Creating a completely paperless workspace is a lot easier than you think.

What’s more, going paperless will save you money, help you stay organized, and increase your focus and productivity.

Here’s how to go paperless in just 3 easy steps:

Step One: Take Inventory

The first step to going paperless at home or at work is taking inventory of the paper clutter you’ve already accumulated.

Whether you have file cabinets that are bursting to the brim, or just a messy desk, your first job is to decide what needs to be kept and what can be recycled.

Sort all of your papers, files, receipts, and business cards into two piles: one for recycling and one for paperless processing.

Once you’re clear on what you need to keep, it’s time to move on to Step Two.

Step Two: Clear the Clutter

In Step One, you created a pile (or garbage bag-full) of documents that were important enough to keep.

But when you go paperless, the truth is that you won’t really “keep” any of your paper documents – at least not in hard copy form.

It’s possible to securely store important documents by converting them to digital documents instead. This will save you space while ensuring that your documents are never lost or damaged. When thinking about how to go paperless, digital documents are the answer!

You have many options for clearing paper clutter by digitizing your documents.

You can….

• scan everything and save it on your computer
• use a receipt scanning service
• snap photos of your documents with your smartphone

Whether you decide to use a service or do it yourself, make sure the documents you scan are organized, stored, and backed up in a secure cloud-based system like iCloud or Google Drive.

Once your paper documents have been scanned, organized, and stored, feel free to recycle everything and further reduce the burden of paper clutter.

Finally, keep in mind that the IRS accepts digital versions of receipts and other documents for tax purposes. Unless it’s an original birth certificate, a deed to a home, or a car title, almost all paper documents can and should be digitized.

Step Three: Create Paperless Systems

In Steps One and Two, you cleared paper clutter from your workspace or home.

But how to go paperless permanently and make sure the clutter doesn’t start to creep back into your life?

The answer lies in creating paperless systems.

Take a look at the systems you currently have in place (i.e. the systems that created the clutter in the first place).

What happens when you get a receipt, print a document, or receive mail?

Chances are you’ve been filing hard copies in a filing cabinet, stuffing receipts in envelopes, or simply tossing paper on your desk.

In order to prevent paper clutter permanently, create rules that you follow every time you find yourself holding a piece of paper.

For example…

• Snap a photo of a receipt as soon as you get it, then toss it before leaving the purchase location
• Set aside one hour on Fridays to scan all the business cards and bills you received that week
• Spend 15 minutes at the end of every workday digitizing the day’s documents

Also, don’t forget to reach out to all of your vendors and contractors and request digital statements instead of paper statements.

When considering going paperless, it’s crucial to dump the clutter you already have. But it’s even more important to keep clutter at bay by eliminating paper each and every day!

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!

Digital receipts are also extremely beneficial for the environment, and may even protect you from cancer! That’s because some of the chemicals used to make paper receipts have been shown to cause cancer in lab rats – yikes!

Save money, save time, save the planet, and protect your health. Not too shabby, right?

Here are seventeen of the top benefits of scanning receipts and going digital:

17. When you go digital, there will be no more paper clutter in your car, wallet, purse, home, or office. You’ll be able to stay organized and get back to doing what’s most important to you.

16. A digital receipt will let you instantly track your expenses with receipt scanner software and cut time spent doing your taxes in half.

15. Protect yourself from harmful BPA, the chemical found in paper receipts that’s been shown to cause cancer in lab rats. Every time you touch a paper receipt, you’re exposed to this chemical. Switching to digital receipts will reduce your risk of exposure significantly.

14. Reduce the amount of paper being dumped into landfills each year. According to Will Hines, writing in the Huffington Post, paper receipts account for 1.5 billion tons of waste annually in the United States alone. That’s 10 million trees cut down, a billion gallons of water and over a quarter of a billion gallons of oil used. In the UK, 11 billion receipts are printed each year.

13. Capture receipts while you’re on the go by using receipt scanning apps for your smartphone.

12. Create one-click expense reports with your receipt scanning software’s reporting tool. You’ll never have to staple a stack of receipts to a hard copy expense report again.

11. Organize your receipts by category to get an instant snapshot of your spending.

10. Instantly upload your digital receipt to your application in real time, ensuring that each and every expense is tracked and your accounts are up to date.

9. Save money on costly printer ink and paper by going paperless in your office and at home.

8. Share your information with your accountant or tax professional with the click of a button.

7. If you ever need to find a receipt for tax purposes, it’s as easy as searching by date or keyword within your receipt scanning account.

6. If the IRS requires you to produce a receipt, you can simply print it out and submit it.

5. You can create digital receipts while working off-site by using a portable digital receipts scanner made for travel.

4. Going paperless extends beyond receipts. Most receipt scanner software will also scan bank statements, itineraries, budgets, or any other documents that need to be digitized.

