A Minimalist - The Paper Trail

Running your own company means keeping up with receipts and that means so much paper to be filed aka organized . Its just as important to keep up with outgoing money as it is with incoming money.

Back when I first began running any company I would just put all of it in a bog box and worry about it all in April when I filed taxes but that did not work because it would take me a week just to separate all the receipt into categories .

I asked my CPA was there a better way and he told me to put every days receipts in an envelop . I tried for a couple weeks but found that I was doing the same thing just in envelops , he had no idea how many I had to deal with .

Next I came up with my own filing system I bought a small but deep flip top clear storage tub . I took out the box of envelops and I labeled each Gas - Office - Materials , Etc. until I had enough envelops to cover what I could use on taxes for the company .

When tax time came I still had to figure all the receipts and sometimes I would just sit in the floor and scatter them all around me . 

Once I had a visitor and she suggested that I do the receipts monthly and all I had to do was put my paper work together in April . I did try this . But when the year was up I discovered I wasted more time than I did when I would do them once a year , only a couple days work instead of twelve days , back to my plan of action . 

Last night I sat down and filed receipts for my rental business .

I do pile them on the dining room table and then I simply take out my clear storage tub and I file each in its appropriate envelop and I am done in minutes .

I did something else last night that I have been neglecting , I cleaned and filed my coupons in the binder . I do not plan to coupon shop this week but if I see something that will be free or dirt cheap and we use it then I know I have the coupon for that item and how many . ( Coupons are money because the store accepts them instead of dollar bills ) . Yes I do save my food receipts and yes I did keep up with what I spent and saved and I was amazed how much I got free with coupons . Yes I do buy the Sundays paper for those coupons but I also deducted that amount from savings and I was still amazed .

Now I just need to get the office cleaned up , another business is sitting around in here , Ebay and Etsy . But this room is a whole story by itself !

By Andria Perry