Keeping Track of Receipts

There was a question in the comments a little while ago. A reader was wondering how we keep track of receipts. To be honest, something so very simple sometimes is pretty tricky.

For my husband and I, we have become accustomed to getting a receipt for everything. Some stores ask if you want a receipt, and we always say, “Yes.” We also ask that it is not put in the bag. That way, it can go in our wallets.

Here’s where it should be simple. We take the receipts out of our wallets and put them in a designated spot. Having a designated spot works well for our bills. I have a letter rack where our bills to pay go, as well as anything else that needs our attention. The bill rack is hanging near the calendar so we get a daily reminder of anything important.

Receipts in a wallet get clunky and folded. They also stay in the wallet for a little too long and sometimes those thermal printed receipts fade. I tried using a cheap organizer basket but it didn’t work out. The basket would get moved around and receipts wouldn’t always make it there. Having a designated spot is definitely what we need.

We also need a routine for our receipts. There are days, sometimes weeks where we don’t spend money (except for bills which are paid by check or through online bill pay). So a daily emptying of our wallets is not an easy habit to get into. I have to admit – keeping track of our receipts was easier when we were spending more money…probably because of the daily routine!

I think what we need to do is find a nice basket that can hang on the wall somewhere. It has to be big enough to handle clunky receipts and probably be nice on the eyes. I’m sure there is something that could be bought to fit the bill but I’d rather make something if possible. I looked on instructables.com and didn’t see anything (that is my new favorite site for DIY projects). Any out there have any suggestions on a receipt routine?

Posted by Tricia on March 8, 2009 at 10:13 PM in General Personal Finance | 23 Comments »
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Beth responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 2:50 am
I put my receipts under a paperweight on my desk. I do not like having an extraneous pile of stuff cluttering my work area, and that causes me to quickly process the receipts when they come in. (Like you, I go multiple days without purchasing anything.) I love having a clear workspace. For me personally, if something is sitting in an attractive receptacle that is not in my way, it is too easy to ignore it. My devious creative mind has to combat my devious lazy nature! Also, I’ve read a great quote: “It’s easier to keep up than to catch up.” Meaning, it’s easier to process a few receipts regularly than to face a bigger job after they’ve piled up.
Trixie responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 7:01 am
Hi Tricia,

Between our household items and receipts for our businesses we have hundreds of receipts to track each year. I confess, at first I was overwhelmed!

Over time, I finally figured out a system that works pretty well. On top of my desk I have a pretty little basket sandwiched in between a couple of plants. We empty all receipts and other paperwork that needs to be recorded and filed. Each week I’ll go through the stack and sort them out into home/business 1,2 or 3 and then log them.

Please note, this system works best when I actually sit down and LOG the receipts. LOL

Take Care,

Trixie
Chelsea responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 7:19 am
We use a magnetic clip on the refrigerator. It holds a lot, but begins to be ugly when there are a lot, providing an incentive to process them.
kev responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 7:35 am
I use a small plastic box with a snap-on lid. I log my receipts at the end of every night. It’s a habit now, I don’t even think about it. As soon as the receipt has been logged into Quicken, I place it in my plastic box.

I clean out the box when I reconcile my accounts and shred all the receipts belonging to reconciled items. Unless they are keeper receipts (i.e. stuff I may want to return, gifts, etc..) – I file those ones away.
Susan responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 7:49 am
I use an envelope. A plain old #10 envelope. I put all the receipts in there – I keep it with my bills. When the bank stmt shows up, I can shred ATM receipts, about once every 6 months I purge the grocery store receipts.

Tax stuff does go into a different folder (on 1/1 of a new year I write Taxes (year) on a manilla folder and keep that in a filing cabinet.

We don’t really buy much, so perhaps I don’t have as many receipts as other folks.
Eddie responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 8:58 am
At the end of each day, I scan any receipt I got into my computer. Deposit slips, gas, purchases, even a trip to Dunkin Donuts (no endorsement implied). I then take the receipts and pop them in a small box…remember that Amazon box you tossed out last week? …and at the end of the month: shred shred shred.

The only receipts I save are legalistic, or something maybe needed for a warranty or other issue, but they still get scanned. That allows me to keep a file organizer down to one milk-crate, using pendaflex folders. So, think smarter, not harder.

I use a program called ReceiptWallet (I’m use a Mac) with my Fijitsu scanner. There is a competitor out there called Neat Receipts, but I have no info on how good it is, or what it offers. They do have a nice package that includes a scanner with the software (bit pricey though, imho.)

That said, I am also a religious user of financial software (I use Moneydance, but Quicken or MSMoney is just as functional), so paper retention is kept to a minimum, but information access is at a maximum.
Adrienne responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I saw a while back on a home organization show and have been wanting to try this ever since- the organizer suggested getting a device which I don’t know the name of- but seems perfect. It is one of those metal stands with a point sticking straight up. So, he suggested cleaning out your wallet and placing each one on this stand (which will pierce the paper and cause a hole). Forgive me for not remembering what he called it but I thought I would throw that out there.
moderntightwad responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I too use the envelope system (plain #10). Each month I take out two envelopes, write the month on it and business or home. One day a week I take our wallets and sort any receipts into either envelope and then replace the receipts with our weekly “allowance.” That provides a nice incentive to continue with the process. In all honesty we don’t have many receipts so I usually do a tax round up every six months, which makes it much easier come tax season. And we’re rather new to this system, so the real time consumer is going through boxes of old paperwork and converting them to the new organization.
Michelle H. responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
@Adrienne,
I need a couple of those metal thingies too! Perfect for phone messages and for receipts. Let me know if you find them anywhere.
Blessings!
Mr Plasectomy responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Wow, all of you are pretty organized compared to us. All of our receipts are scattered on the counter, in my money clip, at the bottom of my wife’s purse, or in the bottom of the empty plastic bag hanging up in the basement stairwell with all the other plastic bags.

