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!