Organizing Receipts: Business Receipt Organization

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Do you struggle to keep track of business receipts? It’s so important to keep all business receipts and to keep them organized in case you get audited in the future. Imagine how stressful it would be to be audited by the IRS… Now imagine you can’t find half of the receipts or invoices for your business expenses. That is stress I certainly don’t want to deal with! If you’re looking for a way to make this business task more manageable, I’ve got a hack for you!

Organizing business receipts can be a very overwhelming task for small business owners. Especially if staying organized does not come naturally to you. These pesky receipts can pile up fast – whether it’s invoices in your email or a stack of Hobby Lobby receipts on your desk. The mental clutter they can create is exhausting!

In this article, I will provide realistic schedules for when to file business receipts, recommend a naming convention for filing those receipts on your computer, and the best PDF scanner apps on the app store.

Once you have a system in place for filing your receipts, it will become way less overwhelming! Let’s get into it:

When to File Business Receipts

Don’t Set It Down, Put It Away

One of the most helpful mottos that I’ve heard is “don’t put it down, put it away”. I mostly hear this in reference to keeping your house clean. But this is helpful in so many aspects of our lives. If you are drowning in receipts and just need them to be handled right away, this is your permission to handle them right away. Once you see that invoice pop up in your email, take the 10 seconds to download and save it to your computer in the designated place for receipts. And as soon as you pay a bill, take a screenshot of that confirmation page with the amount paid and save it to your computer.

As you keep reading, you’ll see my file naming convention and file path that will make organizing receipts so much easier. It will literally take 10 seconds or less, so save yourself the hassle later on by putting it away now.

Once a Week on Your Admin Day

If you are the entrepreneur who has an Admin Day once a week, it’s time to add organizing receipts to your Admin Day to-do list. If you don’t already have an Admin Day but find yourself getting overwhelmed with the never-ending “Honey-do list” in your business (and you’re Honey), consider starting this week! Admin Days (also known as Get Shit Done Days) don’t have to be every week. They can be once every two weeks, once a month, once a quarter – heck even twice a week if you need it. The point is, it’s one designated day to get all those lingering, small tasks off your plate.

This could be replying to that email you’ve been avoiding, scheduling Pinterest pins, or invoicing clients. And now, you can add organizing receipts to the docket. It’s the perfect day to tie up all of those loose ends so you have the bandwidth to focus on more high-level tasks that move your business forward.

Once a Month When Completing Your Bookkeeping

The next productive time to scan and organize receipts is when you are completing your monthly bookkeeping. This should be done once a month – preferably the first week of the following month. The longer you wait to complete this, the more overwhelming it will get. This involves sitting down and recording your income and expenses for the month. If you want to DIY your bookkeeping, I have a spreadsheet solution for you. If you don’t want to do your monthly bookkeeping yourself, let me handle that for you.

It may seem like a grueling task, but it’s so important for you to see your business financials from a birds-eye view each month. Once you’ve recorded all of this information, you can see which income streams are doing best for your business, which expense categories have gotten a little too expensive, etc. Then, you’re able to make high-level decisions about your business to keep pushing the needle forward.

Once you open up your spreadsheet each month to record these transactions, you’ll go through and save receipts from your email inbox and scan your paper receipts. Making this task a part of your schedule will ensure that you complete it each month and you won’t be overwhelmed with a pile of unentered receipts at year-end!

How to File Receipts and Invoices

It’s best to file all receipts for one year in the same folder. For example, your 2023 receipts would all be filed in the 2023 Receipts folder. Now, where to put that 2023 Receipts folder? I’m glad you asked. Inside your business folder on your computer, add an Administrative folder. Inside the Administrative folder, create a Financial folder. Your 2023 Receipts folder will live inside the Financial folder.

Here is what your folder file path will look like: Your Business Folder > Administrative > Financial > 2023 Receipts

Easy peasy, right? It logically makes sense and you (or your designated employees) will always understand the path to take to find your receipts.

Next, we’ll look at the recommended naming convention to use in your file names.

In Date Order

This file name naming convention is truly a life-saver! It’s so helpful to keep all those business receipts organized and in one place. And the best part? It’s so simple and makes logical sense! Everything you need to know about a purchase is right there in the file name. No more digging around a folder filled with Scan_094 file names, opening each one, trying to find that one receipt you need to locate. Here is the naming convention I recommend:

Date Vendor Amount Description

So, when the monthly charge from Flodesk hits my credit card for $19 on January 22, 2023, here is how I save that invoice in my 2023 Receipts folder:

23_0122 Flodesk $19 Email Marketing Subscription

It’s as simple as that! Now, we can see clearly which invoice this is when scrolling through our 2023 Receipts folder.

The description part of the naming convention is optional. I typically use the description if I purchased something at Amazon or Target, but not for recurring software purchases, since it’s pretty obvious to me what was purchased from Flodesk.

I label the date as year_monthday so that the folder flows in chronological order. You can set this up however feels right to you but I definitely recommend using numbers for the month, rather than writing out the name of the month so that things stay in order.

The Best PDF Scanner Apps

Although I do own a scanner that is connected to my printer, I prefer scanning apps because they do a much better job in my opinion. There are so many free options in the App Store that make organizing receipts a breeze! I highly recommend scanning all of your physical receipts and saving them to your computer. It’s best to keep all receipts in one place and I’m sure you don’t like to be drowning in paper at your desk. I know I don’t!

Adobe Scan

My favorite scanner app is the Adobe Scan app. However, this one is only my top pick if you already pay for the Adobe suite. If you do pay for Adobe, your scans will automatically integrate with the Adobe cloud on your computer. Which makes life so much easier. The scan quality is great and you have many options for saving files.

iScanner

If you’re not paying for Adobe, then I recommend this scanner app. It has everything you need to scan a clear document. I used this one for years until I started paying for Adobe and it worked great for me!

Now you are all set to organize your business receipts with a clear and logical method. Let me know if you have any other tips for organizing receipts. I’d love to hear how you’re implementing your methods!