Get Started with Receipt Free for Businesses and Streamline Your Document Management

Receipt free for businesses

as a small business owner it's easy to let those business receipts just pile up and never have a real place to organize them all but if you can set up a system it's really easy to implement so in this video i'm going to show you how to set up an organization filing system in google drive for your receipts and your bookkeeping records for your small business by doing this you'll have everything in one place you'll always know where it is and how to access it and you'll have everything in one place for tax season how amazing would that be hi there i'm stephanie thacker and i'm the founder and ceo of steadfast bookkeeping company which is a full service done for you bookkeeping and tax firm and i'm here to simplify all things bookkeeping and tax for your small business how many times have you been looking for a receipt a report something to do with your financial records in your business and you know it's somewhere but you just can't find it you maybe even put it in that special place you thought let me put it in this folder or let me tuck it here or there and then when it comes time to find it you just can not find it i am raising my hand because i've been there with so many things and i know that for me with filing certain things away in my business i procrastinate doing it sometimes because it does take time to set up a filing system it does take a little bit of time and hello we all know there's already not enough hours in the day right i mean are you with me on that well trust me getting a good filing system in place for your receipts and your bookkeeping and financial records is actually not that time consuming once you have a good system in place once you have the system in place you really just have to implement that system on an ongoing basis and you'll find that it actually doesn't take you that much time in the little bit of time that it does take you to save a receipt here take a picture there do those things in the end it is well worth it because again you're going to know right where everything is you're going to have easy access to it so the couple of seconds that it might take you to implement it you know throughout the week or throughout the month will be so worth it in the end just imagine knowing where every receipt is where every financial report is i mean how awesome would that be well let's go ahead and dive in because i'm going to show you how to create an easy filing system in google drive so that this can be you so that you log in and you know exactly where to access all of your receipts and tax records and bookkeeping records for any given year so let's go ahead and take a look okay so here we are inside google drive and this really could be done even with the free version of google drive now here we have the paid version because we have a ton of things between me and all my team and all of our clients we use a ton of storage and google drive however if you're just getting started and you're just looking to create your first you know really filing system in google drive you could probably get away with just using the free version and they'll let you know when you're getting close to your storage and when you need to move up or if you wanted to use the you know the software that's made for teams or things like that but you're going to see here that as far as these bookkeeping records go it's really pretty simple and you it's nothing that is going to take rocket science to figure out or put together so here on the screen you can see i have a bookkeeping records demo now i just did this so that any sensitive information that i have any of my records or any of our clients records was not shown but you can see here you this really could apply to anybody so this main folder that i have that's called bookkeeping records demo i would advise you know for your business if you're already using google drive or if you're going to be setting up google drive and using it in a way that you're not only going to create a filing system for your financial records but maybe for other things in your business it would be good to have a folder maybe called you know your business name um bookkeeping records or financial records or you know just accounting finance something like that where all of this isn't just like jumbled into all of the 1500 other things that you're eventually going to store in google drive or that you're already storing in there so that's my first recommendation is create a folder that you can put these subfolders into okay and i also want to note that i do not think you should be duplicating everything out of your software into these folders so i am not going to advise you to take every transaction you know out of quickbooks and put it here into google drive i'm not going to say you know turn everything into a pdf and put it into google drive every invoice that you send should come in here or every receipt every payment recorded no so if that's what you're worried about or if that's what you were kind of thinking this was leading to you can just go ahead and scratch that out of your mind because that's not what we're going to do i am all about efficiency and that would not be efficient at all okay so what we're really going to use this for is kind of a back up to our records that are already in our bookkeeping or accounting software so you can see here i have four folders now to start off with you might only utilize one or two of these folders and that's okay you can kind of build on this as you go and also you can totally customize this so you might see something here that sparks something that you can do customized to your business and that's okay this is really