How Do You Scan, Manage and Organize Your Reciepts & Paperwork?

[Joshua D.]

Just curious as to the tools and organization system different people are using to manage their receipts and paperwork. Admittedly, I'm still using old-school methods of organizing actual paper instead of scanning, storing, then shredding the physical product.

A flatbed scanner seems like it would be cumbersome (I hate scanning with mine) to do any volume of scanning. What tools do you use?

As to the filing and organizing, how are you doing it?

Thanks!

[James Vermillion]

Most people know my investing situation and know that my partner handles most of the day to day operations while I handle the bookkeeping, website and other “behind the scenes” activities. This takes extraordinary coordination and communication between the two of us and we have developed what I believe is a very effective system for dealing with organization and filing. A primary tool we both use is an IPhone scanning app that allows us to scan and email (PDFs) ov documents on the spot. This is especially important with receipts (he scans and emails them to me directly after purchases). Once I receive any documents via email I will print them out for our hardcopy filing system and put them in our electronic filing system which we share via dropbox. This allows both of us access to our official files at all times and provides us with a hardcopy backup.

For more time consuming tasks, I use a commercial-like printer that can scan and email a stack of papers at once. If needed, I can break these up into separate PDFs. I have a system of electronically naming all documents for easy searching. Once a week I review the electronic files and make sure I included everything necessary for that week.