There’s more to being clutter-free than the requisite sweeping and mopping. A truly clean house can only be achieved when you establish easy-to-follow systems that prevent the buildup of clutter and keep your home free of both dirt and distractions.

Here’s a proven 3-step system for preventing clutter before it starts and creating the kind of peaceful, organized house you’ve been dreaming about:

Step one: Assign homes within your home

The first step to decluttering is to assign every object in your home its own home.

This means that everything – from a pair of scissors to an old stack of photos – has a home where it “lives” and where it’s meant to be.

Items without homes quickly turn into random clutter that makes your house look disorganized. Invest in organizing bins, toss what you don’t need, and feel free to make use of a good old-fashioned label gun when creating homes for everything you own.

Step two: Digitize your documents

The second answer to the question of how to keep a clean house is to digitize your paper documents.

Paper is a huge culprit in keeping homes cluttered and disorganized. Bills pile up, stacks of receipts line the kitchen table, and before you know it, your home looks more like a disorganized office than an inviting place to relax.

Use a service like Shoeboxed to quickly and easily scan your paper documents. Simply snap a photo of each document with your smartphone, or drop piles of paper into Shoeboxed’s Magic Envelope.

The company will digitize all of your paper documents into data within a secure account without you having to do any heavy lifting.

What’s more, the digital versions of your documents are legally binding, allowing you to scan and then recycle 90% of the paper in your house – even bank statements and tax records!

Step three: Create ongoing systems

Assigning homes within your home and digitizing your paper documents will clear out any remaining clutter and give you the truly clean home you’ve been looking for.

But how do you prevent clutter from coming back?

You need to create ongoing systems that make it easy for you and your family to keep the house clean.

Look at the items that most frequently clutter up your living room, dining room, office, or bedroom. Then, create specific systems that dictate where the item should be at all times, whether it’s being used or not.

For instance, you could create systems for how to handle paper receipts every time you get one. You might scan them to your Shoeboxed account, file them in a specific folder, or recycle them.

Another system that works well for keeping a clean house is to establish specific “drop zones” for items like shoes, purses, and coats.

It’s practically impossible to learn how to keep a clean house if your cleaning efforts stop with the mop and broom.

Dig deeper to create systems of organization that prevent clutter, make papers go “poof!”, and give you the kind of organized home you’ve been longing for.

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!

If you’ve been thinking of going paperless, and have been wondering “How do I scan a document?”, you’re in luck.

There are 3 easy ways to digitize your documents – using a desktop scanner, using your smartphone, or using a mail-in service.

When you scan documents, all of your data becomes digitized and searchable on your computer or in the cloud. Once your documents have been scanned, you can recycle the hard copies, freeing up precious space in your home or office.

Here is how to scan a document using a desktop scanner, mobile phone, or mail-in service:

1. “How Do I Scan a Document with a Traditional Desktop Scanner?”

• Make sure your desktop scanner is connected to your computer, either wirelessly or through a USB cable

• Make sure your scanning software is installed. Most devices will automatically detect the scanner and download the appropriate software the first time you plug the scanner into your computer.

• Place hard copy documents face down on the scanner. Or, if you have a multi-feed scanner, place your stack of documents into the feed tray.

• Open your scanning software on your computer, adjust the settings, and click “Scan”

• Once the document is scanned, you’ll have the option to save it on your computer, create a PDF, share it via email, or export it to the program of your choice

2. “How Do I Scan a Document with a Mobile Scanner?”

If you need to get a document online but you aren’t at home, you can scan using your smartphone’s camera. Applications like Shoeboxed allow you to snap a photo of any receipt or document, and instantly send the scan to your cloud-based account.

• Gather any receipts or paper documents you’d like to scan

• Open your scanning application on your smartphone

• Take a photo of the receipt or paper document from within the application

• Make any needed edits or adjustments to the scanned data – for example, Shoeboxed allows you to categorize each scanned receipt right from your smartphone

3. “How Do I Scan a Document with a Mail-In Scanning Service?”

What if you don’t have time to scan your documents at home or on the go? In that case, you can use a mail-in scanning service and have someone else do the scanning for you.

In addition to their great mobile scanning app, Shoeboxed also offers a mail-in service for people who are either too busy to scan themselves, or simply don’t feel like spending hours going through stacks of paper!

• Sign up for a Shoeboxed account

• In a few days, you’ll receive one of their big blue Magic Envelopes in the mail

• Collect all of your receipts, business cards, bank statements and other documents and dump them into the Magic Envelope

• Shoeboxed will send you two envelopes to get started. Don’t worry. If you have more documents to scan than can fit in two envelopes – they will send you more envelopes once you’ve mailed them the first two.

• Drop your Magic Envelope(s) into the mailbox.