3. Digital receipts lead to a more organized, clutter-free office, which in turn improves productivity in the workplace.

2. Thermal paper receipts are not recyclable, making e-receipts more important than ever for making a positive impact on the environment.

1. When you ask for an emailed receipt or snap a picture of a receipt with your smartphone, you’ll enjoy the feeling of a more organized personal environment and a more sustainable environment for everyone.

In the past few years, a variety of new software has been developed to help individuals and business owners track and manage their expenses using digital receipts and receipt scanning software. Here are our top 5 ways to use tech tools to track your spending:

1. Consider going paperless

The #1 reason people make mistakes tracking their expenses, or forget to include lucrative write-offs on their taxes, is because they’re still using hard copy methods. Paper receipts and reports get lost, misplaced, smudged, and torn. Not to mention the damage they do to the environment. Going paperless will make all of your expenses instantly searchable within your chosen software application.

2. Get receipt scanning software

Speaking of software, there are some amazing programs out there to help you track your business expenses quickly and easily. One of our favorites is a cloud-based software application called Shoeboxed.

Shoeboxed turns all of your paper clutter into digitized receipts, no matter how buried your office is! When you sign up, you’ll get a bunch of “Magic Envelopes” in the mail. Just toss your paper clutter, including receipts, bank statements, and whatever else you’ve got, into the envelopes. When Shoeboxed receives them, they will scan and digitize all of your receipts for you and upload the data to your secure account. You’ll then be able to get an instant snapshot of all your business expenses, assign them categories, and create one-click expenses reports.

3. Create one-click expense reports

Gone are the days of passing around a hard copy spreadsheet from employee to employee, or stapling receipt after receipt to a smudged piece of paper. Using your chosen receipt scanning software, you’ll be able to create an instant report of expenses based on category, date range, or whatever criteria you want.

4. Put your smartphone to work

Track expenses while you’re traveling for business, on your way to a meeting, or working abroad. The Shoeboxed app for iOS and Android lets you snap pictures of receipts and instantly upload them to your cloud-based account. This way, you won’t accumulate paper clutter in your wallet, purse, or car, and you’ll keep your account updated in real time.

5. Be consistent

The easiest way to keep track of your business expenses is by being consistent. Mobile receipt scanning software makes it easy to scan receipts and track expenses any time of day or night, wherever you happen to be. Since it only takes a second or two to scan a receipt, there’s no excuse to let the paper clutter build up!

Keeping track of your expenses and sharing them with your tax professional will ensure the highest refund come tax time. It will also save you hours of time throughout the year and prevent reports and receipts from getting lost in the shuffle.

The benefits of capturing receipts via your smartphone or desktop scanner include:

Instant digitization

When you scan your receipts or snap a picture of them using a smartphone app like the one available from Shoeboxed, all of the information on the receipt becomes instantly digitized. This means that you’ll be able to search for purchases and transactions by date, amount, category, and even individual items. Cloud-based applications like Shoeboxed ensure that all of your expense information is available at the touch of a button.

Never lose another receipt

It’s easy to lose track of paper receipts when they’re stuffed in your wallet, purse or briefcase. By capturing your e-receipts and uploading them to the cloud as soon as you get them, you’ll never lose another receipt. You’ll also be able to search for and find receipts as needed when requested by your tax professional or the IRS.

Easy reporting

When the time comes to send information to your accountant or create an expense report, software that captures e-receipts makes the process seamless. Instead of shuffling through receipt after receipt and manually recording each total, simply select the date range or category of receipt you’d like to report, and voila! A comprehensive report created with the touch of a button.

Digitally sort into categories

Another major benefit of capturing your e-receipts is being able to sort and organize them into expense categories. Shoeboxed’s receipt scanning service automatically detects the appropriate tax category for each uploaded receipt.

For example, a scanned receipt from Office Depot would be automatically labeled as “office supplies,” and be available in searches for that particular expense category. If your purchase at Office Depot needs to be categorized differently, it’s easy to remove, edit, and change category labels from within your account.

Capture on the go

While a receipt scanner comes in handy at the office and when dealing with large stacks of paper, capturing receipts on the go prevents clutter from being reintroduced to your newly clean workspace.

When you receive a receipt from a retail outlet or restaurant, simply snap a picture of that receipt from within your smartphone application. The information will be instantly digitized and beamed to your account. From there, you can recycle the receipt and leave the establishment clutter-free. Since the IRS no longer requires hard copy receipts, the digital record is all you need to keep.

Eliminate stacks of paper clutter

Capturing your e-receipts in the office doesn’t have to be a painstaking process. Shoeboxed offers a service called the Magic Envelope, which allows you to eliminate enormous stacks of personal or business receipts and other paper documents in a matter of minutes. Simply toss anything you’d like to be captured into the big blue envelope, and toss the envelope in the mail. In a few days, the folks at Shoeboxed will have scanned and digitized each and every item.

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!