just to get you started this is just some ideas and i would love for you to take this and really run with it and customize it for your own business so the four folders that i have you can see first is the bookkeeping slash financial reports then i have budget then i have contractor invoices slash payments and then expense receipts so i'm going to go into each one of these folders and kind of give you a little detail or recommendation on what you should be putting into each of these folders now i'm first going to open up the bookkeeping financial reports and the first thing that you're going to see are folders labeled by the year now i am a big fan of using years because with bookkeeping and accounting and taxes in general we do things on a year-to-year basis right you file your taxes every single year and so let's say that you are getting audited in 2023 for 2020 you know if you have 10 years three years even of receipts in one folder it is going to be a nightmare to try to go through all of those receipts and things and try to find those so i highly recommend that you at minimum start off with using years inside your folders so i just have 2020 and 2021 here just as examples so i'm going to click into 2021 to further show you now you're going to see that i really like to see step by step by step i do not like things to be jumbled together i do not like to throw just a bunch of things into one folder so i have bookkeeping slash financial reports and then i've gone into the year now what do i have after that now you see a folder called monthly reports now because this folder specifically is for like bookkeeping and financial reports if you are working with a bookkeeper or some type of accounting firm they are probably providing you reports on a monthly basis or maybe they're telling you that you know the the month is closed out and you can now go into quickbooks and view your monthly reports or something like that you know everybody does it a little bit differently i like for our clients and for me personally i like to be able to have my monthly reports accessible in google drive quickbooks online is super accessible as well you can always log in on a computer a phone an ipad anything like that to get those reports but sometimes i like to just have a pdf at my fingertips that i can see in google drive so inside this monthly reports folder you guessed it then what do i have now i have a folder for each and every month again there's 12 months in a year right so some of these folders now with monthly reports you might only have one or two reports but still if it's just called profit and loss and balance sheet like let's say your your bookkeeper is just sending you a report every month and it just says maybe like your business name p l your business name balance sheet well at the end of the year in this 2021 folder you're going to end up with 12 of each of those and it's probably going to be putting like little numbers or you're going to start putting crazy things behind it to be able to upload it and not have the same name repeated so why not just go ahead and create these folders for each and every month so what i do to keep them in order um because yes i'm a little ocd like that so i want my months to be in order from january through december and google drive is going to default to alphabetical order obviously so that is not going to put it in order from january to december so the way that you can kind of get around that is just putting a number in front of it so one you know put the number that corresponds to the month that is going to keep these 12 folders in order every single month of every single year and then inside these folders you can simply just upload your reports so i don't have any in here right now because remember i'm using a demo but inside this you would save maybe your profit and loss report maybe your balance sheet maybe your bookkeeper or accountant is sending you a general ledger maybe they're sending you um cash reports or comparison reports maybe you're running those reports on your own whatever it is remember we're going to take a look back we are inside of our bookkeeping and financial reports so this folder i would recommend would be specific to those financial reports for your business this is really going to be so good if you end up working with a bookkeeping or accounting firm or with a cfo or you know with some type of financial advisor because you could even then share this folder with them so if they want if they say you know i would love for you to send me your you know last um six months balance sheet or six months profit and loss you can easily pull this folder up and just say hey i'm going to share this google drive folder with you and you can share this folder with them which would be really easy but even for you accessing it this is where you would want to put your bookkeeping and financial reports now let's go back to our main folder here this would be your business bookkeeping records folder and the second folder that we're going to look at is budget now within the budget folder you're going to see that i also have years here again i am a big believer in doing yearly budgets for your business and so i think every year it's a really good idea to put a budget together so a lot of times we're using budget spreadsheets right so there is the ability to do budgets and quickbooks online and probably other softwares but a lot of times spreadsheets kind of work a little better we're able to do you know some scenarios and things like that so here at steadfast a lot of times we're using spreadsheets or google sheets that we can keep live and updated at all times that multiple people can have access to and so again i'm going to have yearly folders within this budget folder