• Check your Shoeboxed account. In a few business days, all of your documents will be scanned, digitized, and accessible within your online account.

It’s never been quicker and easier to scan a document! Whether you have receipts to scan while on the go, or file cabinets filled with old bills and records, scanning doesn’t have to be a long, labor-intensive process.

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.

Just a few years ago, you would have to physically go into a FedEx Office store to scan documents, or invest in an expensive scanner and receipt scanning software just to turn piles of paper clutter into digital data.

While you can still use public workspaces like FedEx Office to scan documents, doing so requires you to journey to and from their store location each and every time you need something scanned. That’s a lot of work and a lot of wasted time!

Luckily, things have changed a lot in the past few years.

Now, it’s easier than ever to scan documents from the comfort of your own home or office. Scanners are more compact, more lightweight, and more powerful than ever. As more and more small business owners go paperless, scanners are becoming one of the most – if not the most – important office supplies to have on hand.

A mobile scanner like the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 weighs only about 12 ounces and scans everything from business cards to bank statements.

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 Mobile Scanner

When wondering “Where can I scan documents?”, the answer with ScanSnap is “anywhere you want!” Convert paper documents to PDF, Word, Excel, or JPG, connect directly to your laptop or mobile device, and organize full color scans by category or keyword.

Another great answer to the question “Where can I scan documents?” is “Nowhere!” That’s because there are receipt scanning services that will scan all of your documents for you, eliminating the need to buy a scanner at all.

With a service like the one available from Shoeboxed, you can dump all of your paper documents into a big envelope, drop the envelope in the mail, and watch as your account is magically populated with digital data. All of your documents will be scanned, digitized, categorized, and stored in a single secure account. This is a great option if you’re a busy small business owner and don’t have the time to spend hours scanning.

Shoeboxed also has an app for iOS and Android that functions in a similar way to the ScanSnap scanner. Instead of bringing a portable scanner along with you on business trips, you can use your smartphone as a scanner.

Open the Shoeboxed app on your phone and simply snap a picture of the receipt or document that needs to be scanned. The app will then automatically beam the document to your Shoeboxed account and sync the new data within your account.

There is no longer any need to leave your home, go back to the office, or try and find an open FedEx Office simply because you need to scan a few business cards. With the ScanSnap starting at just $199, and Shoeboxed accounts starting at under $10/month, it’s easy to start scanning documents (or not!) when it’s most convenient for you.

Luckily, even Uncle Sam has decided to go paperless. The IRS now accepts digital receipts, which means that scanned receipts are now considered fully legitimate documentation for your taxes. Instead of collecting stacks of paper receipts in your wallet or “organizing” receipts with plastic sandwich bags, you can simply scan your receipts, upload them to a cloud-based receipt management account, and recycle those pesky pieces of paper once and for all.

Then, if you do need to pull a specific receipt for your accountant come tax time, you can simply open up or log in to your digital receipt account and either email them a screen shot of the receipt or print it out. Receipt scanning software like the programs available from Shoeboxed lets you search for receipts that have been placed into a receipt form digitized by date, amount, line item, or category.

With a Shoeboxed account, you can keep track of business receipts no matter where you are. Dump piles of paper receipts into their Magic Envelope and watch your entire office become clutter-free in a matter of minutes. The folks at Shoeboxed will actually scan your receipts for you, saving you the time and headache of scanning slip after slip of paper.

Neat Desktop Scanner

You can also scan business receipts yourself with a desktop scanner or mobile receipt scanner, or simply snap a picture of each individual receipt with your smartphone. This is a great option while traveling, and prevents receipts from getting lost in the shuffle as you head from the airport to the rental car agency to your hotel.

When you receive a receipt that can be expensed or used as a write off, simply snap a photo of it with your phone from within your account. The information from the receipt, including the items purchased, location, date, and total will be instantly uploaded to your online account.

When you return from your trip, need to generate an expense report, or need to file your taxes, simply log in to your cloud-based account and get an instant snapshot of your receipt totals. Each receipt can be categorized, labeled, and exported as a report to the email address of your choosing. You can also download reports and send them as attachments, streamlining the accounting process for you and your tax professional.

Digitizing every business receipt is a great way to get organized, save money, and save time throughout the year. By opting for digital instead of hard copy receipts, you’ll never have to worry about misplacing important financial documents or losing proofs of purchase. If you’re a small business owner, scanning digital receipts will streamline your entire accounting process, freeing you up to do what you do best – run your business!

While it’s obviously not wise to spend without documenting your purchases, there are easier ways of staying on top of your finances other than relying on an Excel spreadsheet. Here is a breakdown of the top three ways to manage your spending to help you decide on the best spending tracker for you.