It’s difficult enough to keep track of what you’re spending, let alone what your employees are spending! When multiple people start spending company money, organization is absolutely essential for making sure everyone gets paid back swiftly and all funds are accurately tracked for tax purposes.

Expense reimbursements may be required when employees run errands, shop for supplies, travel to meetings outside of the office, attend conferences, take clients to lunch, take the company car to be serviced, stay overnight at a hotel, book airfare, take a cab, rent a car, and more.

Luckily, many of the expenses you’ll be required to reimburse double as tax write-offs for you as the small business owner. Because of this, keeping track of your small business expense reimbursements is crucial to saving money come tax season.

Gone are the days of paper expense reporting, where employees had to manually fill out spreadsheets, submit stacks of stapled receipts, and wait weeks to be paid back. With receipt scanning services like those available from Shoeboxed, your employees can now instantly upload their receipts to a single, cloud-based account. Within that account, they can edit individual expenses, categorize their spending with customized labels, and create one-click expense reports.

Shoeboxed is especially useful during travel. If your employees are out of town for a conference, they can simply snap a picture of each receipt they receive with their smartphone. The Shoeboxed app instantly digitizes the data from each receipt and uploads it to your company account. You can track spending in real time, and your employees can recycle their receipts instead of bringing piles of paper back to clutter up the office.

When your employees are ready to be reimbursed, they can log in to their Shoeboxed account, select all of the applicable receipts, and generate an instant expense report. From there, they can download the report as a spreadsheet or PDF and email it to you for swift processing.

Once you receive your employee’s expense report, you’ll be able to evaluate individual items and track spending based on date, location, and category. If you have a question or need more information about an individual receipt, simply log in to your Shoeboxed account and search by the receipt’s date, category, or keyword.

Once you’ve approved all of the expenses that need to be reimbursed, it’s easy to pay your employees back. Services like Expense Pay allow you to instantly transfer funds from your business bank account to your employee’s personal account with the click of a button. Instead of waiting for payroll to clear, your employees can rest assured that they’ll be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses quickly and accurately.

With cloud-based services like those available from Shoeboxed and Expense Pay, staying on top of your small business expense reimbursements is a snap!

While it is never a bad idea to meet with an accountant, there are plenty of other cost effective ways to stay on top of your assets and expenses. Here are a couple of simple ways to manage money that I use every day to keep my spending in order.

Digitize Your Financial Documents – All of Them

I have an uncanny ability to misplace receipts and bills. One minute they’re in my pocket or padfolio and the next they are off in some other universe. This is terrible for my money management, especially if I pay for something in cash.

The best remedy I have found for this problem is digitization.

Scanners are a great option if you have the patience and don’t think you’ll have trouble keeping up with your receipts until you get back to your office. Lots of companies make very reliable scanners which are more than capable of handling the job of digitizing your receipts, bills and invoices. Most of them are even quite affordable as well.

Once you have scanned the documents and made sure that the extracted information is correct, the possibilities are endless. You can enter the data into spreadsheets to make budget graphs, generate monthly expense reports and even track the money you saved by using coupons. You can also categorize your spending so you know which credit cards you use the most often and how much it is costing you in interest. I also find this useful for tax season because I can enter all the data into the virtual accounting programs I use absolutely free. All of the data is searchable too, which makes it extremely easy to find specific purchases.

Even if you can only budget an hour or two per week to scanning your documents, it is well worth the effort considering your receipts are safe and you won’t have to spend time looking for lost ones. When using a scanner though, it is important to make sure that your scanned images are stored in the cloud and not just on your desktop. Local computers should never be the only place where you store your financial information.

Another good and often overlooked part of digitization is how helpful it can be for storing warranties. Warranties help you to keep more money in your pocket because they protect you from the diminishing value of the products you buy. Making sure that your warranties are accessible in the cloud means you will always know what maintenance and repairs are covered by the manufacturer and it will keep you from getting stuck paying for them yourself.

If you’re not the type of person who can keep up with receipts long enough to scan them, then it is a good idea to take pictures of them with your smartphone. While this sounds primitive, many smartphones allow you to email pictures to yourself which will archive the image in the cloud. Once you’re home you can extract the data and save the receipt image with your others. Did you know that the IRS accepts receipt images, even if you took it with your phone? Pretty cool right?

Track Your Card Spending

Although you should make an effort to keep up with receipts from all your transactions, the best thing about using a debit or credit card is that transactions are tracked online. Learning to take advantage of the online banking applications available to you is key to learning how to manage money better.

While not all banks are the same, many online banking features allow you to set up budgets, categorize your expenses, track debits/credits, set spending limits and they can even send automated alerts to your cellphone if your finances are running low. These applications can also be integrated with your savings accounts so you can really get an accurate snapshot of your finances.

Figuring out how to manage money better takes practice, but it is certainly an attainable goal. Using document scanners and online banking tools can help you stick to your budget while also eliminating the unnecessary time of sifting through piles of receipts.