so in your in your folder you would simply want to put in that spreadsheet so you can see in here i have a 2021 yearly budget again that's going to look different for everybody maybe you have somebody that has done this budget for you in some type of software and they're sharing it with you or they've sent you a pdf maybe you did it in quickbooks and you want to put you know a pdf copy here or an export here whatever that looks like but this is a really great place again you can create shortcuts and things like that if you want to easily access this but again you're not going to be scrolling through pages and pages when you're looking for your budget you're going to know okay where do i go i go to my budget folder and i go to that year now i don't have monthly folders in this budget folder because a lot of times we're not doing monthly budgets now you might be updating it on a monthly basis which is great if you're doing that but we're not actually like creating a whole new budget each and every month usually it's just one for the year um if you are creating budgets for projects like course launches or you know a product launch or a new business launch i would recommend take going to this budget folder and within your year even you could say okay 2021 you could then create a folder for you know xyz course launch or this product launch or this new business venture launch you can even have folders you know subfolders again giving you even more detail for those budgets okay then let's go back to the bookkeeping records folder again and we're going to look at this third folder here called contractor invoices slash payments now surprise surprise when i open this folder again i have yearly folders in here what i recommend putting into a folder like this is if you have contractors that you are paying it could be one time it could be ongoing but hopefully they're sending you some type of invoice right hopefully they have a pdf or maybe it's a spreadsheet or just a word doc um something that they're sending you i highly recommend taking those invoices or taking a screenshot of your payment and putting it into these folders now if i open up my yearly folder you're going to see that i do have months in this folder because i think it's really important to be able to go back and quickly see so if you're looking for jane doe the contractor that you want to see okay how much did i pay her in june of 2021 you simply go into your contractor invoices 2021 go into june and those you know invoices or payment receipts should be there now i know a lot of times that contractors are using different softwares right they could be using anything from honeybook to dubsado to 17 hats maybe they use quickbooks they could be using anything and everything to send this to you when you click in your email to view that invoice i would highly recommend saving that invoice as a pdf and then taking just a few seconds coming into google drive and uploading it to your folder now i'll stop here and say that if you haven't downloaded the app for google drive on your phone i highly recommend doing that as well because if you're checking your emails on the go and your you see that an invoice comes through or a payment receipt comes through you can also upload those straight from your phone to save that file to your phone quickly it can be a photo or it can be a pdf file or something save it upload it to the drive folder and then it's done you don't have to make a list or put it to the side and say okay i have to go back later and do that however let's say again in the case of an audit or the case that you start working with a bookkeeping or accounting firm this kind of information is going to be really crucial to have and have in those months so any invoices that they send save those upload them here payment receipts you know maybe you make a payment online and then you get an email that says thanks your payment re received you paid xyz contractor on this date for this total take that email save it as a pdf upload it to the folder and then you're done okay now let's go back one last time to the bookkeeping records demo folder and look at the last folder that i have here which is expense receipts and i know that this is a big one so there should be no surprise by this point in the video that i have years here i have 2020 and 2021 we're going to look at 2021 and again it should be no surprise that i recommend having monthly folders here now i know that these days we're doing a lot of online shopping right so you know like i said whether you're buying um products or services you're probably paying online more than you're going to like a physical location and writing a check and using a debit card and getting a paper receipt that's just my hunch if that's not you that's okay i'm going to offer a solution for you as well but i know that sometimes it can be easy to say well you know what i've got all of those receipts saved in my email so it's okay because every time i paid so and so or you know every time that i bought something on amazon or i bought something on etsy or i bought from whatever website you can purchase from you know it i got a confirmation email to me and yes that's great because it does create an automatic digital receipt that you don't have to worry about scanning in or taking a picture of however think about this your email i mean i don't know about you but you know your email can start to easily have thousands and thousands and thousands of emails in it you just let receipts and things like that just build up and build up and build up and never get rid of them and if you don't have like an upgraded version of g suite you know your email might tell you that it's getting to capacity and then what do you do you might go just oh i