Flash forward to 2013, when cloud-based accounting software has made it easier than ever to track expenses, generate reports, and create budgets – all without ever having to hit the print button.

The key to creating a flawless expense report is to accurately track your expenses. If you have a solid system in place, generating a report based on those tracked expenses is an absolute breeze. Here are a few of our favorite ways to ensure accurate expense tracking:

Shoeboxed

In the above scenario, one of the biggest pains of creating hard copy expense reports was having to staple piles of receipts to the report itself. Well, no more!

Shoeboxed is a receipt scanning service that digitizes hard copy documents and maintains them in a cloud-based account that can be accessed from anywhere. Every individual receipt is transformed into a digital document that can be searched for by date, location, or individual item.

You can also keep track of receipts when you’re out of the office with the Shoeboxed app for iOS7 and Android. Snap a picture of each receipt and watch as your account is instantly updated with the new information.

When it’s time to create an expenses spreadsheet, Shoeboxed does it for you. Create one-click expense reports by selecting the applicable expenses within your Shoeboxed account. You can then download the spreadsheet, email it to your colleagues or employees for editing, or upload it to a secure, shared server.

Budgt

Budgt for iPhone is an app that lets you track your spending via virtual spreadsheets. This option is great for those concerned with privacy because Budgt doesn’t require any banking or other personal information. Simply buy the app for $0.99 and begin tracking expenses. You’ll have a handheld digital spreadsheet that will help you manage your finances and stick to your budget.

Freshbooks

On the other end of the spectrum, Freshbooks is cloud-based accounting software with the ability to link directly to your personal or business bank account. Freshbooks intuitively knows which items should be added to your expenses spreadsheet. It tracks income as well as expenditures, and displays the data on your account dashboard in the form of charming graphs and easy-to-read charts.

Freshbooks also offers a variety of reporting options that can be customized by client, invoice, expense category, profit and loss, and tax summaries. Simply click the “expense report” option to view and download an instant snapshot of your expenses for the month, quarter or year. You can also assign categories to certain expenses, making reporting come tax time a cinch!

Whichever application you choose to help create your weekly, yearly or monthly expense spreadsheet, the benefits of going digital are clear. So forget the paper print out and scrap the stapled mess – use Shoeboxed, Budgt, Freshbooks or the app of your choice to digitally track your expenses.

Spreadsheets have always been the go-to method for managing business revenues and expenses. For years, tools like Microsoft Excel, FileMaker Pro and OpenOffice have been coveted financial management tools for small business owners looking to organize their finances.

The reason these tools remain relevant even today is because they make it very simple to add, filter and manipulate the data within them. Even with the advent of cloud based solutions like Google Docs, which allows multiple users to change data within spreadsheets in real time, there are lots of other tricks to make your business expense spreadsheet more functional and easier to manage.

One of the best things about spreadsheets is that almost all of the popular accounting programs allow you to export data into existing documents based on pre-set categories. Most of these accounting programs are integrated with Excel and Google Docs, which means all you have to do is click a button and instant business expense spreadsheets are generated on your computer. Many of them will also allow you to insert images of the documents alongside the cells of data to ensure that the information is correct. Just make sure if you are inserting images that your document does not become too cluttered.

(Courtesy of philliecasablanca)

The only problem with a traditional expenses spreadsheet is that it still requires you to manually enter the data you want to track (i.e. vendor, amount, card used, date, line expenses, etc.). While some of the accounting programs will extract the data for you, the best solution is to actually hold onto your receipts and scan them with an OCR system.

There are lots of services and scanners out there that will store your receipts and extract the data from them so you don’t have to. Most of these solutions will also extract information off of bills and invoices, which helps to give you an even more accurate view of your finances. Some services even allow you to generate instant expense reports from your cell phone so you can email them to your employer before you are even back from the business trip!

Here are some other tips for making a good business expense spreadsheet:

• Separate your Personal and Business Expenses: This one may seem obvious, but even one expense in the wrong place could completely throw off your budget tracking. If possible, try to use different cards for your different types of expenses. Sorting by payment method is a great way to separate personal expenses from business ones on a spreadsheet.
• Learn Simple Functions: Tracking your expenses is worthless if you can’t extrapolate the data. Learning how to add, multiply, subtract and divide the different rows and columns is very important for successful expense reporting. A good guide for learning these functions can be found here.
• Graph, Save, Email and Print: Similar to learning the functions, it is also important to learn how to make graphs of the data on your spreadsheets. Graphs are much more helpful for “seeing the big picture” and they are also more meaningful. I should also note that it is crucial for you to save, email and print your spreadsheets every month or even every week. Spreadsheets on programs like Microsoft Excel aren’t saved in the cloud so if your computer dies then you are out of luck.