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Invoice and receipt template for small businesses

hey everybody Joe here from Avalon now keeping track of your business receipts can be a pain in the butt but we've got the solution to help you sit comfortably with your finances this video will give you practical tips on how to easily and quickly manage your business receipts managing your receipts doesn't have to be a nightmare gone are the days of rummaging through shoe boxes full of crumpled paper we are in the digital age my friends we'll first dive into why it's important to maintain your business records and then we'll get into our tips and best practices we'll look at the simple and free receipt management method using Google Drive then I'll show you how to automate things using a software platform called Dex and finally we'll discuss options that come built in with your accounting software so all that nothing else coming right in [Music] foreign [Music] agency lays out specific rules for how businesses should maintain their records and store receipts so understanding these requirements is vital for avoiding headaches down the line businesses are required to keep all necessary records and supporting documents that determine their tax obligations for a period of six years from the end of the tax year to which they relate or more simply you should make sure you keep your records and receipts organized and accessible for at least seven years failure to maintain adequate records can mean that your expense claims are disallowed potentially costing you additional Tax Plus penalties and interest as for the format CRA isn't overly picky they accept documents in both physical and electronic formats for digital records they must be readable and able to be reproduced in case CRA comes knocking on your door to review your books in cases where the CRA reviews your expenses or conducts an audit they could request a variety of documents these can include sales invoices and contracts to verify your reported Revenue purchase invoices and expense receipts to help confirm the expenses you've claimed bank statements to provide an overview of your cash flow and help verify both your income and your expenses if you have employees the CRA May request payroll records to ensure proper remittances of source deductions have been made for businesses collecting GST and HST the CRA could also want to see documents supporting the amounts that you've collected on sales as well as GST and HST paid on purchases the key to successfully navigating a CRA reviewer audit is to maintain thorough accurate and accessible records keeping all supporting documents that back up your income and expense claims and stay organized so you can quickly provide any requested information and that's exactly what we're about to show you how to do first up simple receipt management using Google Drive now Google Drive is a great option if you're doing your own bookkeeping using spreadsheet eats or some other manual method if you're not sure how to manage your books using a spreadsheet you can check out our video tutorial of our popular bookkeeping template for Google Sheets it's a great way to simplify your bookkeeping that video is linked in the description below if you're interested in that but for simple receipt tracking here's how using Google Drive works so step one take a snapshot of your receipt with your phone just make sure that you capture the entire receipt in the photo and not just the credit card receipt it doesn't need to be zoomed in either most phones these days have cameras that will easily capture the fine print from three feet away if your receipt has multiple Pages it's best to separate them out and lay them down on a flat surface and take a single photo of all pages at once step two hop on Google Drive where you're going to set up your folder structure start by creating folders for each month name them something like January receipts February receipts and so on this will help you find things much easier later when you need them so step 3 upload your receipt photos to the Google Drive you'll upload the photo of your receipt into the folder for the month you made the purchase this way all of your January receipts are in one place and all your February receipts are in another and so on now step four is optional but is recommended if you name your receipt to help you find things later that can really help you in the future you can include the date and the name of the supplier in the file name for example if you bought something on June 28th from Office Depot name the receipt 2023 0628 Office Depot this makes searching for specific receipts much faster because you can then sort by date and easily see where the purchase was made alternatively if you don't have a lot of receipts each month it's pretty easy to just use the default date stamp on the photo to search your purchases as you make sales you can include your invoices in these monthly folders as well so that's it just keep on top of uploads as you make purchases or sales using Google drive to Oregon your receipts is a pretty simple and straightforward system that anyone can use and it's a big bonus because it's free as well let's switch gears and look at a way to take receipt management up a notch with a platform called dext now Dex is a specialized application that's all about making receipt management a breeze for business owners and no this is not a sponsored video but here's how it works step one take a photo using your Dex app let's say you've just bought some office supplies at Office Depot all you have to do is whip out your phone take a photo of your receipt using the next app and it will be uploaded to the cloud for Secure Storage and some other magic as it uploads Dex uses a smart feature called optical character recognition to read your receipt and extract all the essential information it will record the date of purchase where the purchase was made the amount of the purchase any sales tax paid and the currency of the purchase if that's visible on the receipt this all gets stored in the cloud with your Dex account you'll see a list of your receipts and all the extracted data nicely summarized in your Dex inbox the last step is to connect your decks to your bookkeeping software you'll publish receipts from dext into the bookkeeping software such as xero or Qbo and watch as your bookkeeping gets a lot more streamlined the expenses get automatically entered into your bookkeeping System including the expense category total amount sales tax amount and even a copy of the receipt image we use decks for our own bookkeeping here at Avalon and for all of our bookkeeping clients and it's a great all-in-one solution the main downside is that it does come with a monthly cost of around twenty seven dollars per month however decks can certainly be worth the fee if you're managing dozens or even hundreds of receipts each month like we are finally let's talk about a solution that might already be at your fingertips receipt management through your accounting software if you're using QuickBooks Online Qbo zero freshbooks or any number of other accounting applications you're in luck these platforms offer built-in receipt management functionality here's how these platforms work step one snap a picture of your receipt using the mobile app provided by your accounting software remember to capture all the details clearly you'll thank yourself later step two you'll then need to manually enter the relevant information from the receipt into the software while this might not be as automated as the OCR feature indexed it not only stores your receipt but enters the purchase into your books now step three is to complete your bookkeeping your digital receipt now rests comfortably within your accounting software and you can reconcile the receipt with the line item from your bank or credit card feed this can be a great option if you're already using the software for your bookkeeping needs so why not you use the receipt management to it keeps everything in one place so your receipts are included with your accounting records the only real downside is that you will have some manual data entry but that can be a decent trade-off for having everything in one place okay so I said there's three options but I'm going to add a fourth because it gives you the best of both worlds when it comes to bookkeeping and receipt management and that's the exact way we do our bookkeeping and the bookkeeping for all of our clients as well so you'll combine decks with your existing accounting software our Top Choice being zero for that piece and you'll capture receipts with Dex and then streamline your bookkeeping by connecting decks to xero for a much more automated bookkeeping experience we even have an online course that teaches you how to use dext and xero in combination to dial in your small business bookkeeping check out the link in the description below for our online course if you want to save yourself some time and truly get your books in order this is a huge step in the right direction navigating business receipts doesn't have to be overwhelming we've discussed various strategies to help streamline the process each option has its own pros and cons the choice depends on your business requirements budget and preferences for automation whichever you choose remember the Golden Rule consistency is key a system only works if you use it regularly you can transform receipt management from a daunting task to a streamlined efficient process and that's it for this video please drop us a comment if you've got a favorite way to organize your receipt or let us know if you've come across some other handy software platforms to manage your business documents and if you've enjoyed this video as always or found it helpful please hit the like button and consider subscribing if you like content like this it helps us reach more people and help more business owners here in Canada but thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video cheers