We really need to start tracking all of this as well. With the cash only system we are using beyond the online bill pay services provided by the bank it would help to know where every penny is going rather than trying to keep a mental tally.
emmi responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
We clean wallets and put directly into quicken. No real schedule for this beyond when the moment strikes or wallets are too big.

Beyond that we keep everything for 10 years. Our old post-quicken filing process broke down over the last few years and for reimbursements it turned into a huge job to find the originals. I even had to hunt behind the unused desk they had been piling up on to find fallen ones. What a mess. In the end, took the $10 card I’d gotten in the mail for an office supply store and went and bought an armload of the recycled plastic accordion folders with 15 slots (they were cheaper than the paper kind!). Now it’s pretty quick. Receipts, statements, bills and everything get registered in quicken and stuffed into the appropriate month on the current accordion folder. If you need to find an old one, it’s not too bad to search for it. When we’ve filled the forth plastic folder, I’ll bundle the contents into a regular file drawer and reuse it. We can’t shred. We’ve needed to produce originals for too many unexpected things in the past.
Thankful responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Receipts stay in wallet and purse until processed. It helps force me to keep up on entry. After processing, they are filed into accordion check file by month. I keep those for 7 years, same amount of time that I could be audited. I’ve been thinking about moving to scanning, but I hate to introduce more time with technology without a very smooth process for handling large amounts of files.
jen w responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
i use one of those check spindles to keep my receipts together.
Tricia responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
kev – well, I have pack rat tendencies and I’ve only just begun to shred receipts from even our grocery purchases from a few years ago. I gotta get better at that. Those receipts can be shredded once the bank reconciliation is completed.

I like the check spindle idea!
marg responded:
Posted: March 9th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
We live in a state where it is beneficial to deduct the sales tax we pay on the itemized deduction form of our taxes (as our state has no income tax so our deduction there would be zero). Thus, we save every receipt for everything we buy all year long. It is a mountain of paper. I keep it monthly in a box that I received as part of a bath & body gift box. Then after reconciling each month, the receipts go in an envelope marked with the month and year. If I have time I will also mark the envelope with the total tax paid for that month
CanadianKate responded:
Posted: March 10th, 2009 at 7:03 am
For those who mentioned the spike to put receipts onto: we did that when we started our home business because I run fans to keep us cool in the summer and the receipts kept floating off my desk.

Dh made me two. A long nail through a 3″ long piece of leftover baseboard, painted black with leftover spray paint (from painting our brass mailbox black when the ‘brass’ wore off after the second winter), and four adhesive rubber feet on the bottom.

I have one in the kitchen for household chits and one in the office for business.

Of course, in order for them to work, you have to actually log the expenses….. for that I don’t have any system except NIKE (just do it.)
Kelly responded:
Posted: March 10th, 2009 at 11:38 am
We have a basket that hangs on the wall. When one of us has a reciept, we put them in the basket. Then when it’s time to log things into Quicken or pay the bills, my DH takes all the things from the basket upstairs to his desk and does the data entry … usually once or twice a week before going to bed and always on Sunday morning while I’m at church.
Rob in Madrid responded:
Posted: March 10th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I mark my weekly spending in a small note book so I simply put my receipts in there at the end of the day and every day or two take a min to update. It’s greatly simplfied my budgeting, at a glance I can tell if I’m over spending or not.
Alissa responded:
Posted: March 10th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Hey Tricia,

I process my receipts immediately, that way there is no need to keep them anywhere. As soon as I have a moment (or after the kids have gone to bed at night), I sit down, enter the receipts into Quicken, and then file them by month in a little accordian-style coupon organizer. If the receipt is associated with a warranty, it gets stapled to the warranty and filed in my warranty file box. Otherwise, it stays in the coupon organizer for the year, and then when that month approaches the next year, that particular section gets thrown out and fresh receipts (from this year) put in. I’ve never had a need to go back more than a year for any receipt (other than the warranty-related ones), so this seems to work for us.
James @ GoingBrokeBlog responded:
Posted: March 12th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
I’m with Alissa; because I run a small business and do all of my finances at the end of each day, I just go through my receipts (mostly digital, very few in hand) and enter them into Quickbooks. Business receipts go in one folder in the filing cabinet, personal receipts in another.

But I am one of those people who will never get anything done if it’s a) not what I want to do, and b) even slightly complicated. It takes me months to repair broken doorknobs and such around the house, so with finances, the fewer steps in the process the better for me.

Ah, my poor wife.
b_in_sc responded:
Posted: March 13th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I try to enter my receipts into the checking account register daily. DH tacks his onto the bulletin board so I can find and enter his. (We have to keep everything out of cat reach).
Kerry responded:
Posted: March 23rd, 2009 at 12:08 am
those metal things.. can be called ‘receipt spikes’. I purchased two on ebay years ago – one at home, one for the desk at work – excellent for receipts. They cost me a few dollars each.
Timothy Gill responded:
Posted: April 4th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
If the receipt is for something that cannot be returned (ie. gas, groceries, fast food) I enter it into Quicken and throw it away. There is no use in keeping the receipts sitting around. For other purchases such as home goods or clothes, I enter them into Quicken, then store them in a file for reference should I need them in the future.