It’s that time of year, Tax Time, where you hand over your financial life to the person who makes sense of your madness. Every year you promise to be more organized.

Did you put a filing system in place?

Are you handing over a bag or box of coffee stained receipts?

Are the receipts ripped and crumpled?

I suggest saving receipts electronically. Why? I have noticed the ink fades after a few months. Snap a picture with your cell phone right after a purchase.

Great!  Now you have tons of pictures of receipts, selfies and other random things on your smartphone.  What do I do now?

Save the pictures to what I call an electronic filing cabinet, a cloud-based file storage service like Box.com, DropBox or OneDrive. There are many to choose from.

Use a smart filename – Vendor Name, Short Description of Purchase, Date, Payment Method.  

          Example:  Starbucks Client Name 02.28.17 CC1234.JPEG

You will be able to search for any receipt you can think of and find it!  Create smart folders that make sense to you.

          Example:  2016 Credit Card (1234) Receipts.JPEG