How To Stay Organized With Reciepts...

ruskent

My news years resolution is to keep my business records more orgainized.
I realized that if i don't keep better track of my records and keep everything in order i am going to loose my butt as my business gets bigger .

I plan on making a folder for every job and putting all the recipts associated for the job in that folder. So i will be able to do accurate PnL reports on each job.

How do you guys keep your other reciepts orgainzed? I figure i will also have a folder for every other catogory of right offs. Should i break each catorgy down to the month or the quater? Or should i put all my gas reciepts for the year in one folder?

Matt

Mike Finley

Do you use quick books? Assign your reciepts or the expense on them to each job and do job costing using quick books with the click of the mouse for profits and loss on each job. Stash the reciepts what ever way you need to for your accountant or for an audit, but use your computer for doing your financials.

Cole

You will love it:
http://www.neatreceipts.com/

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Tulsa's Leader in Outdoor Living Construction | Facebook | Tulsa Pergola Builder | Tulsa Outdoor Kitchens

ruskent

I do use quick books. I was just trying to figure out how to keep my reciepts neither then throwing them in a big box!

ProWallGuy

I use a job folder to hold all the receipts in the truck until I can enter them into the pc. Then that folder gets put in a file cabinet, I always keep the hard copies.

I use these.

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Wallpaper Hanger St. Louis
Digital Murals Installation

KENNEDY

I use a business credit card for all gas and unexpected material purchases. At the end of the month everything is itemized on my bill and takes only a couple of minutes to enter into QB. This also leaves a paper trail so no more collecting all those little receipts at the pump. Also the credit card ALWAYS gets paid in full at the end of the month.

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Sean Kennedy
St. Louis Painting Contractor
Kennedy Painting LLC

Richard

I have yet to upgrade my quickbooks, but I've been entering all receipts in an excel spreadsheet my wife set up--works great...I too need to come up with a much better way forward

I like that scanner cole found, but for $230 I'd rather use my brandy new HP printer...it's nice though

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Rich

Mike Finley

Consider it this way - if your computer using quick books is taking care of all your accounting (job costing, p&L, reporting etc...) then the receipts serve no additional purpose once what they represent is entered into quick books. From that point on the only concern is retrieving a reciept if you are required to prove something to the IRS by means of the hard copy.

So... how you file them really only has bearing on how easy they would be to retrieve if required. Since they will be dated in Quick books, it seems the smartest way to file them is simply month by month. 12 folders full of reciepts, then stuck in bankers boxes and kept on file for 7 years.

Having individual folders for gas, tools, etc... stuffed with those individual receipts really serves no purpose if you are using your computer for your accounting. The receipts are just in long term storage. Does that make sense?

Richard

keep in mind...having backup files on zip drives is key...quickbooks could fail like mine did...not fun, and no...I didnt back things up at that time...

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Rich

Danahy

Quickbooks, then I file the receipts month to month, end of year 12 folders get vaulted, 12 new ones appear in the current section.

Mike Finley

<ouch!>

So you kept ignoring that anoying message that quick books promts you with every 5 or six times you use it about now would be a good time to back up, would you like to do it now?

I don't have any auto back up system in place (maybe I should), I have a few computers networked together so I try to get in the habit of copying important folders onto each of them about once a month. Usually I dump the my documents folder of each computer onto each other.

Richard

yeah, Mike...I'm lucky I only had about 5 jobs in there too--I'm telling ya, those zip drives plug right into the computer and suck out any info, pictures, etc that you want....helps you to delete stuff off of your comp too, which will also speed it up a crap load

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Rich

Teetorbilt

I have backed up QB with daily's, weekly's and monthly's. One stupid keystroke last year fouled everything up for weeks. I've put this here before.

Make sure that you get your reciepts on disk somehow. Thermal paper doesn't last very long, especially here.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

Mike Finley

Have you seen these little gizmos? A USB drive?




They just plug into a USB port, some of them are as big as a Gig or more! They are super cheap, $10-30 each, I've even seen them for free with a rebate from Office Max.

ruskent

I pay the 4 bucks a month for the online backup from qucikbooks. It backs up my whole qucikbooks file every day.

I think online backup is the way to go incase you house ever gets burnt down or destroyed.

Matt

Teetorbilt

Mike, I even have some of them left over from O'l#2's techie conventions. I'd prefer that they give out free drinks at nudie bars like they do at the boat shows.

I got a pile of them. Not a hint as how to use'm but I got'em.

__________________
You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

Brian

We enter our receipts into QB 3 or 4 times a week. We then file the paper. No huge piles of paper, and no missing receipts. It takes less than 15 minutes a week (and that's a busy week). The longer things sit around, the more easily they get lost. The more we procrastinate, the longer it takes to get it done.

And do what the others have suggested and back up regularly.

Brian Phillips

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Houston Interior Painting
Houston Exterior Painting
Houston Painting Contractor

ultimatetouch

Thats all I need to back up my quickbooks file. You plug that in what every week or so and then remove it?

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Ultimatetouch
Illinois Remodeling Company, Kitchen Remodeling Chicago, Room Additions Illinois

axnjoe

Its funny that you ask about filing receipts. My wife and I were just argueing about that process last night. We have Quickbooks too. She likes it , I do not. I file all reciepts in order by DATE and that is how they are filed. If you are a small biz, you can run down to an office supply house and get one of those 12 month expandable folders and file erery receipt by date. SOOO simple and all in one place.
My wife on the otherhand wants to create files for every vendor...etc.
But after you enter the receipt into quick books, the idea of creating multitude of files(folders) seems redundant to me.
I like my way better. For now atleast, til I see the logic to support otherwise.

Mike Finley

Matt- that's a good idea. $4.00 is well worth it, I didn't know they did that.

Teetor- techies aren't allowed in nudie bars!

ultimatetouch - you could do that with them, maybe not the best idea to rely on that as a permanent back up system. I think those things are great for moving files from one computer to another if you don't have a network, or for giving a file to somebody, but I don't know if I would trust them for long term storage.

I would get something like this instead of the USB memory thing.


External hard drive. They are ridiculously cheap, I've seen name brand ones with 250gigs for $150.00. They just plug into your computer with a USB cable and your computer should see it as another drive on your computer, just drag or copy the files you want to back up to it with the click of your mouse.