How do I swim through this ocean of receipts?
January 24, 2018 7:05 PM Subscribe
I need a better system of tracking/storing my shopping receipts. Is there a phone app that I can use? Or some other system that can make me feel somewhat organized?
I know there was a similar question a few months ago but that was primarily to compare prices among different stores. All I want is to store the stupid receipts somewhere that's not in piles on my dining room table.
What I've done for years is stuff them in envelopes labeled November 2017, December 2017, January 2018 etc. But this is ridiculous and I have a billion envelopes stuffed into every corner of my tiny, tiny Brooklyn apartment. Ideally I'd like to only keep one or two months of receipts (for things I might need to return) and scan the rest of it onto a cloud or something.
Any ideas? I've tried at least a dozen apps on my phone but none of them really does it. They basically take a picture of the receipt and then want me to put it into some complicated budget. I just want to save it somewhere and then be able to look at it when necessary. Help!
I know there was a similar question a few months ago but that was primarily to compare prices among different stores. All I want is to store the stupid receipts somewhere that's not in piles on my dining room table.
What I've done for years is stuff them in envelopes labeled November 2017, December 2017, January 2018 etc. But this is ridiculous and I have a billion envelopes stuffed into every corner of my tiny, tiny Brooklyn apartment. Ideally I'd like to only keep one or two months of receipts (for things I might need to return) and scan the rest of it onto a cloud or something.
Any ideas? I've tried at least a dozen apps on my phone but none of them really does it. They basically take a picture of the receipt and then want me to put it into some complicated budget. I just want to save it somewhere and then be able to look at it when necessary. Help!
Google Keep will even pull out some of the text from the picture you take. Worth a try.
posted by 8603 at 7:33 PM on January 24, 2018
posted by 8603 at 7:33 PM on January 24, 2018
It might help to understand the problem if you tell us why you are keeping so many receipts that there's an "ocean". If you're you're not interested in entering/tracking the data for budgeting or other accounting purposes, then why are you keeping every receipt?
posted by caek at 7:43 PM on January 24, 2018 [13 favorites]
posted by caek at 7:43 PM on January 24, 2018 [13 favorites]
My father likes to use Evernote for this and it works Great - take a picture of the receipt, throw it away forever.
However, one additional detail. My husband is like you and keeps baggies labeled “June 2017” and “Dec-Jan ‘12-13” scattershot around the house. It makes me crazy. Meanwhile, I do not keep any receipts - not even the Evernote approach. It has never, ever been a problem for me that I don’t keep receipts. We have never, ever referenced my husband’s receipt baggies. Granted, we’ve only been together for 9 years and it’s possible that it will happen in the future, but I’ll take 9 years of evidence as a strong indicator. Therefore, whether you use Evernote or not, my single biggest piece of advice to you is: Throw away your receipts, because they are trash.
posted by samthemander at 8:48 PM on January 24, 2018 [11 favorites]
However, one additional detail. My husband is like you and keeps baggies labeled “June 2017” and “Dec-Jan ‘12-13” scattershot around the house. It makes me crazy. Meanwhile, I do not keep any receipts - not even the Evernote approach. It has never, ever been a problem for me that I don’t keep receipts. We have never, ever referenced my husband’s receipt baggies. Granted, we’ve only been together for 9 years and it’s possible that it will happen in the future, but I’ll take 9 years of evidence as a strong indicator. Therefore, whether you use Evernote or not, my single biggest piece of advice to you is: Throw away your receipts, because they are trash.
posted by samthemander at 8:48 PM on January 24, 2018 [11 favorites]
I’ve been using Scanbot on my phone, and syncing the resulting image to my desktop via Dropbox. I shoot the image on the spot when the receipt is generated, and the file name shows the time and place where I shot it. There’s no fancy budget management involved.
posted by adamrice at 8:55 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by adamrice at 8:55 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Respectfully, it's likely you're skipping a step -- the why before the how. As a professional organizer, I find that many of my clients keep their receipts because they think they are supposed to; at the least, they think they are supposed to keep all of the information referenced in them. That's not true. In general, unless you are trying to keep your receipts as alibis in case the police try to convict you of a crime (yes, my clients watch way too much Law & Order), you generally want to keep receipts for three reasons:
1) In case you want to return something (which, as you've identified, means keeping things for no more than 30-60 days, whatever the items return policy is). Two #10 envelopes should suffice for this. Put a note on your calendar reminding you to shred the over-60 day receipts.
2) To prove ownership, generally advised for things of significant value. (Each client sets his or her own best value -- for some clients, anything over $200 is a big-ticket item; for others, it's over $1000. Think: jewelry, major electronics, major appliances. If your home were damaged in a fire, your insurance company would not review receipts to reimburse for individual small items like books, toasters, hair dryers, pillows, CDs, etc.)
3) To prove a tax-deductible expense.
So, that dramatically reduces the receipts you want to keep longer-term.
If you are not keeping your receipts (or the info on them) in order to track them against your bank account or credit cards to make sure you were correctly charged, then the receipts that don't fit into the above three categories, and receipts past the return-policy expiration date in category #1, don't need to be kept at all. Cash receipts that don't fit the three categories above can be tossed immediately. Receipts for meals (unless they are tax-deductible business expenses) can be tossed as soon as you verify that the tip wasn't changed/falsified.
As you don't want to maintain old receipts for budgeting or tracking, my professional advice is to only keep the printed receipts for category #1 until the return policy expiration date, and keep files for categories #2 and #3, as most stores and the IRS will not accept most scanned receipts. (The IRS will tell you that you can scan your receipts. Then, in an audit, they will likely tell you that the way you scanned your receipts is not acceptable proof. We professional organizers have been fussing with the IRS about this for at least 15 years.)
