Receipt Management with a Moleskine Pocket
I spent half of my Good Friday sorting out all the receipts I’ve accumulated in my wallet, and various piles around my desk and bookcase. Not the most fun I’ve had over a holiday weekend! I used to have a nice system for going through my receipts every day or two; filing the receipts I’d need to reconcile against bank or credit card statements for the end of the month; and throwing away the others once they were entered in my accounts.
I had been using a beta release of ChaChing until I went to America last year and discovered that it only works in one currency. And the receipts have been piling up ever since.
On Friday, after reading around the alternatives, I got the free trial of Moneydance 2007, and began the laborious task of transfering all my unreconciled transactions — most in US dollars, but plenty in Sterling, and a hand full in Euros. Still only half way through the pile and with half the day gone I figured there had to be a better way of doing this, stopped what I was doing and made a cup of tea to sit with and mull things over. Here’s what I came up with, and wanted to post here incase you too are drowning in receipts:
- When you get a receipt for anything, it goes in the little pocket at the back of your Moleskine Planner. And since it goes everywhere with you, that’s the easy part
If you haven’t yet bought into the Moleskine revolution, a pocket in your wallet, or a special pouch just for your receipts will do as well. Just make sure you keep them all in one place. - Every day (or two at the most) empty the pocket, and enter the transactions into Moneydance before deciding what to do with the receipt itself.
- Anything that constitutes a reimbursable business expense goes in an envelope marked expenses in, say, the top drawer of your desk .
- Anything that is tax deductable goes in a similar envelope, marked tax deductable 2007.
- Anything else worth keeping as a proof of purchase (say your new iPod stops working, and you want to return it to the store for a refund) goes in a third envelope marked proof of purchase 2007.
- Whatever’s left, toss it in the bin.
- The only wrinkle in this system is managing online purchases, but I had that covered already: whenever completing a payment through the online billing system, just print out the web-page receipt if it needs to go in an envelope, and add the transaction to Moneydance right away in any case.
To kickstart the system, I quickly went through the rest of my receipts and saved any that needed filing, and put the rest in the bin. As far as Moneydance is concerned, my finances started yesterday… I created all new accounts, initialised with todays balance. No sweat 
This will keep our wallets from bulging with receipts, and make keeping track of where all our money is going a lot easier. Let me know if you either make use of, or streamline, any of these ideas in the comments.
Edit: Thanks to Moleskinerie for the “receipts in a moleskine pocket” picture above.
