First off, how many people here save receipts? So far I really haven't. The thought of keeping track of them all boggles my mind, they're annoying to store away somewhere, and actually finding them again would be a pain.

Second, what do you need receipts for these days? Keep in mind that I'm new to this world of personal finances. Is the IRS ever going to question me about those two CDs I bought at Best Buy the other day?

Lastly, if there's ever a reason I'd need a receipt, would I be legally safe if I only had a scanned copy? I'm thinking of getting a receipt scanner, or a normal flatbed scanner. If I got the latter, I'd probably want some good software for organizing these things. So does anyone here currently do this already and have a good system in place?

Thanks for the help.

I've been keeping almost any document I get (receipts, business correspondence, account statements, etc.) stored as a high-resolution PDF for about three years now. The key isn't some sort of complicated software, but rather an intelligent filing system. I organize like so...

- Year
---Month
-----Accounts Received
-----Accounts Paid
-----Medical
-----Automotive
-----Grocery
-----Employment
-----Housing
-----Etc. (you get the basic idea)

I back up to DVD-RW each week on Saturday morning after scanning in the week's documents. It generally only takes me an hour of so, and once it's done I store the originals in my file cabinet for one calendar year. For instance, on July 1st of this year, I will pull and shred the original documents for June 2005. I figure if I don't touch (or need) the originals for one calendar year, I'm ok shredding them. If I end up needing a copy, I can print it out from the PDF.

One thing that really helps me is being consistent with my file names. I generally use, for example, something like: T-Mobile_Bill_06102006_OPEN.pdf... When I pay the bill, I change the filename to T-Mobile_Bill_06102006_PAID.pdf

This seems like a ton of work when I type it all out like this, but it's really not bad. Plus, now I have one file cabinet and no clutter.

Hope this helps.

I just save some for sentimental reasons. Like cd and video game ones just because it's fun to look back and see when I bought them.

I'm terrible about receipts.

But as a small-business owner, I have to keep some of them to reduce my taxes. So I just dump them into a shoebox until tax time -- for stuff "owned" by the biz.

For personal stuff: if it comes in a box, and has a longish warranty, then I keep the box and stuff the receipt into it. Otherwise, forgetaboutitafter30days.

I stopped matching VISA receipts against statements about 15 years ago -- well worth the time savings.

Cheers!

I keep all of my debit / credit card receipts. I store them in a ziplock bag marked year/month. All invoices for online orders go into folders and everything gets entered into Cash Organizer and that gets synced to MS Money. If your in the US and do Itemized Deductions you can claim your state / local sales tax.

I don't keep any reciepts unless I need them to claim expenses from work.

Same here - I don't keep any receipts at all. I keep ATM slips long enough to record them into Quicken, but that's it. I also shred all bills/invoices over a month old. The only things I keep long term are tax filings and associated government forms. Of course, I don't have my own business, so it's pretty cut and dry.

I used to keep all old statements/invoices, but after never needing to look at any of them for 10 years, it seemed that immediate shredding didn't have much downside.


-Zeke

So far, I've been hole-punching my bills, financial statements, and so forth and putting them into large three-ring binders, one per tax year. This is increasingly a pain and I'm considering buying a scanner and going paperless. I generally keep receipts that matter for reimbursements (e.g., travel expenses), and the rest go into a shoebox "just in case". Heaven help me if I ever actually need something out of that box...

I pay $5/month so my bank will let me download my credit card and checking account data directly into Quicken. It's highway robbery, but it's still worth it to avoid the annoyance of data entry.

Maybe the right answer is to get a flatbed scanner with a sheet feeder, such that it can digest small receipts and larger sheets of paper. Still, I'd prefer the smaller form factor of sheet-feeder-only scanners. Can those deal with flimsy restaurant receipts?

Stick'em to a bit of A4 before you scan them. I have a Fuji scansnap and it's very good, producing OCR'ed PDFs (hence you can search the whole archive for amounts or phrases with acrobat) very quickly - it also can scan both sides at the same time.