1. Budgeting Options through Your Bank and Credit Card Company

One of the best and most obvious ways to keep track of your spending is through the very outlets where you keep your money. Almost all banks and credit card companies now offer budgeting graphs and charts, savings advice, spending reports (sorted by date, amount and venue) as well as overdraft alerts.

Simply create an online account with your bank or credit card company and check out what they offer in regards to spending tracker options. You’ll probably be surprised with how many useful tools they offer completely free of charge.

I would not suggest solely relying on these services though as they don’t go quite as in-depth as some of the other options out there. Use these budgeting options as your basic tracking method and then build on them with mobile apps.

2. Mobile Apps

Mobile apps like Mint and Jumsoft Money are great options for integrating your bank and credit card accounts into a central location. These apps are very simple to set up, extremely secure and offer real-time glimpses into your current financial standing.

The best part about using these apps is that they require very little effort on your part to keep them updated. Because they are integrated with your accounts, they know every time you make a purchase with one of your cards. They also have budgeting features that let you break down your budget exactly how you want it so you can get quick, graphical overviews of your spending over a certain period of time.

The only downside of these apps is that they don’t track your cash purchases. When you do make a cash purchase, it is up to you to data enter that purchase into the app. If you’re not the best at holding on to receipts when you make cash purchases though, then you might also want to implement a form of receipt management.

3. Receipt Scanning Apps

The best and most accurate spending tracker is one which allows you to sort and categorize based off of receipts.

Online banking features and mobile apps are really only good for broad categorization. Tracking your spending based off of receipts is a much more accurate and all-encompassing way of ensuring proper money management.

Receipt scanners and services like Shoeboxed.com make it extremely simple to digitize your receipts and save them in the cloud. The best part is that you can create expense reports and budgets that can be filtered all the way down to the itemized products you bought.

For example, let’s say that you bought a crib and baby clothes on your last trip to Wal-Mart. Your bank might classify the purchase as “Wal-Mart” while Mint and Jumsoft Money would classify it as “Retail” or “Shopping.” Receipt Scanners and services can actually classify the purchases as “Baby Supplies” or other specific designations due to their ability to create custom filters.

Do you have a method for tracking your spending that you would like to share with us? We’d love to hear about it in the comments section below!

When you’re trying to save money, build wealth, and manage your budget, it’s absolutely essential to have a free expense tracker to account for every hard-earned penny you spend.

The latest and greatest expense trackers manage all areas of your finances, whether you’re charting transactions on personal accounts or mapping the financial health of your small business.

Here are some of your options when it comes to expense tracking tools.

Spending Free

Spending Free, iPhone’s take on a free expense tracker app, gives you simple snapshots of your overall financial picture every time you open the application.

View your income in green, your expenses in blue, and compare the two in a dynamic interface that breaks up totals by the day, week, month, year, and lifetime.

This tracker is a great choice for goal-setting because it creates a clear picture of where you’ve been and how your income relates to your expenditures. After all, the first step to making significant changes in your finances is getting crystal clear about your situation as it now stands.

Expense Tracker

Expense Tracker turns your smartphone into a mobile bookkeeper. With its easy-to-use interface and shareability features, this app is the perfect choice for savvy entrepreneurs on the go.

Expense Tracker gives you control over how you manage each area of your expenses, which can be arranged and charted by date, quarter or category. Available for Android, this app intuits selections you’ve already entered, making the creation of labels and descriptions a breeze.

Freshbooks

You know and love Freshbooks for cloud-based accounting, but did you know that Freshbooks can also track your expenses?

Simply sync your Freshbooks account to your checking or savings account, and watch this intuitive program get down to business.

Once the application has access to your spending accounts, it automatically recognizes expenses, categorizes them, labels them, and creates an easy-to-read snapshot of your personal financial picture.

Each time you log in to your account, you’ll see expenses listed side by side with income and unpaid invoices, making it a snap to see where you’re overspending and where you can afford to indulge a bit.

Now that’s fresh!

Shoeboxed

Every time you receive a receipt and beam it to your Shoeboxed account, the expense is automatically labeled and digitally filed into a category predetermined by you.

Once you’re in the application, you can search, edit and export expenses associated with everything from business travel to office supplies.

Shoeboxed makes it easy to create expense reports in a variety of formats and share them with your co-workers, employer or tax professional. And since every receipt has been scanned and digitized, you can rest easy knowing that you have legally binding documentation of each and every expense.

Using a free expense tracker is the best way to take control of your financial health and continued growth as a small business owner or solopreneur.

As you track each expenditure, you’ll rest easy knowing that the application is saving you time and money by organizing each item into detailed lists and categories. When the time comes to submit your expense reports to your employer or accountant, you’ll be able to do so with the click of a button.

How did you used to track expenses before there was “an app for that”?

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.