While there are dozens of different receipt scanning options available, many of them are complicated, expensive, or just plain confusing.

Here’s what to look for when choosing receipt scanning software to get organized:

• User-friendly – Great receipt software is easy to use and has an interface that allows you to hit the ground running. This means that from the first receipt you scan, you can easily see how your info is stored, organize and categorize each receipt, and pull up individual receipts by amount, date, or company.

• Powerful – The best receipt software will give you a powerful interface for scanning and storing receipts. You’ll have lots of storage space, enhanced security, and be able to scan/upload stacks of paper receipts quickly.

• Integrated – The receipt scanning software you choose should offer lots of different integrations. Once you scan and upload receipts, you’re going to need to extract the information from those receipts and use it to complete your taxes, create budgets, or track spending. Make sure the software you choose offers integrations with QuickBooks, Evernote, and all of your most-used apps.

• Flexible– There are many different ways to digitize receipts, so your receipt software should offer flexible scanning options. Whether you want to scan stacks of paper receipts using your scanner at home or quickly upload a receipt using your smartphone on the go, the software you choose should be able to do both.
  The Neat system is useful if you want to do the scanning yourself. But if you want more flexible receipt scanning, Shoeboxed is a great option because you can digitize your receipts from anywhere – at home, from your phone, or by outsourcing the job entirely using the Shoeboxed Magic Envelope. This option lets you dump all of your receipts into a big envelope, which gets mailed to Shoeboxed and scanned into your account by their team.

• Secure – In the age of identity theft, security is more important than ever in online applications. But it’s especially important to consider when you’re looking for the best receipt software. Since receipts contain personal information like your name, credit card number, and where you shop, it’s crucial to choose software with enhanced security to protect your sensitive information.

Once you have found receipt scanning software that is user-friendly, powerful, integrated, flexible, and secure, make sure the price is right. Choosing a subscription-based software solution is usually the most cost-effective way to go, because it lets you pay based on how many receipts you scan or how much storage you need. A receipt scanning service like Shoeboxed starts at just $9.95/month – not bad when you consider how much time, energy, and money gets wasted searching for lost receipts!

Armed with the right receipt software, you’ll be able to get organized and go paperless faster than you ever thought possible.

Well, the good news is that, if you’re in that situation now – even if you haven’t started tax preparation yet – it’s possible to finish the process quickly, easily and accurately.

And if you’re not currently in that situation, then the good news is that you never have to end up in it again.

So what’s the secret to swift, painless taxes?

Using a digital receipt scanning service like Shoeboxed to help you.

Forget hiring a Virtual Assistant or spending hours upon hours poring over deductions and write off’s.

With Shoeboxed, you can save hours of time on your taxes by letting their human verifiers scan, digitize, and organize your receipts for you.

Here’s how it works.

Step One: Scan Your Documents

Whether you have piles upon piles of paper receipts, or a single folder just for saving receipts for taxes, Shoeboxed will scan and digitize everything for you.

Magic Envelope

Use one (or five!) of Shoeboxed’s convenient Magic Envelopes to rid yourself of paper clutter in seconds. Simply toss everything into the envelope, drop the envelope in the nearest mailbox, and check your account a few days later.

Every single receipt, business card, bank statement, and tax-related document will be scanned and uploaded to your secure Shoeboxed account – all without you having to lift a finger!

Smartphone App

You can also use the Shoeboxed smartphone app to scan receipts right from your phone.

Open the app on your phone, snap a photo of your receipt, and Shoeboxed automatically populates your account with all pertinent information including the purchase amount, date, location, and tax category.

The smartphone app is a great option for staying organized throughout the year. Instead of letting paper clutter build up, simply scan your receipt the second you get it, then recycle it and go about your (paper-free) day!

Step Two: Organize Your Receipts

Once your receipts are digitized within your Shoeboxed account, double check to make sure they’re assigned to the proper tax deduction categories.

Shoeboxed technology does this automatically, i.e. assigning airport receipts to the “business travel” category, but it’s a good idea to double check for accuracy.

You should also assign tax categories to any receipts labeled “uncategorized” in your Shoeboxed account.

Step Three: Report Your Results

Here’s where the magic really happens. Once your receipts for taxes have been scanned and organized, use Shoeboxed’s one-click reporting tool to calculate your deductions instantaneously.

You can export itemized receipts with assigned categories to a variety of different accounting applications, including Quickbooks, Evernote, Outright, and more, or simply export everything to an Excel or Google spreadsheet.

The reporting option makes it easy to share your itemized receipt totals with your accounting professional, calculate the results, and instantly obtain write-off amounts for each business deduction category.

The next time you prepare to do your taxes, there’s no need to spend hours analyzing bank statements and shuffling through paper receipts.

Use Shoeboxed to scan, digitize, and organize your receipts to finish your taxes faster than you ever thought possible!

Why?

Because a clutter-filled workspace forces you to spend hours per week searching for lost items instead of actually running your business. While you’re digging through a pile of receipts wondering where the heck you put that expense report, the competition is busy wooing your customers and closing deals.

