FinerThingsFriday & it’s a blog party
iDreamOfClean
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I have a 9×12 manilla envelope on the bulletin board next to my desk. I put all the current month’s receipts in the envelope. When the month is over, I close it up, put it in my file cabinet and put up a new envelope for the new month. At the end of the year, I put all the receipts in a storage box for that year’s paperwork.
Clever!
The receipts I need to control are the ones that I need to check against our credit card statements, a job which I put off too much. Now I have mountains of them to go through! Each time I do them I remind myself that they would not be a big job if I did them as soon as the statement arrived, but somehow they get out of control again. Oh well…
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