don't need any of those emails from last year and you just archive them or delete them well again what happens in an audit if you get audited in 2023 for 2020 and they're like can you show us all of the receipts for the advertising and marketing category and you're like oh shoot i deleted all of those from my email you don't want that to happen even if you don't have them deleted from your email how in the world are you going to go through thousands of emails to try and find all of those receipts that tie to the advertising marketing category or whatever it is you don't want to do that how easy is it to have this expense receipts folder have the year have a folder for every month again labeled 1 through 12 so that they stay in order and then so if it's january 2021 and you make a purchase you get that email confirmation save that email as a pdf if you don't have the ability on your computer to print that email to a pdf just take a screenshot everybody's computer can do a screenshot again even if you're looking at it on your phone you can do a screenshot so take a screenshot save it as a pdf whatever you need to do pop into this 2021 january folder and upload that when you are being audited by the irs or by your state whatever it is digital receipts are perfectly acceptable so you don't have to worry about printing all of those out and putting them in a folder putting them in a file saving them in storage somewhere this can be your storage google drive can be your filing storage so let it be that simply take that and upload it to the folder by the end of the year yeah these folders are going to be full of receipts however again how awesome is it that you know exactly where to go so if you are doing your bookkeeping and you're backing everything up in a good filing system if you need to see all of those advertising and marketing receipts you can simply go to quickbooks pull up a report that shows all of your advertising and marketing transactions and it will have the dates right there then you can start coming into these folders and pulling those receipts now this is just another step that you can take to organize this even more so i'll quickly say it but when you're uploading these you know a lot of times if you're taking a picture on your phone you know it's just going to be image whatever whatever dot whatever type of image it saves it as or if you're taking a screenshot on your computer same thing one thing that you can do is rename that file pretty quickly so if you are printing it to a pdf on your computer you can at that time say to save it as you know xyz um purchase you know maybe even put the date and then save it like that that way when you come into these folders you can see a little bit more detail than just a bunch of images however if you don't do that at least you have everything in the right month and the right year it's still going to save you a ton of time or if you're uploading on your phone you can always upload it with just that image name and then you can just click on it later you know click on it right after you upload it and say rename and then once you do that you can rename it whatever you want and save it now if that sounds like a lot just trust me it's when you're implementing it on a daily and weekly monthly basis it's just going to become routine so you're just going to open up those receipts that you get in your email and you're going to say oh i need to take a screenshot and upload it or i need to print this to pdf and upload it if you are getting receipts physical you know in a store whether maybe you're going to a wholesaler and purchasing flowers for an event coming up or you know you're in a store you're in target and you're purchasing things for your business and you get an actual paper receipt take a minute right there to take a picture of that receipt it can be once you get in your car you can snap a picture of that receipt pull up that monthly folder whatever month it corresponds to and upload it right then and there just takes a few seconds once it becomes routine though you're good to go as long as you don't need that receipt for you know returns you can trash that you do not need that a digital receipt is perfectly acceptable remember what i said it's perfectly acceptable for the irs or for state agencies so that's really it um again these are just four folders that you can start with some of my tips that i use for steadfast these are also some ways that we do filing for our clients for their bookkeeping records and i really hope that this is helpful to you so that's it really it's simple right now that you've seen it do you see how simple it is but truly how organized it is just to have a few folders in google drive ready to go where you can stash receipts and records and reports it makes such a huge difference in your business you saw there that it really doesn't take that much time to set up and again once you're implementing it it really doesn't take that much time and it's totally worth it in the end i really challenge you and encourage you to give it a try go ahead set up those folders for your business customize it for your needs and see how it helps you in your daily and weekly routines for your business also if you're looking for more bookkeeping tips or just more information on bookkeeping in general i invite you to take my free bookkeeping course and i have the link for it down below and in that course i talk all about the who what when where and why of bookkeeping so i'd love for you to check that out and then let me know your thoughts on that plus don't forget to subscribe to my channel because i release new videos each and every week going over bookkeeping and tax resources and tips for your business and i cannot wait to see you there next time