I think the current ones don't come with the OCR stuff included anymore, or with the full copy of acrobat either. ISTR mine was about 200+VAT. Does colour too, but it's not really up to photos, being something like 300dpi max.

Hugo

I think part of the highway robbery is coming from Intuit rather than from my bank. Do any banks offer free data download and bill payment via Quicken? I know many offer it from their web sites, but I want my data locally.

Really? I have quicken and sych all my accounts - two or three banks, Charles Schwab etc... all for free. The only money I've given Intuit was for the application itself.

I'm using Quicken Premier, but all versions seem to support downloading/linking. I don't pay bills from w/in Quicken (I actually prefer hand-writing checks for the most part), so I can't comment on that part.

I think my bank (a credit union) does offer free d/l, but I don't use it. It seems I'm off by a bit every other month and sometimes double log some big amount twice a year, so I prefer to reconcile the statements manually. I also find aobut four bogus cc charges a year, never very big, but if I was downloadin' the statements, I'd probably never catch them. It does take me about an hour or two to reconcile everything every month, but I run a small manufacturing business. Before the business, it was only like 15 minutes a month, so no big deal.

I used to keep all my reciepts, but not any more. The business expenses I keep in one file per year (the irs can sort through it if they ever decide to) and everything else I only keep until the statement / bill comes through, reconcile, then shred. The only exceptions are big purchases (like a car) which I file with the other associated docs for that item, forever.

One year I itemised every penny I spent. I live in california, and with all the taxes totalled (federal, state, sales, utilities, property, cars, petrol, etc...) it totaled to just under 60%. And we stupid americans like to laugh at swedes for their taxes. We don't even get health care for that amount. That figure might be even higher, as I counted only the petrol tax taken at the pump, but pertol it about 50% taxes before they tax it at the pump.

My accountant suggested that I don't track all the taxes, as it only serves to anger me.

I save all my receipts for reasonably expensive stuff, if only to prove I owned it if get burgled. When I did get done over I had very little in the way of evidence I owned anything... as a result I don't think I got everything back that I should've done.

I get free downloads from Fidelity, but my bank (Chase) charges me for the bill payment and such. It's worth it for me if only because prior to it I had a habit of saving bills up for payment and I'd occasionally loose one or end up stuck with late fees. Once I started using Quicken for bill payment, I solved that problem once and for good.

I just purchased a this little guy. It's called Neat Receipts Scanalizer and it's simply amazing. I just bought it Friday from the Atlanta airport and it's great. All you have to do is create a folder (like a drawer in your file cabinet) and then scan the receipts. It recognizes the name of the business, the nature of the purchase (meals, fuel, retail, etc.) and you can then export the information to excel, pdf, word, quicken, etc. I've just started using it and I'm already impressed.

BTW, it's $229 on the website and it was on special for Father's Day for $189, shipping included. I'm sure if you call and ask about that special you might be able to talk them into it.

Well worth the money to me.

Yeah, that Neat Receipts scanner is basically what prompted this question. It's just that I get so many receipts piled up (they're all over my car), and I'm not sure what I should be doing with them. I guess I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Like others here, I keep the receipts for stuff above a certain cost. I'll probably get more organized, and put the small-expense receipts in one place, then shred them after a period of time.

Wow, that sounds perfect. Can you use the scanner as a generic scanner or only as part of the whole package? How does the price / quality of this scanner compare to a generic scanner?

EDIT: I went poking at CDW. It seems flatbed scanners are much cheaper, but comparable hardware to this one clocks in around $150. With the Father's Day discount, you're paying $40 for the software. All things considered, that's pretty good, particularly since you're getting integrated software that knows specifically how to parse receipts as well as general-purpose OCR. I'm ordering one right now.

Wells Fargo makes me pay for the quicken access but they give the web access for free.

Oh, that's what you needed the translator for.

No, honestly that was work :-)

Rob