If you absolutely need to keep receipts because -- a) you watch too much Law & Order, b) you have a relative or some other fiduciary relationship where you are required to be able to prove all expenses you've ever had, or c) something I haven't covered here, Evernote is your absolute simplest option. It will date your scanned item (and you can use your phone's camera to handle the task) and give you the chance to tag your receipts with things like expense categories, payment methods, or alibi partners' names. You can put all of your receipts in one notebook, though if you really must scan all of the receipts, then you may as well at least have separate notebooks by year.
But seriously, I must have at least three clients a month with whom I have this convo, and in 17 years, I've only had one (non-Law & Order alibi person) who had to maintain this information long-term, and it was due to the requirements of a financially abusive spouse. Before you start filling up your Evernote notebooks, please reconsider why you would need to keep receipts for things you are not tracking or budgeting, not returning, and not deducting, and not proving big-ticket expense ownershp. Chances are good that you will find it freeing to only maintain (digitally or otherwise) documentary proof of essential purchases.
(Related note: one client's husband refused to let go of his broken-in-four-places plaster-ish dental impressions from when he was 11, before he got his braces put on, because he was convinced from watching Law & Order that his body could be identified from fire/rubble by matching his teeth to the crumbling, broken dental impressions. From 50+ years earlier.)
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 11:50 PM on January 24, 2018 [20 favorites]
1) In case you want to return something (which, as you've identified, means keeping things for no more than 30-60 days, whatever the items return policy is). Two #10 envelopes should suffice for this. Put a note on your calendar reminding you to shred the over-60 day receipts.
2) To prove ownership, generally advised for things of significant value. (Each client sets his or her own best value -- for some clients, anything over $200 is a big-ticket item; for others, it's over $1000. Think: jewelry, major electronics, major appliances. If your home were damaged in a fire, your insurance company would not review receipts to reimburse for individual small items like books, toasters, hair dryers, pillows, CDs, etc.)
3) To prove a tax-deductible expense.
So, that dramatically reduces the receipts you want to keep longer-term.
If you are not keeping your receipts (or the info on them) in order to track them against your bank account or credit cards to make sure you were correctly charged, then the receipts that don't fit into the above three categories, and receipts past the return-policy expiration date in category #1, don't need to be kept at all. Cash receipts that don't fit the three categories above can be tossed immediately. Receipts for meals (unless they are tax-deductible business expenses) can be tossed as soon as you verify that the tip wasn't changed/falsified.
As you don't want to maintain old receipts for budgeting or tracking, my professional advice is to only keep the printed receipts for category #1 until the return policy expiration date, and keep files for categories #2 and #3, as most stores and the IRS will not accept most scanned receipts. (The IRS will tell you that you can scan your receipts. Then, in an audit, they will likely tell you that the way you scanned your receipts is not acceptable proof. We professional organizers have been fussing with the IRS about this for at least 15 years.)
If you absolutely need to keep receipts because -- a) you watch too much Law & Order, b) you have a relative or some other fiduciary relationship where you are required to be able to prove all expenses you've ever had, or c) something I haven't covered here, Evernote is your absolute simplest option. It will date your scanned item (and you can use your phone's camera to handle the task) and give you the chance to tag your receipts with things like expense categories, payment methods, or alibi partners' names. You can put all of your receipts in one notebook, though if you really must scan all of the receipts, then you may as well at least have separate notebooks by year.
But seriously, I must have at least three clients a month with whom I have this convo, and in 17 years, I've only had one (non-Law & Order alibi person) who had to maintain this information long-term, and it was due to the requirements of a financially abusive spouse. Before you start filling up your Evernote notebooks, please reconsider why you would need to keep receipts for things you are not tracking or budgeting, not returning, and not deducting, and not proving big-ticket expense ownershp. Chances are good that you will find it freeing to only maintain (digitally or otherwise) documentary proof of essential purchases.
(Related note: one client's husband refused to let go of his broken-in-four-places plaster-ish dental impressions from when he was 11, before he got his braces put on, because he was convinced from watching Law & Order that his body could be identified from fire/rubble by matching his teeth to the crumbling, broken dental impressions. From 50+ years earlier.)
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 11:50 PM on January 24, 2018 [20 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks everyone. I guess you're right and I dont really need to keep all these receipts, except for the ones that fall into the three categories The Wrong Kind of Cheese lists above.
For those receipts, I will check out Scanbot. I think I already tried Evernote and it didnt work but... I'll give it a second look. Thanks!
posted by silverstatue at 11:16 AM on January 25, 2018
For those receipts, I will check out Scanbot. I think I already tried Evernote and it didnt work but... I'll give it a second look. Thanks!
posted by silverstatue at 11:16 AM on January 25, 2018
I scan just about everything including receipts and bills. Have been doing this for several years as part of a paper-less strategy. The scanned and mostly ocr'd material ends up on a windows machine. Windows has a pretty good built-in indexing/search system so it's generally easy to find something from the past without intentional organizing.
A decent scanner is needed; mine is a fujitsu Scansnap which cost a few hundred $$$.
The big advantage of this approach is that you don't have to think much about what to save and what to discard. Once a week or so scan from the "in" pile; save the hardcopy through the next backup cycle for the computer and then shred or discard.
There are exceptions. I hang on to original tax docs and receipts for large purchases - at least for awhile.
posted by Kevin S at 1:20 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
A decent scanner is needed; mine is a fujitsu Scansnap which cost a few hundred $$$.
The big advantage of this approach is that you don't have to think much about what to save and what to discard. Once a week or so scan from the "in" pile; save the hardcopy through the next backup cycle for the computer and then shred or discard.
There are exceptions. I hang on to original tax docs and receipts for large purchases - at least for awhile.
posted by Kevin S at 1:20 PM on January 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 7:12 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]