How to organize business receipts

Key to a good business is organization. Reducing clutter, instilling a reliable and effective organizational system, and automating processes where possible is crucial to running your business smoothly.

One of the most challenging organizational tasks for most business owners is how to manage your business receipts. As a business owner or self employed person, you need to keep track of your spending rigorously, so that you can do your taxes properly, survive an audit, and continue monitoring your financial health.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss optimal business receipt organization. We’ll go over the methods, services, and practices you can use in your own business to pair receipts with transitions and ensure better receipt organization for your business.

Many business banking accounts and financial services boast multiple features that can assist you with your organization. The ideal thing about using a business account is that all of these features are interlinked and can be used to mutually benefit each other.

For instance, with a Qonto account you can take photos and scan your receipts, upload them and forward them via our Zapier or Integromat integrations. Then, because you’re able to integrate accounting software, you can send the receipts directly to your accountant after they’ve been automatically organized.

Spend management as a practice goes beyond monitoring your individual spending and expenses. When you manage a team, you have to make sure your spend management practices are applicable across the team, so that everyone is clear on expenses when they travel and order materials.

Practicing spend management means assessing and organizing the following expenses:

• Daily expenses
• Monthly expenses
• Quarterly expenses
• Travel expense reports
• Improvement costs
• Staff training costs
• Infrastructure spending

Among other expenses. With spend management, you can optimize costs, remain compliant with policies, reduce fraud, and save a lot of time.

To maintain spend management across your company, make sure you lay out your policy as clearly as possible for your team. A clear policy will eliminate unnecessary communication, reduce the risk of errors and undetected fraud, and better regulate spending.

When crafting a spending policy, take care of these steps:

1. Define your expenses, set your budgets, and label your expense categories
2. Treat employees equally with spending allowances
3. Keep the policy short and simple—easy to read
4. Update your policy as your company grows and changes
5. Remain compliant with local regulations
6. Use high end software to automate expenses and simplify processes

Scanning and digitizing your receipts comes with many advantages. Increased security, reduced clutter, more control over your finances, and more accurate accounting are among the most beneficial for any business.

Scanning your receipts is best done with a smartphone. This way you can do it on the go and seamlessly link your devices. It only takes a few steps, and most receipt scanning apps will be the same:

1. Take a photo of the receipt with your phone camera
2. Convert the file to a file type of your choice (.pdf, .jpg, etc.)
3. Store the file in your chosen cloud storage.

You can also choose to destroy the old receipt for clutter reduction and security, or hang on to it as an extra copy in case your data is lost or your account is hacked.

How you choose to file receipts and what works best for you will come down to your own preferences. The easiest way, however, is going to be digitally storing your receipts. Without anything physical to keep track of and devise a system for, a digital filing method will reduce clutter and make it easier to bring up receipts when you need them.

When storing receipts digitally, there are fortunately many different apps and software you can use to take care of the organization for you. The other perk to doing this is you’ll have your receipts protected and digitally backed up so they can’t be lost.

When selecting the right one for you, think about what you need from receipt storage software:

• Do I want automated capabilities, or is it better that I manage the organization myself?
• Can I link the app to my finance department or accountant’s email?
• Do I want an all-in-one inclusive finance app, or just a receipt scanner?
• Is it better if I just scan the receipts myself and store them on a cloud storage device like Google Drive or Onedrive?

If you don’t want to keep your physical receipts, which really shouldn’t be necessary given all the digital technology we have at hand, it’s a good idea to also save your receipts offline, in a desktop folder. This protects you from cyberthreats or internal problems with the company holding your data.

Looking back over your receipts on a regular basis is a great way to prepare for an audit and analyze your spending better. It’s important for any business owner to have a clear picture of their spending, and this can be achieved by reviewing receipts.

When doing regular receipt reviews, there are a few things to keep in mind. Let’s go over some of the main points so you can review your receipts with confidence.

Pick a time for each monthly or quarterly review—or however often you choose to review your receipts—so that it becomes routine. This will make it easier to follow up on any unclear or missing information on the receipts, because you will dedicate the time in your calendar to these tasks.

Rushing your receipt reviews will render the whole process pointless. Make sure you have a system in place or software that thoroughly checks your receipts with maximum efficiency, so you can give each receipt the attention it needs.

Data on level III transactions is the highest amount of data that can be put on a receipt. You won’t need this level of data for all your business transactions, but certain ones it will be important for. Determine the information you need for your transactions and, in the review process, call and request from the merchants when the information is lacking.

As your company expands, you might find yourself able to hire staff members to take on more responsibilities. One of the best responsibilities for any business owner to offload will be receipt management and handling.

When teaching your employees proper receipt handling, there are a few things you can do to make the process easier.

Instead of overloading an employee with receipt handling as an extra task, dedicate a team member or department to all financial matters. This will ensure more accuracy and increase the likelihood of hiring the right people or person for the job.

Expense policies, data levels required, company budgets—make sure your finance department has everything it needs to assess receipts accurately and according to your company policy. In addition, make sure they have the resources and software they need to maximize accuracy and efficiency in the procedure.

Rather than putting your finance team out of a job, automation is going to make the process easier for them and ultimately benefit you and your company. Automation software can help with the organization of your receipts, extracting data from bank statements, while automating some bookkeeping tasks.

Fortunately, there are numerous apps that can help with receipt organization. These apps are suited for both individuals and teams, with some catering more to others through available features and monthly costs.

Forbes published a great rundown of the best receipt scanner and organization apps in 2023 which is worth reading to get an overview of your options.

When looking for a receipt organization app, consider whether your company needs the following features:

• Real-time notifications
• Automated data extraction from receipts
• Receipt scanning
• Multiple user allowances
• Sync options with accounting software
• Connect options other payment services