Not to mention the fact that clutter can sap your energy, making you feel tired and unmotivated, which in turn translates to missed business opportunities and sluggish sales.

Here are our top 7 ways to make getting rid of clutter quick, easy, and painless:

1. Skip the “marathon session”

You may be tempted to spend an entire Saturday cleaning out the office – don’t do it! Instead, spend 10 or 15 minutes at the end of each day de-cluttering. Accumulated clutter is a habit that needs to be broken, not a one-time problem that can be fixed in a single swipe. Small changes made consistently are much more likely to last long-term.

2. Go paperless

The bulk of your clutter is most likely caused by scraps of paper and hard copies left lying around your workspace. Use a receipt scanning software program like Shoeboxed to digitize all of your receipts, reports, bank statements and business cards.

3. Give everyone a “home”

If you have a scissors, a stapler, and a bottle of White-out, you should have a “home” for your scissors, stapler, and bottle of White-out. Each item, no matter how small, should have a place to live. At the end of each day, make sure that each item is returned to its proper home, ensuring you’ll return to a de-cluttered office the following day.

4. Ditch the filing cabinet

You probably don’t need to hang on to half of the old documents you’re currently storing in your office, even if they’re important financial statements. The IRS accepts digitized copies of almost everything nowadays, so unless it’s your will or the deed to your property, scan it and recycle it.

5. Work as a team

Getting rid of clutter has to be a team effort. If there is more than one person working in your office, make sure everyone is on board with the plan to get and stay clutter-free.

6. Prevent “trackback clutter”

As a small business owner, you and your team members most likely spend a fair amount of time outside the office. Whether you’re meeting with clients, visiting another job site, or traveling for business, coming and going from the office makes it difficult to prevent “trackback clutter” – the kind of clutter that is dragged in off the street like a stray cat.

Train yourself and your staff to scan their receipts and digitize their reports before they return to the office, preventing new clutter from entering your space every time someone enters the office.

Shoeboxed has a great receipt scanning app that lets you take a photo of a receipt right from your smartphone, and then beam that receipt to your Shoeboxed account. With apps like these, there is no reason for receipts, expense reports, or paper of any kind to collect in your workspace.

7. Hold a fire drill

Whenever needed, hold an emergency clutter fire drill in your office – have everyone stop what they’re doing and spend the next 5 to 10 minutes scanning, digitizing, recycling, and filing.

First, let’s look at the end goal.

Below you can see what it looks like when you have all of your receipts nicely organized electronically.

Notice that every receipt is in the system, completely legible, sortable by everything from the date to the vendor to the amount to the type of purchase it is.

In addition, as you can see below, an image of each actual receipt is also stored along with the digitized data.

And you can access this storehouse of your receipt information and images from anywhere on any device at any time.

As you consider that, are you starting to realize how, to organize receipts this way, offers so many benefits?

• You’ll never need to save the paper receipts again.
• You’ll never have trouble finding a receipt when you need it.
• You’ll never have difficulty reading an old receipt.

Think of how much easier this makes it when you need to return something or when tax time comes around.

The benefits go on and on.

The data is verified as accurate, highly secured and you can export it in formats that are compatible with a number of other financial and other programs you might use.

How You Enter Your Receipts Into the Digital System

So now you’re asking “How do I get my receipts into that digital system?”

The images above happen to be of an online digital receipt organizer called Shoeboxed, which we highly recommend.

The way it works with Shoeboxed is that, once you sign up, you can enter your receipts into the system very simply in any of several ways. You can:

• Scan them using your own scanner into your computer and then upload them via Shoeboxed’s web uploader or via email or…
• Photograph them using your mobile phone and easily transfer the images to Shoeboxed or…
• Physically mail them in Shoeboxed’s prepaid envelopes using any mail carrier

Once Shoeboxed receives the images of your receipts or scans the actual receipts you mail to them for you, they then extract all of the data from the scanned receipt images into a digital format. This is done using what is known as “optical character recognition” or OCR software. OCR software is special software that is able to “read” images and transform text in the images into digital text like you saw in the organized grid earlier.

However, Shoeboxed does not rely on the OCR software alone. They always have a human being double check that the data is extracted correctly.

Once the data is extracted, they organize it in the neat, convenient, sortable format previously shown in your online account, where you have full access to use it in any way you wish, whenever you wish.

Many Excellent Options for Organizing Receipts and Other Documents

Shoeboxed is a very convenient option for how to organize receipts. In fact, you don’t have to stop there. Shoeboxed will also allow you to organize other documents, whether they be business cards, bills, personal records or anything else you want saved in an easily accessible digital fashion.

Shoeboxed even offers a completely free account option. So you have nothing to lose by giving them a try. We are confident you will really enjoy their service.

But that isn’t your only option. There are other companies that offer similar solutions for organizing receipts and other documents depending on how you prefer to enter and store your data and what your particular needs are.

If you’d like to explore further, hopefully one of these receipt scanning software options will work for you.