Virtual Internet Marketing Assistance for Busy Business Owners

Setting up a system to keep order on your receipts and invoices needs to be easy to maintain so that it doesn’t get neglected and then become a huge onerous task that always gets put the bottom of the todo list. At the same time you need to have to hand invoices that need to be paid so you avoid any late charges because it’s got lost in the pile of receipts. My system doubles up as a log of all outgoings and incomes which I can easily reconcile when a statement comes in, as well as lets me know exactly how much money I have available (not the same as your bank balance which doesn’t take into account uncleared cheques or direct debits about to go out). In addition, I use the same data to prepare my year end accounts for the tax man.

Here’s how to get started:

Get 3 different coloured plastic slip folders (I have red, yellow and green), 1 lever-arch folder and 1 set of a-z index dividers. Each statement, bill or receipt progresses through these folders only once and eventually ends up in the A-Z dividers in the lever-arch (or the shredder if it has no value in keeping.

Red folder – labelled “to check/pay”

Here put all statements (bank and credit card), invoices or bills that need to be paid. They might arrive by post or email. If by email, then print them off and put them here. When they’ve been paid or in the case of statements, checked, then put them in the yellow folder. Check this folder weekly to fortnightly so bills are paid in time so not to incur late fees, and not too early that the bank and not you benefits from the interest on your money.

Yellow folder – labelled “to log”

Here you put all the receipts and statements you’ve checked and/or paid. You can also put other paid receipts that you collect in your handbag (credit card receipts as well as cash receipts that are business expenses). I log all these in a spreadsheet where I record date, which card (i.e. whether I used my debit card or which credit card, or cash), what it was for and the amount. This is the same spreadsheet that I use to reconcile the bank and credit card statements. I just have an extra column for checking off. If the receipt is not needed any further (e.g. grocery or hair/personal receipts, etc), then I shred it. If it was for a purchase for my business (e.g. petrol, stationery, postage, business services etc) then it’s needed for my tax records and it goes in the third folder, the green folder. If the receipt is for a large purchase that has a warranty, then this too goes in the green folder. I check the yellow folder as often as weekly to at least once monthly, depending on how closely I need to monitor bank balances.

Green folder – labelled “to file”

If I don’t want to do any further filing immediately, I slip the bills and statements I need to keep in the green folder ready to file in the lever-arch folder. I usually do filing at least once a month, so it doesn’t become too onerous.

Lever-arch folder – labelled “Expenses”

This is the final destination for receipts and statements. They are filed in alphabetical order with the aid of the A-Z dividers. Within each letter, it naturally gets filed in date order, so the latest is on the top. I have one for each financial tax year. If it’s been a particularly busy year, this folder might expand into two lever-arches before the year is over. At the end of April, it’s ready to pass on to the accountant and it’s all sorted ready for their audit, together with my spreadsheet, which also equates to a lower audit fee as they don’t have to sort my documents out to make sense of it all. Then I create another lever-arch folder with A-Z dividers ready for the next financial year.

Have you got some filing tips that work well for you? Please share them, I’d love to hear them.